KISHWAR NAHEED

BIOGRAPHY

Kishwar Naheed, was born in Uttar Pardesh, India in 1940 and moved to Pakistan during its partition in 1947. She witnessed violence, rape and abduction of women when Pakistan was coming into being as a nation.

Married to Yousaf Kamran, a poet, she continued as a working woman during her marriage as well as after her husband's death in order to support her children.

Director General of Pakistan National Council of the Arts, she helped in developing Urdu and Punjabi literary communities. She lend a helping hand to women without an independent income through her organization "Hawwa" (Eve) by enabling them to become financially independent through cottage industries and handicraft trade.

For her outstanding work and lifetime achievements she has received the Sitar-e-Imtiaz.

Mallika Sarabhai, an Indian activist and classical dancer, uses parts of Kishwar Naheed's poem in her theatrical performance to project the female voice who is rebelling against her objectification by the patriarchal society.

I AM NOT THAT WOMAN

POETRY

Starting from 1969, when she won the Adamjee Award for Literature uptil 1991, Kishwar Naheed published six collection of poems.

Her poetry insists for juridicial rights for women in Pakistan and she uses her poetry as a political tool to stand up against President Zia-ul-Haq's Hudood Ordinance Laws, which manipulated and twisted Islamic principles to control and suppress women.

She describes these laws beautifully in the last stanza of her poem "Anti clockwise":

Your fear of my being free, being alive

and able to think might lead you, who knows

into what travails.

She is a staunch advocate for the freedom of women and her poetry is the voice she gives to her belief.

She uses the ghazal, (a poetic form consisting of a collection of couplets which follow strict rules) which is critical for the local and nationalist interpretations of femininity in her poetry.

Her most famous poem "Hum Gunaigar Aurtain" 's title translated as "We Sinful Women" has become the title of a brilliant anthology of contemporary Urdu feminist poetry, edited and translated by Rukhsana Ahmed.