A century on, Begum Rokeya’s feminist science fiction is still inspiring Indian artists

In a 2021 article for The Caravan, Devangana Kalita, a member of the women’s collective Pinjra Tod jailed in relation to the 2020 Delhi riots under a draconian law, shared her drawing featuring women swimming among fish with their fists raised sto the sun in a gesture of political resistance. The work was inspired by the illustrations of artist Durgabai Vyam, in the Pradhan Gond style, for a story called Sultana’s Dream: “We had a reading session of the story in our barrack one night,” writes Kalita in a letter published in the article. “It felt special, warm and familiar…”

What was this old tale that inspired and heartened Kalita, an activist who is part of a movement seeking to liberate women from patriarchal fetters like curfews, confinement and surveillance in the name of safety and security? How does it appear to have become reactivated in contemporary Indian visual culture? And what does this reactivation tell us about the times we live in, seemingly distant from the historical moment of the story’s origin?

Written in 1905 by a Bengali educator and reformer called Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain or Begum Rokeya, Sultana’s Dream is the first known example of feminist science-fiction by a non-white writer. Straddling the lines between satire and manifesto, the short story was...

Read more