Begum Rokeya's Non-sectarian Pluralist-inclusivist Imagination

Bengali writer, educationist and pioneering feminist activist, Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain (1880-1932), popularly known as Begum Rokeya, was born at a critical juncture in South Asian history when hostility and bloodshed between Hindus and Muslims was a recurrent experience. It was the time of Swadeshi movement in Bengal (1905-1911) and later Gandhi's Swaraj (1919-1947), which although meant to overthrow the Raj and find India's independence, seized by the fanatics on both sides of the religious divide, often resulted in inter-religious strife and sectarian violence. Rokeya lived through the communal riots in Dhaka (1930), Kanpur (1931), Kashmir (1931) and Vellore (1930-31), to name a few, but her faith in the importance of Hindu-Muslim fellowship for building a modern, progressive, peaceful and prosperous India (and by extension, present-day Bangladesh) was not shaken by such dreadful incidents.