The Hindu Business Line : Gentle, but firm, on equality

Early this month, Dr Sakina Hasan passed away with the quiet dignity that had marked the way she lived. She was 89. I saw her a week before the end. She was lying on her side and breathing with difficulty. I noticed that she was, as usual, dressed in a freshly ironed sari. She smiled at me but did not say much.

Born on February 3, 1920, in Lucknow, , Sakina was the eldest child of Syed Ali Zaheer, a minister in the Uttar Pradesh government, and Begum Aliya, who was the Chairperson of the Central Social Welfare Board.

The women in her family were staunch feminists. Her grandmother, Lady Vazir Hasan (her husband was titled), threw all her Manchester cottons into a bonfire and brought a charkha (spinning wheel) home. As a girl, Sakina went from door to door campaigning for her father, who contested from Lucknow’s Chowk Assembly constituency.

She went on to study at Lucknow’s La Martiniere School and later took her B.A. degree from Isabella Thoburn College. An LLB and M.A. (English) from Lucknow University followed, and she completed her doctorate at the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU). She married Dr Ammar Hasan, Professor of Orthopaedics at AMU.

Her teaching career started at the historical Karamat Husain Girls’ College in Lucknow. Writer and pioneer of women’s movement Zarina Bhatty recalls Sakina as being “simple, modest, loveable;she came to the college as a humble teacher without any arrogance of class”.

I was a young girl when I first met Sakina — we all called her Bibi — in Kashmir. My father had been invited by Ghulam Mohammad Sadiq, the then Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir, to be the Educational Advisor to the State Government. He was deeply interested in women’s education and Bibi’s work in that regard. She taught at the Government College for Women in Navakadal. Later, she became Principal of the college, and was dearly loved by her students and staff. She stayed in the State for 13 years, from 1954-1967. For Bibi, those were good years. Her face, I recall, seemed to glow in the warmth and friendship she gave and received from students.

She returned to Aligarh in 1967 and continued to teach there until her retirement in 1980.

Like others in her family, particularly my sister, Zakia (who is married to Sakina’s brother), I saw her as a treasure house of knowledge — especially on women’s movement and the contribution of Muslim Women in pre- and post-Independence times. Once, my friend Sheba George and I were lamenting to her that Muslim women have been stereotyped as backward and oppressed. She replied, “Yes, they are, but Muslim women have been frontrunners in social and political movements in India.” The next time I saw her, she gave me a handwritten note. In her clear, beautiful handwriting, she wrote State-wise a list of Muslim women in public life, from Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Punjab, Kerala, Jammu and Kashmir, and UP. Against each name she wrote, totally from memory, brief biographical notes.

In the early 1970s, she was one of 11 women appointed to the Committee on Status of Women, which was chaired by Dr Phulrenu Guha, a minister in West Bengal. The committee submitted its report — ‘Towards Equality’ — in 1974. It became a landmark for Indian women’s movement. During the years of the committee, she travelled throughout the country, trying to understand the predicament of otherwise faceless women. She became very close to the other people involved in this process such as Urmila Haksar, Neera Dogra, Vina Mazumdar and Lotika Sarkar.

Malavika Karlekar, writer, editor and curator, calls Sakina the “chronicler of our times”. She remembers visiting her often at her flat in Golf Apartments, New Delhi, which was filled with memorabilia. Photographs of the 1920s adorned the walls. Bibi was devoted to the Centre for Women’s Development Studies — until two years ago, she never missed a single meeting. She loved this hub, where intellects of the women’s movement did rigorous work. Dr Lola Chatterjee, my former teacher and Sakina’s good friend, recalls the time they spent together in Srinagar, where her husband, Tiny Chatterjee, was the director-general of Radio Kashmir. In Bibi’s home, there were animated discussions during long evenings by the fireside about how these young men and women hoped to change the world.

Bibi’s deep insight and concern for women, particularly Muslim women, is expressed in her writings, which always reflected her clarity of mind. On the health and nutritional status of Muslim women she wrote: “Attention is now also being drawn towards the occupational hazards faced by women and young girls such as severe eye strain among the chikan workers or skin allergies among agarbatti workers. But the most common disease is the incidence of tuberculosis among the glass workers of Firozabad, or the metal workers in Aligarh... Segregation is difficult in congested slums, and they share the same utensils, the same bedding and even the same burqa with those who have the disease — the metal workers sit huddled together in a small room, coughing and spitting and infecting one another.”

She is remembered as a beautiful synergy of the personal and political. With her sari pallu draped over her shoulder, she spoke fluently and clearly about current affairs and the state of polity; always gentle, never imposing.

Dr Vina Mazumdar has written these words and we echo them: “Goodbye, old comrade! We shall remember you as long as memory lasts.”