A literary canon is passed on from one generation to the next. It is given as full, definitive, and unavoidable — a parade of great names that have defined the imagination and boundaries of the language. They are all names you’ll know from Urdu fiction: Premchand, Saadat Hasan Manto, Rajinder Singh Bedi, Ismat Chughtai, Intizar Husain, Qurratulain Hyder, and Abdullah Hussain. They are well deserving of their position.
However, each canon is silent in some respects.
With each writer entered into the syllabus, another was dropped from the syllabus. Those who are not familiar with the names of the famous authors in history may have never heard of the women who were just as prolific, if not more, but were not recorded in history. Their books went out of circulation, their names were deleted from school lists, and their efforts became a footnote in a literary history that they had helped to create.
The history of literature is more than simply what was written. It’s also a history of what is recalled.
The Urdu fiction story has been told in many ways, one being that of extraordinary male writers with a few exceptional female writers. Ismat Chughtai was courageous enough to be a fearless satirist of social hypocrisy. Qurratulain Hyder’s historical novel was an astounding endeavour. Hajra Masroor’s portrayal of Partition and its aftermath has been very sensitive. They have continued to excel and their success is undeniable.
The trouble is, they’ve become a generation of women writers in and of themselves, giving the impression that they were pretty much all alone.
They were not.
During the early decades of Urdu fiction, an incredible number of women explored aspects of domestic life and education, marriage, class, colonial modernity, and the emotional fabric of daily life. Rashid Jahan, Wajida Tabassum, Hijab Imtiaz Ali, Jamila Hashmi, and Khadija Mastoor were writers who brought a radical approach to Urdu prose in many ways at the time. They discussed the desires of women, inner thoughts, vanishing work done by women, social differences, and migration long before they gained popularity in literary criticism.
But in the world beyond academia, few of these names are given much credit today when it comes to their contributions.
The motives are not as easy to list and are not purely fortuitous.
It has always taken more than literary merit to achieve literary fame. What’s published is in print from the publisher’s perspective. The texts that are required reading are decided by the universities. Critics shape reputations. These judgements are passed on to readers and may be taken for granted. After a writer has left these institutions, it is harder to find them.
Historically, women were involved in the process at a disadvantage.
Burdened by family duties, many didn’t have time for a long career in literature. Others were not published regularly, didn’t have influential networks, or wrote in an area that was less prestigious, facing formal or social censorship. It was more harshly criticised when a woman wrote about sexuality openly, when a woman was unhappy in her marriage, or when a woman was exploring similar themes to a male writer.
This led to what I call a literary erosion, which meant that in the end, the text was left somewhat eroded.
They were not always banned from the books; they were left to disappear.
Redefining the Domestic Sphere
The biggest error in the judgement of these authors is that they were exclusively about women.
They used to write about society.
The drawing room, the kitchen, the courtyard, and the zenana were by no means insignificant places, but political ones. In these areas were played out questions of power, inheritance, education, class, religion, and identity. Women authors were able to expose structures of inequality which the grand political narrative often fails to consider by detailing everyday life at home.
Revolutions are often a consequence of history. In fiction, it is documented how these revolutions came into the house.
This is what makes many of the forgotten women writers feel so unpleasantly contemporary.
Even before the term “emotional labour” was thrown into mainstream discourse, Urdu fiction was working on these themes, too. Although the words are from another time, the fears are not. There are still women who have to cope with trying to meet expectations that are just too high, as well as trying to balance their own desires with those of their families and trying to find space for autonomy in stifling social conventions.
It is not that these stories are no longer relevant; it’s that we’re not listening to them.
The Path to Rediscovery
Luckily, there are indications of rehabilitation.
Neglected works are starting to be published again by independent publishers. With the growing number of literary festivals, forgotten writers are being brought back. Rare texts are easier to access than ever before thanks to digital archives, and younger readers are finding these writers through book clubs, podcasts, and social media articles and discussions — not just through the course of university syllabus requirements.
It’s important that rediscovery does not make literature any less popular, but rather makes it more so — by recognising its complexity.
There are no theories of canonisation which dilute Manto or Premchand. It enhances the discussion and conversation around them. It prompts readers to remember that Urdu literature did not have to wait for a few extraordinary individuals to build it, but was being created by a diverse collective of voices that were contesting, innovating, challenging, and chronicling lives from all angles.
It’s not nostalgia or a symbolic inclusion effort to find lost writers. It’s a historic piece of work.
If literature can only be recalled by the loudest voices, then it’s possible it’s failing to live up to its full potential. Sometimes the profoundly less vocal messages carry just as significant a meaning and information — not because they didn’t shout as loud, but because they watched more intently.
Maybe that’s the thing that forgotten Urdu women writers have taught those of us who still write in Urdu. They were never removed from the field of literature; they just didn’t make the cut in the versions of history that are most commonly told.
Today’s reader is not called upon to pull them out of the mire. It’s important to remember that they’ve been waiting patiently on dusty shelves for a long time. They were there then, and they will still be there in the future — sometimes the greatest literary discoveries are not new books, but books we never thought to read.