“Had she written in English, she would no doubt have been reclaimed long ago as one of Bangladesh’s national treasures; had she written in Bengali, she would certainly have been included by Shaheen Akhtar and Moushumi Bhowmik in
Women in Concert, their pioneering anthology of Bengali Muslim women’s writing from 1904-1938”, says Aamer Hussain writing about Rahat Ara Begum in “Tales of Another Time”. However, because she wrote in Urdu, as Hussain notes, “today she is lost between linguistic and national borderlines”. Unlike Roquiah Sakhawat Hussein (1880-1932), who chose to write in Bangla though brought up in an Urdu-speaking family and married into an Urdu-speaking family as well, Begum did not write in Bangla. However, it is clear that she knew Bangla well enough to…
1413 words
Citation: Zaman, Niaz. "Rahat Ara Begum". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 06 March 2023 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=15018, accessed 08 May 2024.]
