Ismat Chughtai - Significance

Significance

Ismat Chughtai is considered a path breaker for women writers in the subcontinent, as the many women writing at the time of Ismat's birth and childhood - including, notably, Muhammadi Begum, Sughra Humayun Mirza, Tyaba Bilgrami (to whose novel Anwari Begum Chughtai refers in Terhi Lakeer), and Khatun Akram, were considered to be too caught up in the ideology of slow, conservative and religiously sanctioned changes for women advocated by such male reformers as Mumtaz Ali, Rashidul Khairi and Shaikh Abdullah. However, in Ismat's formative years, Nazar Sajjad Hyder had established herself an independent feminist voice, and the short stories of two very different women, Hijab Imtiaz Ali and the Progressive Dr Rashid Jehan were also a significant early influence on Ismat.

In her career many of her writings including Angarey and Lihaaf were banned in South Asia due to their reformist and feminist content offending conservatives (such as her view that the Niqab, the mask forced on women in Muslim societies, should be discouraged for Muslim women because it is oppressive and feudal). Many of her books were banned at one or other point in time.