Ismat Chughtai

in Module
Published on: 15 August 2016

Ismat Chughtai is considered one of the four pillars of Urdu afsana along with Saadat Hasan Manto, Krishen Chander and Rajinder Singh Bedi. Celebrated for infamous ‘Lihaaf’ (‘The Quilt’, 1941), she also wrote essays on variety of subjects, on social movements, issues of marriage, and on people including Manto. She was a part of the Progressive Writers’ Movement. Chughtai wrote for films, and several of her novels and short stories have been made into films. Her style was bold, innovative, rebellious, and unabashedly realistic. Manto once said about Chughtai, ‘If Ismat had been a man she would have been me and if I had been a woman, I would have been Ismat.’ This module interprets Ismat not so much as a legend, but as a powerful idea of revolutionary fiction.