Begum Rokeya Shakawat Hossain

Bangladeshi education pioneer who founded girls' schools and challenged patriarchal norms through progressive writing.

Begum Rokeya Shakawat Hossain (1880-1932) was a Bengali intellectual whose writings and schools revolutionized women's education in colonial India. Born in Rangpur (now Bangladesh), she defied child marriage and cultural taboos to establish the Sakhawat Memorial Girls' School in 1911 – one of South Asia's first institutions providing modern education to Muslim girls. Her satirical stories like "Sultana's Dream" (1905) imagined a gender-reversed utopia where women governed technology-driven societies, challenging gender roles over a century before modern feminist sci-fi.

Royka's 1926 book "The Secluded Ones" exposed the harms of purdah practices, while her 1926-1932 journal Sarbahara promoted women's participation in public life. She also founded the Anjuman-e-Khawateen-e-Muslimeen (Muslim Women's Association) to advocate for women's rights. Despite limited resources, her schools educated thousands, including future leaders like poet Kazi Nazrul Islam. Modern Bangladesh honors her through the Begum Rokeya University (https://www.rokeya.ac.bd) and International Rokeya Day (February 9). Her writings remain influential in feminist and postcolonial studies, with Bangladesh's government including her in national education curricula.