: Rare woman poets who ensured gender equity in ghazals (IANS Column: Bazm-e-Ghazal) #IndiaNEWS #Lifestyle <br>The reason is not difficult to ascertain. Ghazals, in the days before mass media

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Rare woman poets who ensured gender equity in ghazals (IANS Column: Bazm-e-Ghazal) #IndiaNEWS #Lifestyle
<br>The reason is not difficult to ascertain. Ghazals, in the days before mass media and mass dissemination of knowledge, were only known and spread by recitation in public events like mushairas where prevailing social norms did not allow the attendance of women, leave alone their participation. There were women who wrote but this was a most private endeavour and they usually remain obscure.
And there was rekhti. Said to originate in early 18th century Lucknow with then Urdu poetrys enfant terrible Insha Allah Khan Insha, and his cronies like Saadat Yaar Khan Rangeen, Meer Yaar Ali Jaan Sahib, it was an earlier form of feminist poetry, where male poets made use of womens voices, idioms, mannerisms, and, even accents, to talk about issues from the female viewpoint or what they imagined it to be
While rekhti was an affectation that generally fizzled out as decadent living declined, the social barriers persisted throughout the 18th and 19th centuries and change came only well into the 20th century.
And even then, the process has been slow and far from encompassing, as far as ghazals are concerned. Women singers like Begum Akhtar, Suraiyya, Noor Jahan, et all could interpret them in a musical format, but original writers took time to emerge and become famous.
While the likes of Ismat Chughtai, Qurratulain Hyder, Attia Hossein, Bano Qudsia, and many others have left their mark in Urdu nasr (prose), especially novels and short stories, there are not many familiar names on the poetry side. Those with some knowledge of the field may recall actress Meena Kumari, who wrote under the pen name of Naz, or Parveen Shakir, whose life was tragically cut short by an accident.
Another name that may strike a chord is that of Fahmida Riaz, who fled Gens Zia ul-Haqs dictatorship and was granted asylum by India by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. She was, however, more of a nazm writer, and in the late 1990s, riled the right-wing in India with a bitingly satirical piece Tum bilkul ham jaise nikle, comparing their present course with the suicidal fanaticism that had almost doomed her country and still can.
However, since the 1950s, there has been no shortage of accomplished women ghazal poets though their names and fame usually remain confined to the dedicated aficionados of the genre. Lets try to showcase a few who have shown they are no less than their male peers, though this can only be a representative selection.
One of the first and foremost was Ada Jafarey (1924-2015), or Ada Jafri as she is better known, whose early life was proof of the obstacles facing women poets even in the (fairly) modern world.
Born in Badaun in what was then the United Provinces and losing her father when she was just three, she had started writing shayri from an early age, said to be 9 or 12 as Ada Badayuni, but lacked an outlet to portray her prowess.

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