Women authors popularized Urdu
ALKHOBAR: A well-known Urdu playwright, poet and lyricist from Pakistan said women have contributed immensely to the popularity of the language through their trend-setting fiction writing.
Amjad Islam Amjad was speaking at the release of the Alkhobar-based Pakistani writer Farhat Perveen's fourth book of fiction titled, "Sandal Ka Jungle" (Sandalwood Jungle). The program was organized by the Hamawaaz Literary Forum, headed by Qudsia Nadeem Laly.
Referring to some of the best names of women in the world of Urdu fiction writing, Amjad said: "Urdu fiction took tangible shape in the early 1900s. Women started contributing only in the 1930s with the arrival on the literary scene of Nazar Sajjad Haider and Hijab Imtiaz Ali."
The period that followed was that of the Progressive Writers' Movement, which is popularly known in the Urdu world as Taraqqi Pasand Tehreek. "During this period, many women writers rode the crest of popularity with their scintillating experiments with prose. Among the best of them all was undoubtedly Ismet Chughtai," said Amjad.
However, according to him, the biggest name in Urdu fiction is that of Qurratulain Haider. "Her 'Aag Ka Dariya' remains the finest piece of fiction in the Urdu world," he said. "And then we had other notable women writers in Khadija Mastoor, Hajra Masroor, Bano Qudsia and Jeelani Bano."
Amjad said critical analyzes of the writings of these women reveal that a majority of them were concerned with gender discrimination and the rules and regulations that governed their lives in a patriarchical society.
"Among the current women writers, such as Farhat Perveen, Nilofar Iqbal, Tahira Iqbal, Atiya Syed and Neelam Bashir Ahmad, most of them have been exposed to societies other than their own. Some of them lived in the West, some of them in the Gulf, and so their experience of life is different from the one we encounter in the fiction of previous writers," he said.
He said Perveen's fiction is enriching because she has experienced three different societies. "Of course, she is a Pakistani, that is number one. Then she lived in the United States, and we feel American society's reflection on her in her first book 'Munjamid'. Then she spent a large part of her life here in Saudi Arabia. All these have made her fiction unique."
However, he said, a deeper look at her fiction reveals that it is her attachment and upbringing in the Bhakkar district of Punjab that dominates her fictional themes. "Life in a village and the unadulterated values and the noble concept of human relationships ... her characters, particularly in those abstract stories, yearn for those values," Amjad added.
Among others who spoke about Farhat Perveen's fiction were Naseem-e-Sehar, professor Iqbal Ejaz Beg, Shaukat Jamal, Azra Naqvi and Equbal Wajed.
