Ze Khe Sheen (born Zahida Khatun Sherwani; 18 December 1894 – 2 February 1922; sometimes spelled Zay Khay Sheen) was an Indian poet and writer who wrote in the
women's rights
Women's rights are the rights and entitlements claimed for women and girls worldwide. They formed the basis for the women's rights movement in the 19th century and the feminist movements during the 20th and 21st centuries. In some countries, ...
. She published her poetry under the pseudonyms Zay Khay Sheen (or Z-Kh-S) and Nuzhat, as her conservative Muslim society did not permit women to write poetry or initiate movements upholding the rights of women. She belonged to a rich family of landholders of the Sherwani tribe. Her poems and
ghazals
The ''ghazal'' ( ar, غَزَل, bn, গজল, Hindi-Urdu: /, fa, غزل, az, qəzəl, tr, gazel, tm, gazal, uz, gʻazal, gu, ગઝલ) is a form of amatory poem or ode, originating in Arabic poetry. A ghazal may be understood as a p ...
in Urdu, which had a "female touch", had romantic appeal for young people.
Biography
Zahida Khatun Sherwani was born on 18 December 1894 at Bhikampur in the
Aligarh district
Aligarh district is a district in the state of Uttar Pradesh, India. This district is a part of Aligarh Division. The districts which adjoin Aligarh are (clockwise from north) Gautam Buddha Nagar, Bulandshahr, Sambhal, Badaun, Kasganj, Hathra ...
of
North India
North India is a loosely defined region consisting of the northern part of India. The dominant geographical features of North India are the Indo-Gangetic Plain and the Himalayas, which demarcate the region from the Tibetan Plateau and Central ...
. Her father was Nawab Sir
Muhammad Muzammilullah Khan
Nawab Sir Muhammad Muzammilullah Khan Sherwani, Khan Bahadur (1865–1935) was a noted zamindar and politician from the United Province of British India.''The Indian Year Book'' - Volume 23; Volumes 25–28 - 1941– Page 902
He was former Vi ...
(1865–1938), a '' rais'' (rich man) of Bhikampur who had taken an active part in the
Aligarh Movement
The Aligarh Movement was the push
to establish a modern system of Western–style scientific education for the Muslim population of British India, during the later decades of the 19th century. The movement's name derives from the fact that i ...
. The Sherwani clan to which he belonged were scholarly people of high standing in the educational field, who although progressive were conservative in outlook. As Sherwani's mother died young her father took a keen interest in the education of his children – Sherwani, her older sister Ahmadi and her younger brother Ahmadullah. He performed for them the formal
Bismillah ceremony
Bismillah ceremony, also known as Bismillahkhani, is a cultural ceremony celebrated mostly by Muslims from the subcontinent in countries such as Bangladesh, India and Pakistan. It marks the start for a child in learning to recite the Qur'an in ...
which marked an initiation to the teachings of Quran. Sherwani was then four years old. She and her sister were taught
Persian
Persian may refer to:
* People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language
** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples
** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...
as part of an education in rich culture, under a governess, Farkhunda Begam Teherani, an Iranian woman who had migrated to India and who was proficient in reading, writing and teaching poetry to her students. Sherwani learned to write poetry not only in Persian but also in Urdu under her tutelage and also obtained knowledge of life in the world beyond the limits of their home in Aligarh. When Sherwani was 10 years old, she declared her intentions to become a poet in her first poem, which reads:
Sherwani's father ensured that she and her siblings learned
Islamic theology
Schools of Islamic theology are various Islamic schools and branches in different schools of thought regarding '' ʿaqīdah'' (creed). The main schools of Islamic Theology include the Qadariyah, Falasifa, Jahmiyya, Murji'ah, Muʿtazila, Batin ...
and expository prose in Urdu. For this purpose, he appointed Muhammad Ya'qub Isra'ilithe, who belonged to the family of the Imam of the Juma Mosque of Aligarh and who had participated in the Ahl-I-Hadith movement. During this period her father was also active in Aligarh in establishing a girls' school and women's
normal school
A normal school or normal college is an institution created to train teachers by educating them in the norms of pedagogy and curriculum. In the 19th century in the United States, instruction in normal schools was at the high school level, turni ...
and upgrading the Aligarh College into a Muslim University. At this time Sherwani wrote poetry and also other articles and published them in magazines such as ''Khatun of Aligarh'', ''Ismat of Delhi'' and ''Sharif Bibi of Lahore''. She was also responsible for establishing the Young Sherwanis' League comprising young members of the Sherwani clan, which promoted schools for the children of Bhikampur and Datauli and generated funds to run a boarding house for the Aligarh Girls' School.
She wrote about the conditions of Muslims in other places and also scripted
nazm
''Nazm'' () is a major part of Urdu and Sindhi poetry that is normally written in rhymed verse and also in modern prose-style poems. is a significant genre of Urdu and Sindhi poetry; the other one is known as ''ghazal'' ().
is significantly ...
Balkan War
The Balkan Wars refers to a series of two conflicts that took place in the Balkan States in 1912 and 1913. In the First Balkan War, the four Balkan States of Greece, Serbia, Montenegro and Bulgaria declared war upon the Ottoman Empire and defea ...
Red Crescent
The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement is a Humanitarianism, humanitarian movement with approximately 97 million Volunteering, volunteers, members and staff worldwide. It was founded to protect human life and health, to ensure re ...
was also set up in Aligarh.
A nazm Sherwani wrote in 1913 titled ''‘Id ki Khushi men Ghamzadegan-i-Kanpur'' (''Festival of ‘Id in Memory of the Victims of Kanpur'') was published under her pen name Nuzhat in ''Zamindar'', a newspaper of
Lahore
Lahore ( ; pnb, ; ur, ) is the second most populous city in Pakistan after Karachi and 26th most populous city in the world, with a population of over 13 million. It is the capital of the province of Punjab where it is the largest city ...
. Her father, who saw this article, was unhappy with the tenor of the article which criticized the government and covered Muslim political causes, warned his daughter to be careful in her writings, though he was appreciative of her poetry. Another poem she published in ''
Zamindar
A zamindar ( Hindustani: Devanagari: , ; Persian: , ) in the Indian subcontinent was an autonomous or semiautonomous ruler of a province. The term itself came into use during the reign of Mughals and later the British had begun using it as ...
'', titled ''Mosul ka tail'', which dealt with the importance of oil in the international economy and the West's move to control oil deposits around the world, also alarmed her father.
Upset with her father's warnings, she discontinued writing for some time. She resumed writing poetry without telling her father. In the meanwhile, her brother Ahmadullah died in 1916 which anguished her as he was a constant support and source of information to her. After this tragedy her tenor of writing took a serious turn and in 1918 she published ''Sipas Nama-i-Urdu'' (''In Praise of Urdu'') which was narrated on the occasion of the inauguration of
Osmania University
Osmania University is a collegiate university, collegiate Public university, public State university (India), state university located in Hyderabad, Telangana, India. Mir Osman Ali Khan, the 7th Nizam of Hyderabad in 1918 , He released a farma ...
, Hyderabad, then the only institution of higher education in India where Urdu was the medium of instruction; she had published the poem under her pseudonym and people did not know then that it was written by a woman. Shan-ul-Haq Haqqee wrote a critique on this poem noting "its powerful imagery and the parallels the poet draws between the status of Urdu—marginalized, ignored, hidden from view—and the status of women in her society". She had also evinced interest in the
Gandhi
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (; ; 2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948), popularly known as Mahatma Gandhi, was an Indian lawyer, anti-colonial nationalist Quote: "... marks Gandhi as a hybrid cosmopolitan figure who transformed ... anti- ...
an
swadeshi movement
The Swadeshi movement was a self-sufficiency movement that was part of the Indian independence movement and contributed to the development of Indian nationalism. Before the BML Government's decision for the partition of Bengal was made public in ...
and had started changing her wardrobe with clothes made of
khadi
Khadi (, ), derived from khaddar, is a hand-spun and woven natural fibre cloth promoted by Mahatma Gandhi as ''swadeshi'' (self-sufficiency) for the freedom struggle of the Indian subcontinent, and the term is used throughout India, Pakistan ...
in support of Indian nationalism.
Sherwani did not get married, as a cousin whom she was to marry died young. There was no other prospective groom who suited her rich family background. She died on Thursday 2 February 1922 at 27. An obituary issued in the women's magazine ''Tahzib un-Niswan'' said: "She was a nightingale, now silenced, who was born in a cage, lived her whole life in that cage, and there drew her last breath."
Appreciation
Zahida Khatoon Sherwani is the subject matter of a doctoral thesis under the title ''Zay Khay Sheen'' written by Fatima Hasan. In a lecture given to the Working Women Welfare Trust at
Karachi
Karachi (; ur, ; ; ) is the most populous city in Pakistan and 12th most populous city in the world, with a population of over 20 million. It is situated at the southern tip of the country along the Arabian Sea coast. It is the former c ...
, Hasan spoke glowingly about Sheen saying "...Sheen took part in various feminist activities aimed at promoting and encouraging women's right to education and empowerment. Even the tragedies of the death of her grandparents, mother, brother and fiancé that she suffered in her very young age could not deter her from continuing with the mission." Hasan also said about her: "She was a visionary and she wrote on a variety of topics such as farming and farmers, World War, Aligarh University and the Khilafat Movement. Her poetic work ''Masnavi Aina-i-Haram'' on women's rights was like
Allama Iqbal
Sir Muhammad Iqbal ( ur, ; 9 November 187721 April 1938), was a South Asian Muslim writer, philosopher, Quote: "In Persian, ... he published six volumes of mainly long poems between 1915 and 1936, ... more or less complete works on philoso ...
's ''Shikwa'' and drew the latter's remarks that had Zay Khay Sheen lived longer, she would have achieved as much as he did".
Zay Khay Sheen is also the theme of two MA and MPhil graduate theses.
Rekhta
''Rekhta'' ( ur, ; hi, रेख़्ता ) was the Hindustani language as its dialectal basis shifted to the Delhi dialect. This style evolved in both the Perso-Arabic and Devanagari scripts and is considered an early form of Urdu and H ...