Ismat Chughtai: Urdu writer with indomitable spirit and fierce feminist ideology

Her outspoken and courageous approach made her an inspiration for the younger generation of writers, readers, and intellectuals, especially women writers.

Google doodle is today celebrating the 107th birth anniversary of this well-known feminist writer, and thinker. Ismat Chughtai was an eminent Indian Urdu writer, known for her indomitable spirit and a fierce feminist ideology. She wrote on themes like female sexuality and femininity, middle-class gentility, and class conflict, often from a Marxist perspective. Her feminist and iconoclast ideology made her the most controversial and successful writers of that time.

Be is begums and wives of decadent Nawabs, sex-workers of the common market, coy wives and young maidservants inside a middle-class household, she depicted all characters, their oppression, their struggles with impeccable intensity.

She was born in Uttar Pradesh, India on 21 August 1915 into a Muslim family to Nusrat Khanam and Mirza Qaseem Baig Chughtai and was ninth of ten children–six brothers, four sisters. Sacred Duty, Works of Ismat Chughtai, Terhi Lakeer were among her notable works. Many of her writings, including Angarey and Lihaaf, were banned in South Asia because their reformist and feminist content offended conservatives.

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She was also awarded the Padma Shri in 1976 by the Government of India, and Ghalib Award in 1984 in the best Urdu Drama category. She also won Filmfare award in 1975 for Garam Hawa, an iconic film on based on partition.

Her outspoken and courageous approach made her an inspiration for the younger generation of writers and intellectuals, especially women writers.