Question

Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain wrote a remarkable story titled 'Sultana's Dream' in 1905. This story imagined a woman called Sultana who reaches a place called 'Ladyland'. Ladyland is a place where women had the freedom to study, work, and create inventions like controlling rain from the clouds and flying air cars.
A.True
B.False

Answer 1

Hint: Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain was an eminent feminist writer, educationist and activist in colonial India, the relevance of whose works and writings hold even today. She was born in 1880 into a Bengali Muslim family in the village of Pairaband in the district of Rangpur, then a part of the colonial British province of Bengal Presidency but currently in Bangladesh.

Complete step by step solution:
Option A: is correct. The following statement is true. Not only did Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain’s writings bring the condition of Indian women to the forefront, but they were also a reflection of the grassroots movement to address the lack of education amongst Muslim women in British India. She actively sought to emancipate women from the deeply entrenched values of Indian social and cultural patriarchy through her writings and her activities. One of her most prolific literary works was Sultana’s Dream in which she has called out society for creating a system in which men subjugate women based on religion, traditions and customs. The book is written in the form of a delightful fantasy about a Utopian “Ladyland” where men rather than women were kept in seclusion while women run the affairs of the country.
Option B: is incorrect.

Note: In a deeply orthodox environment, Rokeya was supported by her elder brother who had been educated at St.Xavier’s, a prestigious college in Calcutta while she and her sisters were schooled at home. Her brother secretly taught her English and Bengali. Later she was also supported by her husband Syed Sakhawat Hossain who encouraged her to write. She later started a school for Muslim women after his death in his memory.