Begum Rokeya is undoubtedly one of the best female writers, social activists, and educators of the Indian/Kalkata region of that time. In between late 19th century to the mid1930 there was no other prominent Bengali feminist thinker like her.
Her writing is still relevant today. She wrote about social injustice, women's development and empowerment, her personal experience of life at that time, and more. Her writings and stories contain details that help imagine the society, culture, and economy of that time.
She became famous for writing about women's health, education, empowerment, and development in a time when no one talked and thought about women. She was the first female who took the initiative to send women to school/educational institutes.
I have a collection of her writing and I often read them when I feel like it. For the past few days, I have been reading her Collected Works of Begum Rokeya -2. I have the part 1 in my collection as well and I read it years ago.
I will share the part 1 when I re-read that. I'm sorry for the inconvenience of sharing the second part first. But don't worry, it's a collection so there's no continuation of writings, and no one has to face any trubble reading the first one later.
The book is written in Bangla. There are 17 short stories in this collection. Some are about social situations, and the economy, some about women's condition, the writer's personal experience, and many more writings about society.
I'm highlighting the few that I enjoyed reading the most. They are about the situation of the society in that time.
- চাষার দুঃখ - The Farmer's Sorrow is a short writing that shows how the farmers were suffering back then. Because of societal change and the British era, the farming, crop production, and business in general have changed a lot. And it impacted the farmers economically a lot.
They were suffering either way; because of their lack of finances, lifestyle change, British rule, etc.
- In the এন্ডি শিল্প/Andi Silk, Begum Rokeya showed in detail how this craft is going out of trend and what the importance of reintroducing this. She even gives details about how any farmer can start this business, the costings, and marketing technique. All this made me think how thoughtful she was about the society.
Then comes, নিরীহ বাঙ্গালী/Harmless Bengali, where she showed how people were moving apart from farming and business and growing interest in doing jobs. How this tendency is killing farming, sources of food, and clothes, and depending the society more on industries.
On the other hand, there was short writing about child rearing/শিশু পালন. She gave detailed points how what to do and not to do after birth and helped grow the child.
- There's another writing about জ্ঞানফল/Fruit of Knowledge, where she talked about the Adam and Eve's incident and twisted the whole story to focus on not just depending on god's will but working on our fate.
This is the writer, who died in 1932 but her writing is still relevant and we cherish her work to this day.
This book is the cheap version, not the paperback. Her writings have many translated copies too that are in English.
All of her writings give a real scenario of that time, how society was changing, and how people were adapting to modern life but forgetting their roots. And how this led to losing economically because they were depending on others. Also, the condition of women in society, and what needs to be done to improve their situation.
She didn't stop in the writing phase but did a lot of social work, for example building a female school. Rokeya is known as a pioneer of women's liberation. Not only her writings will give you a perspective of society but also they will improve your understanding of society and our roots.
All photos are taken by me. You can keep Google Lens on the pages and they will show you a translated version if you like to read it.
