Jamila Hashmi was an Urdu short story writer and novelist. Born in Amritsar, she had just finished her high school when the 1947 partition led to creation of Pakistan and her family moved to Lahore. She did her Intermediate and Bachelors as a private student. She then enrolled in Forman Christian College, Lahore and completed her Masters in English Literature in 1954. She started writing short stories while she was a Masters student at Forman Christian College and later published her novelette "Aatish e Raftaa"  (click here for a free Urdu eBook version of Aatish e Raftaa ) which is considered her masterpiece. 

After finishing her education and having published her first novelette to critical acclaim, Jamila Hashmi then accepted an arranged marriage with a "Pir" or a "living Saint": a man accepted by rural, semi literate Pakistani citizens to have miraculous powers ... the people go to such Pirs to solve their unsolvable problems of life such as infertility, not having a son, who to take as a second wife, to secure a job, to win in a land dispute, to win in a murder trial, etc.). This practice of going to a Pir is also common in present day India (where even Hindus go to the shrines of famous Muslim Pirs !!) and Bangladesh.

Hashmi's daughter, Ayesha Siddiqa (herself a famous non-fiction writer) tries to explain in an article in Lahore's weekly The Friday Times in 2013 entitled "The Reluctant Feminists" the factors that led to her mother's decision in accepting this arranged marriage to a Pir Sahib who already had one first wife and a daughter who had been married off.  The Pir wanted a son to carry forward his "Pirship."  Jamila Hashmi did not see or meet the Pir Sahib before marriage and after the Nikah ceremony, was asked if she wanted to see her husband's face... she replied with characteristic candor "Does it matter now!"

Jamila Hashmi could have obtained a civil service job quite easily in the early 1950s of Lahore with her M.A. in English. However, that would have meant (in Hashmi's mind, according to her daughter's article) dealing with 'x' number of bosses at the workplace and other bosses at home (her brothers and their wives). By marrying a Pir, she would only have one boss, would not have to work, would be relatively well off living in rural Bahawalpur State (southern Pakistani Punjab) as the wife of a well respected Pir and all of this would give her lots of time to write Urdu short stories and novelettes . . . that was her passion!

Her American Professors at Forman Christian College  viz. Dr. R.M. Ewing and Dr. F.M. Velte had introduced her to the masters of English Literature and instilled in her a fervor to write short stories and give expression to her inner feminist voice!! In later years, when she had established a residence in Lahore, she would regularly organize an annual "Shab e Afsana" night (a by invitation event only) at her house where she would entertain a hand picked circle of avant garde Urdu short story writers. The invited guests would each read a short story they had recently created. Luminaries at the Shab e Afsana included Ismat Chughtai, Ahmed Nadeem Qasmi, Ashfaq Ahmad, Intezar Husain, Masood Ashar, Farkhanda Lodhi and many others.

 Jamila Hashmi was a born story teller and I (Talat Afroze) vividly remember the strong and enduring impact she had on me as a young college student at Forman Christian College (1975-78) when I first read her novelette Aatish e Raftaa, a riveting story set in Indian Punjab.

Besides Aatish e Raftaa, she has written numerous short stories, the novelette  Rohi on the phenomenal Cholistan desert; Chehra-ba-Chehra Rubaru on Sufism of a Bahai rebel poetess and the best seller Dasht-e-Soos a novelette on the life of the renowned Sufi Saint Mansoor Hallaj.  Her daughter explains that

"In her novelettes as well as her numerous short stories, Jamila Hashmi's protagonist is always a woman. Sadly, Hashmi is one of those post-1947 Pakistani Urdu fiction writers who contributed tremendously to Urdu literature but have not received the  attention that was her due. Jamila Hashmi experimented with both style and content in her writings over time." 

The politics of the literary cliques (literary mafias) reigning supreme on the landscape of current Pakistani Urdu Literature are to blame for the neglect of Jamila Hashmi's craft and her creations, according to Hashmi's daughter and I personally feel that there is a lot of merit in her argument.  Most Urdu literary critics and some renowned Urdu fiction writers of Pakistan belong to the native Urdu speaking ethnic population which migrated to Pakistan from Lucknow, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Hyderabad State, etc. at the time of the 1947 Partition or are descendants of those native Urdu speaking immigrants/refugees. However, the Progressive Writers Movement had already started inspiring Punjabi speaking writers to start writing in Urdu (Manto, Ghulam Abbas, Rajinder Singh Bedi, Balwant Singh, Krishan Chander, Sanaullah Dar alias Mira Jee, Majeed Amjad) and this trend increased tremendously after 1947 with the adoption of Urdu as the official State language in Pakistan.  There was a huge upsurge of brilliant Urdu fiction writers who were Punjabi speakers such as Ghulam Abbas, Manto, Mumtaz Mufti, Ashfaq Ahmed, A. Hameed, Abdullah Hussein, Farkhanda Lodhi, Mansha Yaad (or Hindko speakers who became major Urdu poets such as Ahmad Faraz). Instead of recognizing the creations of non-Urdu speaking Urdu fiction writers, the ethnic Urdu speaking fiction writers and critics ignored these new Pakistani writers, tended to strengthen ties with native Urdu speaking writers in India and only expressed opinions on their own writings or the Urdu fiction created before 1947.  For example, Hashmi's daughter states that "Intizaar Hussain’s appreciation of Urdu literature ends before 1947 or extends to his own work or that of Quratulain Haider’s works."  Even the few translations of Urdu fiction into English are focused on the works of native Urdu speaking fiction writers e.g. the feminist Ismat Chughtai's novel "Tayrrhee Lakeer"or The Crooked Line which, no doubt, is a milestone of Urdu fiction, has been translated into English by Tahira Naqvi. but the ground breaking works of non-Urdu speaking Urdu writers has not been translated into English. Given this scenario of calculated neglect and ethnic bias, Abdullah Hussein, one of the great Urdu novelists of our time and a Punjabi speaker, was forced to translate one of his novels into English himself (Emigre Journeys).   

Left to Right: Hijab Imtiaz Ali, Masood Ash'ar, Jamila Hashmi, Kishwar Naheed and Nisar Aziz  (picture courtesy of Forman Christian College and Jamila Hashmi's daughter, Ayesha Siddiqa's 2013 article "The Reluctant Feminists" (of Pakistan).

Ayesha Siddiqa is the daughter of Jamila Hashmi. Siddiqa is a non-fiction writer who authored the investigative bomb shell, Military Inc., a shattering portrayal of the true face of the Pakistan Military Establishment .

Article courtesy of The Friday Times Nov. 8th 2013 edition

The Reluctant Feminists



Ayesha Siddiqa The Friday Times Issue: 08 Nov 2013

Led into becoming the second wife of Bahawalpur’s sajjada nasheen, Ayesha Siddiqa’s novelist mother, Jamila Hashmi carved out her own intellectual space in a world of political intrigue.

How does one recognise a feminist? Is it by how aggressively she demands equal rights? Is it by challenging traditional roles ascribed to a woman and restructuring her personal space? Or is it someone who wears her feminism on her sleeve all the time? I guess I never seriously thought about feminism while I was growing up, maybe because I never had to. Having spent my life in Lahore with two feminists who were different from each other in their approach to feminism yet similar in their perception of tradition, contesting for their space as matriarchs in a highly male oriented society, feminism was always in my bloodstream. This is a reference to a life spent with my mother, the Urdu novelist and short story writer Jamila Hashmi and her good friend and poetess Kishwar Naheed. It’s through these two women in particular, and a few more, I learnt that feminism couldn’t be drawn in a straight line. It is better defined through its inner contradictions and along a winding trajectory that life itself is.

For their friends and circle of intellectuals the two women were diametrically opposite. And different they were indeed. My narrative weaves together their differences and inner contradictions to explore the deeply feminist psyche of both, a desire to capture and claim their own space and define their relationship with society and the world on their own terms.

At the risk of using a much-beaten-to-death cliché, a lot of those claiming to be liberal-feminists in Pakistan may consider Jamila Hashmi as an anti-thesis of both liberalism and feminism. She visibly appeared a conservative – a woman who regularly prayed five times a day and organized milad before celebrating her only child’s birthday party. What’s worse, she opted to accept her mother’s choice to marry a man who was already married, had a grown up daughter and was a sajjada nasheen of the Khanqah of Mohkum din Sairani in Bahawalpur. This is a woman, who by the time she got married in the late 1950s had already published a novelette Atish-e-Rafta depicting the culture of East Punjab which is recognized by her contemporaries and other critics of Urdu literature as a mini classic. She was also formally more educated than her husband. Jamila Hasmi did her masters in English Literature from FC College, Lahore where she was taught by some very capable American professors. Yet it was almost a surrender of the kind we see in vintage Hindi films when asked to take a peek at her husband after the nikah her response was, “Does it matter now?” Later, she went to live in a village where there was no electricity in the first few years of her marriage.

Soon after marriage she was asked to select her duty, she was asked if she wanted to take care of the washing and ironing of the husband’s clothes and his food or take care of the langar (daily feast cooked for visitors to the shrine). Being a city girl she couldn’t care less for the latter and so opted to take care of the husband while the co-wife, who was more conscious of the political economy of the place was all too happy to go for the more lucrative deal. Controlling the langar gave access to extra finances and established power vis-a-vis the khalifas of the pir. It translated into greater influence than what the husband’s dirty laundry could. The tension between the two wives was always of a political nature and played out silently. When in Bahawalpur, they would have their evening cup of tea together which was a moment for friendly banter, family gossip and sometimes a discussion of the man they shared between them. My mother was conscious of the decision she had made, due to what she explained to me later was an absence of options. Her first choice was not to get married at all but if the choice was depending on the whims of her brothers and their wives and having a life of her own then she opted to get married. For her waiting for the right man didn’t seem to be an option. Nor did she have the choice to compete with her husband’s first wife, who never felt seriously threatened by the younger co-wife. The senior wife had agreed to let her husband marry a second time for she had not been able to produce a son who would inherit the mantle of the sajjada nasheen. She knew that her husband would get married again; the choice was between letting larger politics ruin her and her daughter’s life, and a lesser evil. Her daughter’s mother-in-law was eyeing my father for her own daughter. Being the older family in the lineage of pirs of Owaisi silisila, the pressure from the pirs of Khankah Abdulkhaliq in Chishtian might have prevailed had my stepmother not encouraged my father to look outside the clan. In any case, in the State of Bahawalpur of those days it was fashionable amongst the Nawab and notable families to marry Punjabi women.

But the formally educated woman had no inkling of the deeper politics of the place. She didn’t know she had to watch her back all the time amidst people who otherwise spoke softly in a dialect considered as one of the sweetest languages of the subcontinent. Jamila Hashmi gave birth to a healthy son who was then killed through deceit and conspiracy. She bore the pain stoically. However, she also planned more carefully not to bear the second child, a few years later, in Bahawalpur. Thus, I was born safely in a hospital in Lahore. Many years later when the story of what happened to my brother was revealed to me including the identity of those involved in the crime I wanted to know how she could still talk to those people. Her answer was, “It’s up to God to take my revenge.”

Was this the archetype of a true believer? Perhaps yes but her decision was also based on a deeper strategy to survive because there wasn’t much she could do in the face of family politics in which the odds were against her. I saw her great survival instinct at work again after my father’s death in 1979 when the family wanted her to leave, or face piles of court cases. Had it not been for her inner resolve and friends like Barrister Ijaz Hussain Batalvi, Jamila Hashmi the writer might not have survived. And her God was certainly with her during those tough times – God whom she remembered while saying her prayers and singing bhajans of Jotika Roy and Mira Bai. I had once asked her if she considered her bhajan singing as a contradiction of her faith as a Muslim. She just smiled and reminded me there were several ways of remembering the Almighty.

But referring to her personal struggle there was no way she was ready to accept that her husband’s clan dictate terms to her. To date the ordinary folk of village Khankah Sharif often refer to her as a shairnee (lioness) who not only fought for herself but for others too. She was the ultimate matriarch who negotiated the rules of life on her terms even though the path may sometimes have looked long and arduous. I once asked her why she named me Ayesha Siddiqa when most of my class fellows at school had normal surnames. “It is because I don’t want you to keep changing names from one house to the other. What’s the fun of changing from your father’s name to your husband’s? I want you to have your own name and a personality to go with it if possible” was her quick response that I understood many years later much after I had experimented on my own with changing names.

The sanctity of a name was critical in her scheme of things. Ironically, she was Jamila Hashmi in her own world but would conveniently switch to Begum Sardar Ahmed Owaisi when she was in my father’s world. She continued with this even after his death. It was both out of love and a sense of pragmatism that she conceded space and not fight for every inch as perhaps the feminism theorists would have expected her to do. Her logic was that this was not subservience but an expression of love and gratitude for someone who had expanded her canvas. She had an independent life as a creative writer in which my father always assisted her silently. He would, for instance, make sure she had everything available for her annual shab-e-afsana events. She organized a story telling night once every year in winters where a select number of writers were invited to write and read out a new story. People ranging from Ashfaq Ahmed, Bano Qudsia, Qudratullah Shahab to Intizar Hussan, Hijab Imtiaz Ali Taj, Nisar Aziz, Salahuddin Mehmud and many others became a part of her shab-e-afsana at one time or the other. Those were indeed great days of literary life in Lahore when people used to meet to discuss new works and organised themselves in groups known less for ideology and more for an ability to sit together and share thoughts. The divide between different groups was often very sharp but these meetings were a great source of learning as there was such exhibition of wit, intellect and even humour. This was all my mother’s world in which she never forced my father to participate. In fact, she was happy to keep the worlds separate so her husband might not feel threatened. Her explanation was that she wanted him to be the center of attention and that was not possible amongst her bunch of friends who were absorbed in their own worlds. But I believe this was also her way of securing her own space without creating tension between her multiple lives.

The fact that she was deeply feminist came out very visibly in her fiction. Be it the novelette Atish-e-Rafta on East Punjab; Rohi on the phenomenal Cholistan desert; Chehra-ba-Chehra Rubaru on Sufism of a Bahai rebel poetess, or Dasht-e-Soos on the life of the renowned Sufi Saint Mansoor Hallaj, and her numerous short stories, her protagonist was always a woman. Sadly, she is one of those post-1947 Urdu fiction writers who contributed tremendously to its literature but have not received attention due to the politics of the language. (Most literary critics, who are ethnic Urdu speakers or writers of the same ethnicity tend to limit themselves to either their own work or that before partition. For example, Intizaar Hussain’s appreciation of Urdu literature ends before 1947 or extends to his own work or that of Quratulain Haider’s). Also, given the dearth of works translated into English very few have access to some of the rich literature produced by non-Urdu speaking writers. Jamila Hashmi, for instance did a lot of experimentation in both style and content. The last two of her works are related to Sufism and Sufi philosophy, which I also consider as great examples of her feminism. Chehra-Bachehra Rubaru is about the Bahai poetess and Sufi Quratulain Tahira who abandoned her home and hearth in search of eternal love. Her desire to meet the Bahai religious icon Mullah Muhammad Bab, whom she had never met ‘chahra-bachahra rubaru’ (face to face) keeps the fire within alive. It also kindles a greater fire of eternal love in her heart. At one level Quratulain Tahira brings out all the rebellion that Jamila Hashmi might have wanted to participate in herself.

One would imagine that the main player of her novel she wrote in the mid-1980s on Mansor Hallaj would be Hallaj. However, throughout the story you cannot escape the overbearing aroma of Aghul Ghaimish, the woman that Hallaj only saw once and fell in love with. They never met but her desire was the flame that built inside him into a bigger fire and consumed him completely. It’s then that Aghul merges with God who then extends into Hallaj forcing him to utter “anal Haq” (I am the ultimate truth, I am God). This was an unexpected love story or at least with an unusual ending. I vividly remember one Lahori poet and friend of my mother’s asking her if the novel had any romance, to which she sheepishly replied in an affirmative. The gent eagerly borrowed the first copy off the press to return it quickly three days later. He was visibly disappointed to see it was not the kind of romance he expected nor was it the usual run of the mill novel. It has a very poetic and unusual diction that one doesn’t come across in Urdu fiction. Others from the liberal left were equally agitated as had they expected a story that would bring out Hallaj – the messiah of the poor – as he was commonly imagined. But Jamila Hashmi had done a lot of historical and theoretical research to write about the Sufi saint’s inner journey. He may have been a messiah to the dispossessed or someone who challenged the status-quo of religion in 9th century Baghdad. But Hashmi’s interest was in writing about the journey, which started with Aghul Ghaimish and ended with every bit of Hallaj’s body, as it was hung by the King’s decree and then chopped into pieces, screaming anal Haq.

Jamila Hashmi was unwilling to confine a character to a certain stereotype. She wouldn’t do that even with her own feminism, which definitely came on tiptoe.



Jamila Hashmi is a 1954 graduate of Forman Christian College, one of the pre-eminent educational institutions of Pakistan and now a chartered University run by the Presbyterian Church, USA. According to the Yale Divinity School archives, Forman Christian College was founded by Charles William Forman who was an American Presbyterian christian missionary in Lahore from 1847 to 1894. His son, Henry Forman, also served as a missionary in North India from the 1880s to 1924.  In 1854 Charles William Forman bought land in the Inner City of Lahore and established "The Rang Mahal School" (according to papers in the Yale Divinity School archives). The Rang Mahal School later founded a college in 1865 which became known as Forman Christian College.

1985  Interview courtesy of Folio magazine, Forman Christian College

Urdu short story writer and novelist Jameela Hashmi did her MA in English in 1954 from Forman Christian College. She started her writing career by contributing to the student magazine Folio. She was also a member of  the prestigious literary society “The Fifteen”. The following are translated excerpts from an interview she gave to FCC students for the Golden Jubilee issue of Folio magazine in 1985.

Folio: What did you study and from which institutions?
JH: I was born in Amritsar and my early education took place there. I did my Matric from Hoshiarpur while living in a hostel. We came to Pakistan at the time Partition because there was so much violence and bloodshed in Amritsar. I did my Intermediate and BA as a private students because after coming to Pakistan I couldn’t get admission into a college immediately. But in 1952 I did get admission, to do MA English at F C College, Lahore. Dr Ewing was my tutor. Dr Velte had previously stopped teaching and gone back to the States, but our batch was the first batch he taught after he returned to FC. Dr Sheets and Professor Biswas were also our teachers at the time.

Folio: Was Dr Enver Sajjad also a student at FC at that time?
JH: No, he came after us.

Folio: You chose English Literature for your MA. Were you especially interested in the subject?
JH: No, I had no special interest at the time. I just decided to join in English, since I had to study something. But once I had taken admission, I became very interested in the subject and I worked very hard. The students of those days used to work like labourers when it came to their studies. We had to take all the notes ourselves, we couldn’t get ready-made notes.

Folio: Why did you decide to join FC College?
JH: I first took admission in Government College Lahore, but I left it to come to F C College because the environment and teachers really impressed me. It was the chance of a lifetime that I could study under Dr Velte, under Dr Sheets. These were teachers who had something to give to their students. You have no idea of the difference between FC College of those days and FC College now. [Ed: The interview took place in 1985 during FC College’s nationalized phase.] When I think about those times they seem like a dream. Our class was held in the upper floor of the Library block. At that time any book would be available in the Library, and all the book shelves were always unlocked. You could take out any book, whenever you wanted. Even if we stayed in the Library all day long, no one said anything.

Folio: Tell us some more of your memories of those days.
JH: Our classes would usually end around 10:00 or 10:30. After that we were free, but we still stayed there. The class atmosphere was very good, there was a family feeling among students. The hostel boys would bring food from the hostel and we all ate together. Dr Velte, who was the Head of Department at the time, used to teach Shelley and Keats very well and in great depth. When he was teaching these poets’ works we felt that we could study them all our lives. Professor Biswas would often tell us recipes for making Bengali sweetmeats and would tell the boys that if you can’t do MA English, you can open a sweetmeat shop. Ali Dawar was a class fellow and a very talented student – he later became a Commissioner. Mrs Iftikhar was also a classmate. In those days there was a very pleasant atmosphere which does not exist in educational institutions nowadays.

Folio: When did you start writing?
JH: Around the same time. If you look at the 1953 Folio, you will find one of my writings in it. I think it was called “Adhooray khwab”. This was the first story I wrote and it was printed in Folio.

Folio: Did you get any encouragement when you started writing? Did you get any inspiration from someone?
JH: At that time the names of Quratul Ain Haider, Hajira Mastoor, Khadieeja Mastoor and Ismat Chughtai were very prominent. I enjoyed reading Quratul Ain. After Partition, her book “Sitaron say Aagay” was published which I really liked. And there were established magazines like “Hoor” and “Zaib un Nissa” in which women had been writing for some time. As far as encouragement is concerned, even nowadays writers don’t get encouragement. It is the writers’ own art which makes them recognized. If there is life in their writing, then the writers and their work will live. They have to do everything for themselves. It is a question of public relations.

Folio: What aim do you have when you write? Do you try to give a specific message through your writing?
JH: When I write, I just write. I don’t have a specific aim when I write. I can’t say that I write to improve society. I don’t want to improve or reform society, I don’t deliberately make society my theme. I think I just write simple stories about love.

Folio: Do you consider someone your literary teacher? Someone whom you are very impressed by?
JH: I think I did my MA in English so that I would learn how great people, great writers, wrote about what they felt. I feel that the great authors I read during my MA English degree are my teachers in writing. And having so many teachers, I didn’t need to make anyone else my teacher.

Folio: Why didn’t you get a job after completing your MA in English?
JH: It was my own decision, not because I wasn’t allowed to by my family. If I could get permission to study, what obstacle could there be for my getting permission to work? My younger sister is working. I thought that if I got a job I would have ten bosses to work for. Wouldn’t it be better to get married and have just one person to work for?

Folio: These are times of material and scientific progress. In such materialistic times, which aspect of literature do you feel is the most appreciated?
JH: Spirituality. Spirituality is gaining ground, even though you rarely find it in literature nowadays. People still prefer to ready spiritual literature. For instance in 1983 once of books, “Dasht-e-Soos: Hussain bin Mansoor Hallaj”. I don’t think any of my other books have had such a reception as this one has. Everyone is critiquing it, some positive and some negative. But in any case the book is being read because it has an aspect of spirituality. After writing this book and seeing how well it was received, I realized that people lean towards spirituality as well. In fact, love and hate are reflections of spirituality.

Folio: Do you remember any beautiful incident from F C College?
JH: For me all that happened at F C College was beautiful. That was a beautiful period of my life. There used to be an English society in those days called The Fifteen. It had only fifteen members. There used to be a meeting every fifteen days, at Dr Velte’s house. Dr Velte’s wife treated us with great kindness and served us with tea and cake. I read a paper in one of the meetings of The Fifteen, titled “The Cultural Development of Pakistan”. Two papers had already been read out before mine in that particular meeting, mine was the third. After listening to it Mr Biswas said, “It is the best paper.” Those days the atmosphere was very good, there were no problems.

Folio: Do you have any message from FC students?
JH: Yes. My message, in fact my plea, is that they should polish their talents and skills well and bring honour to this institution because their alma mater has wonderful traditions and history.

Interview Source: English translation of excerpts from the original Urdu article “Jameela Hashmi say Interview”.
Interview panel: Asif Alipota, Nighat Khurshid.
Printed in Folio Golden Jubilee Number 1935-1985.
Featured photograph: FCC Ewing Memorial Library.