Nurjahan Murshid: Light at the end of the tunnel

"The precondition for a sane society is sane politics," wrote Nurjahan Murshid, one of the leaders of the women's movement whose seminal role in the making of the cultural and political firmament contributed to laying the groundwork for independent Bangladesh. She was among the luminaries of what was then East Pakistan and her active role in politics and unique contribution to the women's movement is now in need of rereading and reiteration.

Nurjahan Murshid, one of the first women lawmakers in Pakistan's East Bengal Legislative Assembly who won a seat for the United Front, always had her eyes set on the bigger picture, so she had to veer away from the realm of power and start to home in on the relevant issues of her time. 

She dedicated her life to political activism, and she also delved into writing and editing, perhaps in the hope of mending a few things in society by means of mending the discursive realm. Sanity in the socio-political sphere had been a topic she would return to in many of the articles she wrote in her lifetime. 

In a 1991 composition, in which Nurjahan outlined the maladies of her time, she re-emphasised the relationship between society and politics. She wrote, "A political system that ensures all the citizens of a country their natural and legitimate rights and allows them the opportunity to evolve can be called sane." Her piece appeared in the Bengali quarterly journal 'Jigyasa.'

Why was it that the idea of sanity had to be reiterated 20 years after the country had won its independence? What was the state of our polity following the restoration of democracy after the last military ruler HM Ershad had been unseated in 1990? Surely hope was the predominant sentiment after the country won a great victory by ending the 10-year-long misrule.  

However, Nurjahan Murshid did not quite see the template of an ideal society in the new political environment following the return to democracy. She penned a reflective piece to point this out and find a way to subvert the hegemonic socio-political assumptions so that a utopian future could still remain relevant. 

She also rued the series of political mishaps that she thought derailed the nation from the path leading to that future, including the partition of Bengal, the killing of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and the usurpation of political power by subsequent military juntas. Being a modern, progressive individual, she even lamented the destruction of nature in the name of "development" which began to eat away at the biosphere. 

She thought that the hedonism and the aid dependence linked to international finance capital in Bangladesh was one important reason why Bangladesh failed to achieve a dignified status as a nation. Yet her principal theme was the loss of the collective aspiration for a sane society. By describing the context of the degradation she witnessed and the greater social disaster she thought was imminent, Nurjahan attempted to cobble together a narrative of hope by resorting to the ideals she believed were slowly wearing away in the face of the conflicts inherent in capitalism. 

Nurjahan Murshid took into account the postcolonial realities, including the fact that the global order was continually reshaping regions across the world. 

"We are trying to remove martial rule from within a small space, whereas America is the military giant which is trying to extend its control over everything," she wrote. As the millennium began, she could easily identify the eye of the storm - Iraq, a country reduced to rubble by the US invasion. She courageously commented that "this war can never be dubbed as the war for justice." "The United Nations can no longer be considered a significant institution; the US would now use it as its stooge," was her logical conclusion.

Khan Sarwar Murshid and Nurjahan Murshid. The couple married in 1948. Photo: Courtesy

Nurjahan Murshid was born in 1924, in Murshidabad, India, and in her youth, she was a budding talent of her time and a student of Victoria Institution in Calcutta, where she witnessed the rise of sectarian politics. Though born into a dispiriting climate of confusion and division, she did not lose sight of hope. She completed graduate school at the University of Calcutta and was then appointed superintendent at a postgraduate women students' hostel in Kolkata when Hindu-Muslim riots began to rock Calcutta and many other cities across India, leading to the partition. 

Nurjahan chose to move to Dhaka. 

She joined politics in 1954. Deep in her mind, she harboured an egalitarian dream. She had an awareness that the future for the multitude lay "in the economic emancipation through class struggle." She also thought that history always comes up short in the face of the caprices of politicians motivated by their egos rather than by social justice, politicians who relentlessly work to serve their own ends.

In an address in 1992, she said, "We need to prove that we are actual Muslims, far better than Jamaat-e-Islami and the like, who are trading in faith, as we believe in the equal rights of the non-Muslim population." She was a pragmatic idealist who thought the essence of "goodness" is not "something to be gauged as an idea," but "to be realised as a meaningful deed in the community".       

Her communitarianism was informed by the fact that "religious obscurantism" hinders progress, especially in the case of women's march toward emancipation. She also believed that the socialist block failed to realise the dream of a classless society that she and her cohorts so passionately and idealistically attempted to achieve.

Nurjahan had little or no faith in the Western style of development. "The concept of development espoused by donor countries is something against which I have expressed my displeasure...In Bangladesh, such a concept of development seems devastating...to emulate the ways, values and needs, as well as technologies of the so-called developed countries to ensure development, is like being in pursuit of a mirage." She believed that the Western style of development served "a small coterie of affluent people while depriving the greater populace" (Jigyasha, 1991).     

As a feminist, Nurjahan Murshid believed that the female body must be transcended so that the limits of the biological body would not dictate the role of women in society. But her radicalism was not against the traditional cultural constructs of love, children and family. What she found problematic was the essentialist view of women that limited their role to "marriage" and "family."

"Without education, women's cause will not be furthered," she wrote in a 1996 article, adding that the educated woman was more capable of working for the emancipation of herself and her sisters. Her holistic approach to life also extended to her ideas about women's freedom. "Law has declared women and men equal...There are organisations and platforms around the world working to ensure the rights of women...We hope that the aim of their activism would not solely be the attainment of social and economic freedom, but the total development of the individual," she observed, adding, "Humans should be placed at the centre of development."     

She believed that "though women in the West are relatively freer to roam about and interact socially...their role in political and social decisions remains limited. On the other hand, Western society has diverted attention from their fundamental rights and values towards glamour, thereby turning them into a commodity." 

In the same editorial for Edesh-Ekal in 1986, she opined, "[Our] rural womenfolk work out in the field...they accompany their male counterparts in crop-fields, toil away to ensure proper cultivation and finally bring home the harvest, but fail to receive the financial benefit ... women's conditions are the same everywhere without economic freedom." (Edesh-Ekal, 1986)            

After Nurjahan Murshid's death in 2003, Ajoy Roy, in a tribute to the women's leader, wrote, "Among the women democrats, Nurjahan Murshid was undoubtedly the most prominent." "Feminist and social democrat" would have been a more accurate and less insulting label than "women democrat."

Roy, in the same piece, placed Nurjahan among the rest of the progressives who made their appearance before the decoupling of West and East Bengal in 1947. He observed, "It is apparent that the natural inclination the young Muslim men and women showed towards progressive politics eventually laid the foundation for the democratic movements."

Roy recalled how idealists such as Nurjahan Murshid were instrumental in creating the political culture and cultural politics where the concepts of "class" and "socialism" were reinvented and became part and parcel of the developing discourse. 

"The non-sectarian, nationalist movement blossomed" because these idealists were neither partisans of any established political ideology nor were they willing to give up their integrity for personal gain, as the history books show. Nurjahan, according to Roy, remained in favour of democracy and leftism throughout her life.                         

In a 1973 article for Morning News, Nurjahan Murshid wrote, "History is a progressive movement proceeding dialectically through certain inevitable stages to a consummation called freedom." This is the locus from which one must begin to map the contributions of this social dreamer, who, like the idealist Hippocrates, kept herself busy "declaring the past, diagnosing the present, foretelling the future." 

While at it, she remained committed to the idea of social transformation for the benefit of the greater public. 

Her diagnosis of society in a mid-1980s E Desh E Kal editorial still applies: "We have now become a rudderless boat in a tumultuous sea...the struggling people never fought the War of Independence to merely change the ruler and the flag...they sought economic freedom."

Mustafa Zaman is an artist, writer and curator based in Dhaka 

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