Life has always been hard for Bangladesh women, long kept in physical and social purdah by the power of a backward-looking patriarchal system and the country’s endemic poverty. But at long last, they are now on the road to attaining their rights and achieving equality. As they travel, learning as they go, the women of Bangladesh, and the north-west in particular, have one illustrious role model from their own history to show them that women can, and must, advance and play a public role in society: Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain. She is the woman whose dreams are the dreams of all women today - education; human rights; freedom of movement; political recognition – and whose life, thoughts, writings and actions are an inspiration.

Born into a prominent Rangpur family in 1880, Begum Rokeya pioneered women’s advancement at a time when all women across the sub-continent were being crushed under by the forces of the British Raj and traditional society; for Muslim womanhood in Bengal, restrictive, repressive purdah was the only way-of-life.
 
Although her parents were, by the standards of the day, liberal and encouraged their daughter to think for herself, it was Rokeya’s eldest brother who noticed her thirst for learning and began her education. Fortunately, Rokeya’s husband, Sayed Skhahawat Hossain, an enlightened magistrate, also supported her quest for knowledge and backed her struggles to encourage and assist other women in the fight for their freedoms.

Early in her self-defined career as the voice of oppressed women in Bengal, Begum Rokeya realized that to achieve emancipation, women needed to be educated and she began her life’s work by advocating the schooling of girls. Her first successful venture was the establishment of the earliest Muslim girls’ school in 1909, with Begum Rokeya going from door-to-door persuading parents to enrol their daughters when it moved to Calcutta in 1911.

Again ahead of her peers, Begum Rokeya realized that economic independence was also essential if women were to achieve full emancipation and no longer be dependent upon fathers, brothers and husbands for their livelihoods. To that end, she encouraged the revival of craft industries, which women could successfully carry out at home. An early feminist, in many ways, Begum Rokeya pioneered the work of development NGOs.

In both her actions and her writings, Begum Rokeya was opposed by conservative factions in society, but she fought on, asserting: “What we want is neither alms nor gift of favour. It is our inborn right. Our claim is not a more than Islam gave women 1,300 years ago” In her literary work, Begum Rokeya focused again and again on the evils of purdah, child marriages, polygamy and divorce, all of which left hundreds of powerless women in poverty and pain. A social critic, her writing demonstrates immense confidence in women’s potential; in ”The Sultana’s Dream” (written in English) she visualized a world where women’s latent talents and knowledge were capable of mastery over nature without the help of men. And in “Aborodhbashini”  (Captive Women) she presented 47 cases of women oppressed by purdah in Muslim society.

Well-known and respected as a social reformer, thinker, writer and feminist, Begum Rokeya died in Calcutta in 1932 after a long life struggling so that other women might do as she had and be free to be themselves. Her life is summed up by the words she wrote about her dreams: