“Main bhī muṉh meṉ zubān rakhti hūṉ”: Feminist Identity, Confession, Consciousness-Raising, and Urdu Autobiography: A Study of Dagar Se Haṭ Kar (1996) by Saeeda Bano (1920-2001)
Shuby Abidi
DOI https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.13292428
Abstract. My paper aims to study Saeeda Bano’s autobiography Ḍagar Se Haṭ Kar (1996) as a candid feminist autobiography. While articulating her unconventional story, the author becomes the voice of the doubly marginalized Muslim women. It examines how while documenting the socio-political milieu and disenfranchised history, the author indulges in consciousness-raising and emphasizes the relevance of female education, economic independence, and a self-reliant female identity. The paper directs our attention to the confessional nature of the autobiography, which foregrounds the most personal and intimate details of the author’s life and initiates the process of critical self-understanding and self-validation. It intends to analyze the autobiography as a revolutionary text that resists normative gender roles and urges women to create their own identity and space to exercise their freedom to live on their own terms. The paper posits how the contributions of innumerable women like Begum Sultan Jahan paved the path of independence for the author. It aims to investigate how the book critiques deep-seated sexism and charts the author’s journey from the usual to the unusual.
Keywords. Autobiography, Saeeda Bano, feminist, identity, confession, consciousness-raising, zanana
Works Cited
Bano, Saeeda. Dagar Se Hat Kar. 1st edition Sajjad Publishing House, 1996.
Buss, Helen, M. Repossessing the World: Reading Memoirs by Contemporary Women. Ist edition, WLU, 2002. z lib.org
Divya, N. “When Women Speak Through Memoirs: An Analysis of Selected Autobiographical Works” Indian Literature, Vol 64, No.4(318) July –August 2020, pp-146-157 www.jstor.org
Di Battista, Maria & Emily O Whitman.The Cambridge Companion to Autobiography: Cambridge University Press, 2014. zlib.org
Raza, Shahana. (Trans.). Off the Beaten Track: The Story of my Unconventional Life. By Saeeda Bano, Zubaan & Penguin Random House India,2020.
Rowbotham, Sheila. Woman’s Consciousness, Man’s World. Penguin, 1973.file:///C:/Users/HP/Downloads/Wisconsi.pdf
Saleem, Shabana. Urdu Mein Khwateen ki Khud Navisht: Sawani Umariyan. Ist ed., Babul-Ilm Publication, 2015.www.rekhta.org.
Smith, Sidonie & Julia Watson. Women, Autobiography, Theory. Madison: Wisconsin University Press, 1998
1998.file:///C:/Users/HP/Downloads/Wisconsi.pdf
Zaidi, Nishat. “The Woman Who Dared to Break Taboos”. The Book Review. Vol. 46. No. 12. Dec 2022.
Dr. Shuby Abidi is an Associate Professor in the Department of English, Jamia Millia Islamia. Her areas of specialization include Diaspora Studies, Indian Writing in English, and Muslim Women’s Writing. She has edited a book entitled Premchand on Culture and Education published by Routledge in 2021. She is keenly interested in Translation studies and has translated several short stories and non-fiction by Premchand. Her translation of Shahid Nadeem’s Dekh Tamasha Chalta Ban for Islam in Performance: Contemporary Plays from South Asia, edited by Prof Ashis Sengupta, was published by Bloomsbury. She has published several articles on Diaspora Literature in literary journals.
https://orcid.org/0009-0004-6497-7141
shubyenator@gmail.com ; sabidi@jmi.ac.in
“Main bhī muṉh meṉ zubān rakhti hūṉ”: Feminist Identity, Confession, Consciousness-Raising, and Urdu Autobiography: A Study of Dagar Se Haṭ Kar (1996) by Saeeda Bano (1920-2001) by Shuby Abidi is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0 
