Background

Ismat Chughtai was born on August 21, 1915, in Badayun, Uttar Pradesh to the family of Nusrat Khanam and Mirza Qaseem Baig Chughtai. She was ninth of ten children - six brothers, four sisters. The family shifted homes frequently as Chughtai's father was a civil servant. She spent her childhood in cities including Jodhpur, Agra, and Aligarh, mostly in the company of her brothers as her sisters had all got married while she was still very young. Chughtai described the influence of her brothers as an important factor which influenced her personality in her formative years. She thought of her second-eldest brother, Mirza Azim Beg Chughtai, a novelist, as a mentor. The family eventually settled in Agra, after Chughtai's father retired from the Indian Civil Services.

Education

Chughtai received her primary education at the Women's College (then a High School) at the Aligarh Muslim University and graduated from Isabella Thoburn College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1940. Despite strong resistance from her family, she completed her Bachelor of Education degree from the Aligarh Muslim University the following year.

Career

Chughtai wrote a short-story The Troublemaker for the Urdu magazine Saqi in 1939, which was her first published work.

After completing her Bachelor of Education degree, Chughtai became a headmistress of an Aligarh-based Girls school. While in Aligarh Chughtai continued to write for various publishers. She gained widespread attention for her short-story The Quilt, which appeared in a 1942 issue of a Lahore-based literary journal. It contains a number of vignettes that teased and even infuriated the Indian establishment. The Quilt landed Chughtai in court on obscenity charges.

Chughtai moved to Bombay in 1942 and began working as an Inspectress of schools. She became increasingly involved in writing and found success with such short-stories as Gainda and Khidmatgaar and the play Intikhab, all of which were published during the period. Chughtai was again summoned to court for alleged obscenity in her writings, especially The Quilt, in 1944. Fellow writer and member of the Progressive Writers' Movement Sadat Hassan Manto was also charged with similar allegations for his short-story Odour and accompanied Chughtai to Lahore. The charges notwithstanding, both Chughtai and Manto were exonerated.

Chughtai made her debut as a screenwriter for her husband Latif's 1948 commercially successful drama film Ziddi. Chughtaitried tried herself in directing first time with the 1953 film Faraib. Having again written the screenplay based on one of her short stories, Chughtai co-directed the film with Latif. Chughtai's association with film industry solidified when she and Latif co-founded the production company Filmina. Her first project as a filmmaker was the 1958 drama film Sone Ki Chidiya, which she wrote and co-produced. Ismat Chughtai died in 1991.

Achievements

• With a style characterized by literary realism, Chughtai established herself as a significant voice in the Urdu literature of the twentieth century, and in 1976 was awarded the Padma Shri by the Government of India.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Vintage Chughtai: A Selection of her Best Stories

    (In this selection of stories from one of Urdu s best and ...)

    2013
  • The Quilt & Other Stories

    (In 1944 Ismat Chughtai successfully defended herself befo...)

    1944
  • The Crooked Line

    (A young Indian woman searches for her own identity as her...)

    1944
  • Quit India ! & Other Stories

    (Urdu stories written between 1938-1963, reflecting the sh...)

    2017
  • A Chughtai Collection: The Quilt and Other Stories, The Heart Breaks Free, and the Wild One

    (Collection of three collections by leading Urdu and femin...)

    2010
  • A Very Strange Man

• bool

  • Heart Breaks Free: The Wild One 1993

Religion

Chughtai was a liberal Muslim whose daughter, nephew & niece were married to Hindus. According to her own words, Chughtai came from a family of “Hindus, Muslims, and Christians who all live peacefully”. She said she read not only the Qur’an but also the Gita and the Bible with openness.

Views

Ismat Chughtai wrote extensively on themes that were important for her including female sexuality and femininity, middle-class gentility, and class conflict, often from a Marxist perspective.

Quotations: "“Women cook food Ismat. When you go to your in-laws what will you feed them?” he asked gently after the crisis was explained to him. “If my husband is poor, then we will make khichdi and eat it and if he is rich, we will hire a cook,” I answered. My father realised his daughter was a terror and that there wasn’t a thing he could do about it."

Membership

• Progressive Writers' Association , India

Personality

As an author of very controversial works for the patriarchal society Ismat Chughtai she can be characterized as a strong-willed and an outspoken person. That caused her being twice summoned to court on obscenity charges.

Interests

• Writers

  Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Anton Chekhov, Somerset Maugham, George Bernard Shaw, O. Henry

Connections

Ismat Chughtai married a film director, writer, and producer Shahid Latif in 1942. They had two daughters Seema Sawhny and Sabrina Latif.

Father:

Mirza Qaseem Baig Chughtai

Mother:

Nusrat Khanam

Brother:

Mirza Azim Beg Chughtai

husband:

Shahid Latif

Daughter:

Seema Sawhny

Daughter:

Sabrina Latif

colleague:

Saadat Hasan Manto

References

• Contemporary Authors, Vol. 166 This volume of Contemporary Authors contains biographical information on approximately 300 modern writers.
  1998