Thought does exist, both beyond and underneath systems and edifices of discourse. It is something that is often hidden but always drives everyday behaviors. There is always a little thought occurring even in the most stupid institutions; there is always thought even in silent habits. Criticism consists in uncovering that thought and trying to change it: showing that things are not as obvious as people believe, making it so that what is taken for granted is no longer taken for granted. To practice criticism is to make harder those acts which are now too easy… as soon as people begin to no longer be able to think things the way they have been thinking them, transformation becomes at the same time very urgent, very difficult and entirely possible. 


In an increasingly suffocating world founded on the limitations of human agency, defence and exercise of independent thought becomes a duty when we realise how much effort, resources and machinery are being exhausted to stop people from thinking freely. The first step is not to provoke overt mass action but to create a space to think independently, this is my attempt at just that. My claims might not be entirely novel, they were reinforced if not influenced by philosophy, politics, a variety of disciplines like psychology and art that I will admit have made me value independent thought and its extreme political significance. We must defend free thinking as long as the world goes on or until we establish absolute human freedom and equality in all spheres, all aspects, all relationships, all phases, all corners of the cosmos.

In my opinion nothing can be apolitical, art, music, cinema, literature, poetry is all utterly political and thought is inherently at the centre of it all, this thought defines and sets the tone for the sociopolitical conditions in present and to come. Expanding on Slavoj Zizek, our thought is manufactured and shaped through these seemingly apolitical mediums and as Gramsci posits these ideologies and culture are conveniently used to exploit us and limit our thought with our consent. If an imprisoned Antonio Gramci’s “mere thought" can terrify Benito Mussolini, a fascist dictator who controlled all of Italy, then thought cannot be as ‘‘mere’ as we have been so heavily indoctrinated to believe, could it? As Gramsci wrote his prison notebooks he used a cryptic and abstract language to avoid overtly political language that might be flagged by the fascists, he subtly criticised the tyrannical rule and as it turned out Mussolini was right to be afraid of his radical thought. The fascist governments can imprison the Gramscis for resisting or under the guise of “public safety” but they can never imprison free thought or as Orwell would put it ‘to die hating them, that is freedom’. Gramsci writes “Ideas and opinions are not spontaneously "born" in each individual brain: they have had a centre of formation, or irradiation, of dissemination, of persuasion-a group of men, or a single individual even, which has developed them and presented them in the political form of current reality.” Ideas originate through these ‘centre’s of formation’ such as intellectual circles, political movements, or undemocratic governments and are then disseminated to society through media, education and political institutions, where they become widely accepted, a part of our reality and shape our thinking. What more reason could there be to evaluate our ideologies and critically self-reflect about the sources of our beliefs?

Desire and Thought are manufactured, shaped and limited solely to prevent us from realizing our true potential and freedoms. More than external forces, we are conditioned to impose these limitations on ourselves. Our thought is used against us to constrict us like George Orwell say’s "But if thought corrupts language, Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind." which suggests that when our thinking becomes distorted or is manipulated, it affects the way we use language and how political language takes advantage of this distorted thought and twists said language to mask lies, justify violence, and make falsehoods appear credible. 

And when masses of people think the exact same way because of this political and social conditioning, is that not frighteningly alarming? And when this collective thought is destructive or despotic, does that not make it harrowing? An efficient totalitarian regime according to Aldous Huxley would be one where the omnipotent political executive and their army of managers control a population who really do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude and such people will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of a revolution. But how I ask, do we define such a state or government unless we realise through use of independent thought that we need to break free of these moral or immoral, ethical or unethical, holy or sinful standards that have been set to control the population, deemed sacred so no one dares break them. As Niel Postman comments on the Brave New World, Huxley was not telling us the affliction of the population was that they were laughing instead of thinking but that they were not even aware of laughing and did not know why they had stopped thinking. You must be conscious of your thought and the surrounding political, social, economic forces shaping it. As Søren Kierkegaard asserts “People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.” Many people are quick to want the freedom to speak their minds, but they rarely take the time to deeply think or analyse what they truly believe or stand for. We must remove all preconceptions, sociopolitical conditioning and biases from our thought until what remains stands up to rational examination. What we understand from Kant when he calls for us to emerge from our "self-imposed immaturity" is that true freedom of thought comes not from thinking conventionally but from having the courage for honest self criticism guided by reason, to accept the sometimes uncomfortable conclusions it presents and change our thought. There is but one formidable, herculean obstacle to exercising free thought, that is, one needs to raze their entire belief system to the ground and build it again brick by brick. By this I do not mean Cartesian Foundationalism since our thought or minds are not isolated from language, culture, politics or history. Descartes’ foundationalism would be counterproductive since it would lead to infinite regress. Instead we seek impetus from the Frankfurt school thinkers like Jürgen Habermas and Walter Benjamin. 

Human freedom requires understanding distorted language since modern culture and technology shape our consciousness. We can use art, language and knowledge to emancipate our thought. Modern society creates false needs and suppresses critical thinking. As Kant writes in his Critique of Pure Reason that strict criticisms are proof of a well-grounded way of thinking and nothing can be exempted from it, reason will grant unfeigned respect to only that which will submit to its free and public examination. Free thinking is not just to think without external constraints, but to subject our thought to the rigorous scrutiny of reason itself. Though George Orwell used the lines “Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing” in an entirely different context the implication I hope to derive from it is that if we can apply this process over our own minds and internalise principles of equality, justice and freedom in our reformed thought we will wield unthinkable power. Power to transform the world and it begins with us, with our thought. When Friedrich Nietzche says that all deep thinkers are more afraid of being understood than being misunderstood, I think he was referring to the exclusionary or even deadly consequences that come with challenging normativity even if only in our thought because it's never ‘mere’ thought, thought has unimaginable power, free thought has the power to radically transform our seemingly rigid reality.

In Defence Of Free Thought

It is disheartening that most of us have never heard of Rashid Jahan, despite the fact that she is the first woman—let alone a Muslim woman—to speak out about a variety of social issues, including pregnancy, abortion, prostitution, sexual harassment, and birth control—all of which are still taboo in many sections of our supposedly modern society. As a result of her efforts to free women from the shackles of the conservative society, her struggle to understand the identity of Muslim women and her opposition to fundamentalism, was dubbed the "Angarewali" and the "Bad Woman" of Urdu literature.

It is also important to take into account that, despite being a founding member of the Indian People's Theatre Association and the Progressive Writers' Movement in India, Rasheed Jahan did not become as well-known as her contemporaries in Hindi and Urdu like Ismat Chugtai and Prem Chand. She was a devout realist and her writings were political in nature, radically so; it is evident from reading them how furious, and quite rightly so, she was with the system. Despite her fluency in English, she recognized the value of vernacular language, demonstrating her desire to use her work to encourage social change. Because there were fewer elite and English-educated Muslims, she decided to write in Urdu so that the general public could understand her.

"Are there no women Political thinkers? Can women not think? Why do we treat them like women are incapable of thought?" Women are capable of thinking of course; it's just that we don't treat them with the respect or give them the recognition that their contributions as serious thinkers merit. In addition to being dismissed as unintelligent, women also inspire dread for their freedoms, as they may inspire other women to resist patriarchal control and dominance. It's similar to being labelled a witch in the middle ages and burned at stake by the Church for utilising herbs to heal the sick or in even in the relatively modern times being compelled to publish writings under a male alias in order to reduce prejudice, as was the case with the renowned Brontë Sisters, J.K. Rowling, Harper Lee, Mariam Cross and Louisa May Alcott. 

Charlotte Brontë was asked why she used a male alias and she replied “

We did not like to declare ourselves women, because – at that time suspecting that our mode of writing and thinking was not what is called ‘feminine’ – we had a vague impression that authoresses are liable to be looked on with prejudice.” 

Can we imagine a world where classics like Little Women, Harry Potter, To Kill A Mockingbird, Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights would’ve gone unnoticed just because they were written by women? One wonders if Rashid Jahan had published under a male alias would she have been so heavily boycotted by the muslim elite and would her exceptional work have gained the recognition it deserves?

Reading Rashid Jahan makes us realise that, in the context of women, particularly Muslim women, her work is as relevant now as it was back then. She is a timeless figure who breaks down barriers. In this piece, we will consider her not only as an author but also as a political thinker.

Angarewali: Doctor, Writer and Communist.

Rashid Jahan was a doctor by profession, a writer by passion, and a communist by conviction. She had a huge impact on the literary world. Rashid Jahan, a major member of the Progressive Writers' Movement, was also a controversial figure. She was born in 1905 to Thakur Das, a Kashmiri Brahmin, converted to Islam who became widely known as Shaikh Abdullah. Her mother, father, and aunts were active in establishing women's institutions and schools in Aligarh.

We slept on the mattress of women’s education and covered ourselves with the quilt of women’s education from our earliest consciousness."

 speaks to her desires for the growth of feminism. Rashid Jahan attended the Aligarh school founded by her father before moving to Lucknow to attend Isabella Thoburn College and then Lady Hardinge College in Delhi. Her first piece of writing, "When the TomTom Beats," was in English and appeared in the IT College journal. It was translated into Urdu as "Salma."

At the turn of the 20th century, Rashid Jahan's family led the intellectual and educational reformist movements in the Muslim community. Rashid Jahan was an intellectual who was devoted to the social and intellectual movements of her era. She was editor of Chingari, a political magazine. In addition to writing stories and radio plays, Rashid, better known by her stage name Rasheeda, founded the Indian People's Theatre Association's Lucknow chapter. She dramatised Premchand's short story Kafan.

After marrying her fellow comrade Mahmuduz Zafar in 1934, she established a successful private practice in Lucknow, but the majority of her earnings were donated to the Communist Party, of which her husband was an active member. She continued to be a bold and provocative woman till her untimely death in 1952 due to Cancer. Her works laid the groundwork for the nascent feminism which had begun to take roots in South Asia. She is buried in a Moscow cemetery with a gravestone that reads, "Communist Doctor and Writer,"

Wage War With Orthodoxy (Laced With Anger).

The collection of short stories and plays known as Angarey was published in 1932 by three angry young men and a woman, Sajjad Zaheer, Ahmed Ali, Mahmuduz Zafar, and Rashid Jahan. It included a play by Rashid Jahan titled "Parde ke Peeche" (From Behind the Veil) and a short story titled "Dilli ki Sair" (A Trip Around Delhi). It unleashed the wrath of conservatives, and how convenient that just one of the four anthology contributors received death threats, and not coincidentally, it was the only woman among the four. Rashid Jahan was threatened with acid attacks (how moral and religious?) for acting outside the bounds of what was appropriate behaviour for a Muslim woman in pre-independence India in the 1920s and 1930s.

Rashid Jahan wanted to show readers the fragile lives of the women confined in the forbidden women's quarters by bringing them in through her stories. The book was banned in March 1933 under section 295A of the Indian Penal Code for harming the "religious susceptibilities of a section of the community" due to the controversy it caused in the conservative circles of the United Provinces. Rashid Jahan was dubbed as "Angarewali" as a consequence. Not only was the collection called "vulgar," but it was also called "violation of ideas," "obscene, morally depraved, base, filthy and foul, trash, shameless," and other derogatory terms. Rashid Jahan was threatened with dire consequences like her face being burned, body disfigurement and even chopping off her body parts, for daring to confront the repulsive face of the forces of masculine hegemony.

The narrative Dilli ki Sair portrays an illiterate lower middle class society through its typical expressions and dialogues. In the story, Among her friends and acquaintances, Malka Begum is the only one who travelled to Delhi by train. She describes her trip and accuses the 

 of coughing and making remarks in and around the train and station. She also talks about her husband and his 

who teased her and asked to show off her face. The protagonist uses phrases from the Urdu language that are typically used by the lower class.

Rasheed Jahan revealed the closed-off and repressive reality of Muslim women in the lower strata of Muslim society by depicting this typical woman. Nonetheless, the Muslims in the elite class did not approve of this move. Unexpectedly, religious authorities became enraged and condemned her outright for this brief fiction. A few maulanas even issued fatwas against the author and threatened her with acid attacks.

In an objective interpretation of the story, Rashid Jahan was describing to the reader how non-elite Muslim women who are deprived of freedom live vicariously through the experiences of a married woman and her careless husband, who who left her alone with their luggage in the hot Delhi train station while she was wearing a heavy 

 (cursed) burqah. There, she encountered a wide range of people, including sahibs, memsahibs, and 

, who harassed her in public. When Malka's husband returned after what seemed like an eternity, he informed her that he had dined in a hotel with the station master, to which she retorted, "I was supposed to be on a tour to Delhi, but you keep the tour; I want to go back home."

Why the religious orthodoxy found this text blasphemous is a serious point of inquiry. Was Rashid Jahan's demonstration of the indifference of husbands the reason the Mawlanas went to such lengths to issue fatwas against her? The reason could be that the short story's "Malka" referred to the burqah as "kambakhat," hinting at the more serious reality of being a Muslim woman in a patriarchal society. No other middle-class Indian Muslim woman had ever so explicitly condemned male chauvinism, religious bigotry, and exploitative mechanisms that contradicted Muslim elite orthodoxy so it is obvious why Rashid Jahan was vilified. She was at war with the orthodoxy and while the other side used violence, bigotry and chauvinism (exactly what she criticised them for) her weapons were mere words, satire laced with anger.

Trail Blazing Revolutionary Writer? A Political Thinker.

Rashid Jahan was a trailblazing member in the Progressive Writers' Movement who spoke out against injustice, inequality, and forces that oppressed the poor and vulnerable. The first wave of feminism in India was characterised by women's clear demand for political and legal rights as well as their acute awareness of how men see a woman's status and position in society. Though practically all of these women who were interested in women's rights had arrived to politics through social work and a sense of service, many of them were also involved in the political movement. A prime example of this is Rashid Jahan.

While the majority of prior Urdu texts were androcentric—that is, they saw the world through the eyes of men—Rashid Jahan gave women a voice and relevance. She tackled the subjugation of women in her plays as well as the dynamics of power in her short stories. She investigated sexism in society because she saw theatre as a possible form of expression and emancipation. Despite social backlash, her passion for theatre laid the groundwork for a vibrant theatre group. Rashid Jahan utilised her writing to express her opposition against religious prejudice and patriarchy because she understood the need of self-expression. Concerned about the inferiority of women, she opted to criticise the supremacy of the patriarchal Muslim worldview.

Rashid Jahan was the founding member of the progressive movement, a literary turning point in India's social, intellectual, and political history which was led by upper middle class writers who were joined by intellectuals, journalists, and academics with a communist inclination. Not only did they criticise the fundamental tenets of Islam and Hinduism, but they also ridiculed the attitudes and customs that caused a particular group of people to be marginalised in society. This was a new generation of writers who rejected the idea of an all-powerful religion, rebelled against sexual oppression, and supported social equality and equal opportunity gave rise to Taraqqi Pasand Adab, a progressive literary movement.

Rashid Jahan describes communal riots in the form of mandir-masjid (Hindustani), the intersection of feminism and communal harmony (Padosi), myths about empowered women (Mardwa Aurat), the urgent need for birth control (Pardeke Peeche), the need for women's economic empowerment (Aurat), men burdened by their possessive wives (Gosha-e-Aafiyat), the exploitation of the underprivileged after independence (Kaante Wala), Indian husbands who lack empathy (Dilli ki Sair), a battlefield of Jehad transforming itself into a request for understanding, tolerance and solidarity in sisterhood (Meraek Safar), prostitution and venereal disease (Woh), the belief that being a widow is far better to being a spinster (Bezubaan), childbirth in unsanitary and deadly circumstances, and child marriage (Asif Jehan).

The purpose of Rashid Jahan seems pretty clear, to give the real life issues of people a voice and if that doesn’t constitute a Political Thinker I don’t know what does. Even now, the flame that Rashid Jahan sparked in the shape of feminist literature continues blazing.

By asserting her and other women's right to speak about topics such as maternity, science, progress, ethics, and epistemology, in addition to bodies and sex, Rashid Jahan had made a groundbreaking breakthrough into the literary public sphere.

Rasheed Jahan's language, implications, customs, and traditions in her texts vividly depict the social, political, socioeconomic, and sociocultural conditions of Muslim women from lower class, lower middle class, and occasionally upper middle class Muslim societies . As it happens, it would not be incorrect to characterise her as a humanist who has been inspired by a holistic perspective. Politics, society, and culture are all intertwined for her. Her philosophy has never been to only write about issues; rather, she maintained that one should actually practise what one preaches.

Rakhshanda Jalil who in her A Rebel and Her Cause opines “My sense was that a lot of people talked of her (Rashid Jahan) with awe and admiration, but had not read her, or having read her, not treated her as a serious writer”. She adds “writing was an agency of change for her, a very Marxist concept. That's why her works continue to be relevant today”.



Maskat Ayoub Thakur is a student of Political Science at Jamia Millia Islamia

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of The Jamia Review or its members.

Articles by Maskat

In Defence Of Free Thought

Rashid Jahan: The Angry Young Woman of Urdu Literature

In Defence Of Free Thought

Rashid Jahan: The Angry Young Woman of Urdu Literature