Shams Ur Rehman Alavi
Abida Sultaan was the eldest daughter of the last Nawab of Bhopal, Hamidullah Khan.
Abida Sultanaan was nothing like a typical princess.
She wore her hair short, shot tigers and was an excellent polo player. She flew planes and rode around in a Rolls-Royce from the age of nine.
Born in 1913 into a family of courageous 'begums' (high-ranking Muslim women) who ruled the princely state of Bhopal in northern British India for over a century, Abida continued her legacy in challenging stereotypes around women in general and Muslim women in India. particular.
She refused to be in purdah – a practice followed by Muslim women and some Hindu women, of wearing clothing that conceals them and isolating themselves from men – and became heir to the throne at the age of 15 .
Abida headed his father's office for more than a decade, rubbed shoulders with prominent freedom fighters in India, and ended up having a front-row seat to the hatred and violence into which the country disintegrated after its partition in 1947 to create Pakistan.
She was trained from a young age to take on the role of ruler under her grandmother, the strict disciplinarian Sultan Jehan who was the ruler of Bhopal.
In her 2004 autobiography, Memoirs of a Rebel Princess, Abida recounts how she had to wake up at four a.m. to read the Quran – the religious text of Islam – then spend a day filled with activities, including learning sport. , music, and horseback riding, but it also included chores like sweeping the floor and cleaning the bathrooms.
“We girls were not allowed to feel any inferiority because of our gender. Everything was equal. We had all the freedom that a boy had; we could ride horses, climb trees, play games. any games we wanted. There were no restrictions.” she said in an interview about her childhood.
Abida had a fierce and independent streak from her childhood and rebelled against her grandmother when she forced her into purdah at the age of 13. Her nerve, coupled with her father's open-mindedness, helped her escape the practice for the rest of her life.
Already heir to the throne of Bhopal, Abida was also fortunate to be part of the royal family of the neighboring princely state of Kurwai when, at the age of 12, she was married to Sarwar Ali Khan, her childhood friend and ruler of Kurwai. . She described her nikah (marriage), which she had no idea about, in hilarious detail in her memoir.
She says that one day, while she was fighting with her cousins, her grandmother came into the room and asked her to dress for a wedding. Only, no one told her she was the bride.
“No one had prepared or instructed me on how to behave, with the result that I entered the nikah's room, pushing the gathered women out of my way, with my face uncovered, sulking as usual at having been chosen again for a new experience,” she wrote.
The marriage was brief, like Abida's, lasting less than a decade.
Shams Ur Rehman Alavi
Abida was an accomplished polo player and marksman.
Married life was difficult for Abida, not only because of her young age but also because of her strict and pious upbringing. She candidly describes how lack of knowledge and discomfort around sex took a toll on her marriage.
“Immediately after my marriage, I entered the world of marital trauma. I did not realize that the consummation that followed would leave me so horrified, numb and shameless,” she writes, adding that she does not has never been able to bring himself to “accept marital relations”. between husband and wife”. This led to the breakdown of his marriage.
In her article on intimacy and sexuality in the autobiographical writings of South Asian Muslim women, historian Siobhan Lambert-Hurley highlights how Abida's honest reflections on sexual intimacy with her husband destroy the stereotype that which Muslim women do not write about sex, presenting an unapologetic voice on the subject.
After her marriage broke down, Abida left her marital home in Kurwai and returned to Bhopal. But the couple's only son, Shahryar Mohammad Khan, was the subject of a horrific custody dispute. Frustrated by the long battle and unwilling to part with her son, Abida took a bold step to push her husband back.
On a hot night in March 1935, Abida drove for three hours straight to reach her husband's house in Kurwai. She went into her room, took out a gun, threw it in her husband's lap and told him, “Shoot me or I'll shoot you.”
This incident, coupled with a physical confrontation between the couples from which Abida emerged victorious, ended the custody dispute. She raised her son as a single mother while juggling her duties as heir to the throne. She headed her state's cabinet from 1935 to 1949, when Bhopal was merged into the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.
Abida also participated in the round tables – convened by the British government to decide the future government of India – during which she met influential leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, Motilal Nehru and his son, Jawaharlal Nehru, who would become the first Prime Minister of India.
She also witnessed the deterioration of Hindu-Muslim relations and the violence that erupted in the aftermath of the partition of India in 1947.
Shams Ur Rehman Alavi
Abida immigrated to Pakistan in 1950
In her memoir, Abida describes the discrimination she began to face in Bhopal; how his family, who had lived there peacefully for generations, began to be treated as “outsiders”. In one of her interviews, she spoke of a particularly disturbing memory she had of the violence that broke out between Hindus and Muslims.
One day, after the Indian government informed her that a train carrying Muslim refugees would arrive in Bhopal, she went to the station to supervise the arrival.
“When the compartments were opened, they were all dead,” she said, adding that it was this violence and mistrust that pushed her to settle in Pakistan in 1950.
Abida left quietly, with only her son and hopes for a better future. In Pakistan, she championed democracy and women's rights throughout her political career. Abida died in Karachi in 2002.
After she left for Pakistan, the Indian government made her sister the heir to the throne. But Abida is still known in Bhopal, where people call her by her nickname 'bia huzoor'.
“The religious politics of recent years have eroded her legacy and she is no longer talked about as much,” says journalist Shams Ur Rehman Alavi, who has researched Bhopal's women leaders.
“But his name probably won’t be forgotten anytime soon.”
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