Abstract
Journeys are of course of the heart, mind and spirit, as much as they are about travel across physical space and change of locale. This book is about Atiya Fyzee (1877–1967), a woman whose travels and explorations, artistic and literary contributions could be described even today as ‘exceptional’.
Born in Istanbul in 1877, Atiya Fyzee, niece of Badruddin Tyabji, grew up in Mazagon, Bombay. Along with other girls of the Tyabji family she studied at the Zenana Bible Missin School, later known as the Queen Mary High School for Girls. Atiya acquired a parallel education as an active member of the Aqd-e Surayya (The Necklace of Pleiades), a women’s social club established in the late 1880s by Atiya, her sister Nazli, and their cousin, Surayya, encouraged by their uncle, Camruddin Tyabji (1836–89), elder brother of Badruddin Tybaji and the country’s first Muslim solicitor.
The Aqd-e Surayya organised debates, musical performances, picnics, hikes and its members engaged in ‘works of charity’. The club took its business seriously. It had a constitution, and minutes of meetings and financial accounts were kept carefully. From 1910 it even had a printed rulebook! Participating in the club’s activities taught women of the Tyabji family organisational skills and set a standard of professionalism that inspired other clubs for Muslim women across the country. A remarkable feature of the Aqd-e Surayya was its rejection of the strict purdah norms that prevailed in most other Muslim women’s clubs. Instead, visitors, both ‘ladies and gentlemen’, were invited to participate in the club’s activities—as long as they had obtained permission from the appropriate officer!
Another unique achievement of the Tyabji clan was its initiation of the akhbar-ki-kitab or family letter books which were maintained by almost every household. Both men and women were encouraged to record social and political events, meetings, visits and other activities that they participated in. These family narratives, recorded in both Urdu and English, provide a valuable source for reconstructing the social and political history of twentieth century India and have been eagerly read by scholars. It is possible, state the authors, that it was Camruddin Tyabji, who suggested that his family emulate the European tradition of keeping guest books. He may have known of English families that kept records of personal or public significance.
Whatever the origin, the many akhbar- ki-kitabe contributed to public and historical awareness in the Tyabji family. They wrote about political meetings and speeches, of badminton and tennis matches, of picnics, treks and poetry. Many of the letter-books record travels of family members and visits to the Fyzee home at Yali in Kihim. The first entry in the Fyzee family’s Kitab-i-Akhbar-i-Kihim-Yali, was by Atiya’s grandmother Durrat-ul-vali, who encouraged all family members, especially women, to contribute to it regularly. Literacy was at a high premium and women in the family were seen as custodians of these letter-books. The milieu in which Atiya Fyzee grew up was thus, on many counts exceptional.
The focus of the book is on the travel diary kept by Atiya Fyzee during her one year visit to Britain in 1906–07. Atiya Fyzee boarded the P&O steamboat Moldavia, on 1 September 1906 at Bombay to study at the Maria Grey Teachers’ Training College in London. A recipient of a two-year government scholarship, she was expected to return to India as a qualified teacher and dedicate herself to education reform. The scholarship gave Atiya the opportunity to experience the West and compare it with her own country. Her year abroad was life-transformatory, setting her on a path of artistic creativity and self-discovery. Ill health, we are told, compelled her to abandon her studies and return home in 1907. Back in India, she immersed herself in the cause of education, music, art and culture.
Atiya was not the first South Asian Muslim woman to travel to Britain, note Lambert-Hurley and Sharma, for many had gone before her, ranging from dignitaries to bonded servants. She was, however, among the first to maintain a detailed ‘day-book’ of her life and experiences in a foreign country.
Atiya Fyzee’s accounts of her travels and experiences recorded in the Roznamchah, were originally intended to be read only by her two sisters, Zehra and Nazli. Shortly thereafter, the diary entries were serialised and published in an Urdu weekly magazine, the Tahzib un-Niswan (Women’s Culture), published from Lahore. Its editor Muhammadi Begum, wife of Muslim reformer and intellectual, Sayyid Mumtaz Ali was keen to publish Atiya’s writings in the hope that they would help widen the intellectual horizons of Muslim women. She encouraged Atiya to explore the different ‘way of life’ in Britain, and record in detail her experiences in that country. Other contributors to the Tahzib dealt with issues pertaining to women’s education, the rights of women under Islamic law and improved women’s health and child care. By 1902 the magazine had some 3–400 women subscribers. Atiya’s writings were received with interest and in 1921 her travel diary was published as a book entitled Zamana-i-tahsil (A Time of Education).
Atiya Fyzee’s student year in London gave her a first-hand experience of the education system in Britain and the opportunity to meet some influential politicians, social reformers and intellectuals. Invited by her British friends to their homes, she learnt about everyday life in that country. During her year abroad, she also visited museums, art galleries and historic sites in England, France and Germany.
Atiya’s stay in London coincided with a new era of reform in Britain. Led by Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, the Liberal Party won elections in February 1906. Committed to battling poverty and unemployment, the new government introduced the ‘People’s Budget’ and social welfare programmes. The political climate was one of promise and radical change; it was a heady time to be young and in London.
Among the scholars and administrators that Atiya Fyzee met during her year abroad were Professors Thomas Arnold and Theodore Morison who had taught at Aligarh and influenced generations of Indian students. She also met Sir Henry Cotton, who had served as Chief Commissioner of Assam and was one of the select few British Presidents of the Indian National Congress (1904) and Liberal M.P. from 1906–10. At a farewell party given in his honour, she was introduced to India’s prominent nationalist leader, Dadabhai Naoroji, former Liberal M.P. and three times President of the Indian National Congress. Many of the meetings were organised by the National Indian Association (NIA), founded in 1870 to encourage greater understanding between the people of India and Britain. These encounters made a lasting impression on the young Atiya.
During her stay in London Atiya Fyzee also visited other educational institutions, including University College Preparatory and the Froebel Institute founded by well-known German educationist, Friedrich Froebel. Many of the kindergartens established in Britain sought to emulate his teachings. Froebel’s methods were introduced in India but did not gain the same popularity as those of Italian educationist Maria Montesorri.
Atiya Fyzee’s friendship with noted poet Muhammad Iqbal (1877–1938) and leading Muslim intellectual Maulana Shibli Numani (1857–1914) have been the subject of considerable discussion. Meetings between Atiya Fyzee and Muhammad Iqbal took place in the months from April to August 1907 in London, Cambridge and Heidelberg, Atiya’s travel diary however, records but two entries. The authors surmise that her writings were edited by her sister Zehra, for the Roznamchah merely states that Iqbal was ‘a very learned scholar and also a philosopher and poet’.
The relationship was apparently more special, the book claims, for after three weeks that Atiya and Muhummad Iqbal spent in Germany, the poet sent Atiya a poem entitled Visal (Union) whose opening lines read thus: justuju jis gul kitadpati thi ay bulbul mujhe/khubi-yi qismat se akhir mil gaya who gul mujhe (O nightingale, I have found the one I was desperately looking for/ Thanks to destiny, I have found that rose).
On Atiya Fyzee’s return to India she devoted herself to artistic and cultural activities in Bombay, Bhopal and other places in the country. Her friendship with Maulana Shibli Numani played an important role in her intellectual development. She saw him as mentor and sought his advice on many issues that ranged from Persian poetry to women’s education. The Persian poetry and ghazals which Shibli wrote during this period are said to have been inspired by A Atiya Fyzee.
In 1912 she married Samuel Rahamin, a Bene-Israeili artist from Pune who served as art-advisor to the Maharaja of Baroda, Sayaji Rao III for a decade from 1908–18. The couple travelled extensively in Europe and the United States and received international acclaim for their contributions in the fields of music, dance, visual arts, theatre and literature. Atiya acquired fame as a connoisseur of classical Indian music and was invited to sing at noted salons in Paris. Some of her songs were recorded at the University of Sorbonne.
At the first All-India Music Conference held in Baroda in March 1916 and attended by the famous musicologist Pandit Bhatkhande, Atiya Fyzee proposed the founding of a music school, Dar-ul-ulum-i-Sangit-i-Hind (Institute for Indian Music), that would have branches in the five Presidencies, funded by a subscription raised from the princely states.
In the late-1930s, two plays written by Samuel Rahamin were staged in London. They were Daughter of Ind and Invented Gods. The music and choreography for both were done by Atiya. She was also greatly interested in promoting Indian crafts and curated an exhibition in New York at the School of Applied Design For Women. The promotion of Indian crafts was a cause dear to her. She believed the intricate and beautifully designed crafts reflected the ‘golden age’ of Indian history, and that the course of India’s development had been ruptured by the coming of British colonialism symbolised by ‘the throbbing steam engine’. Modern technology and political domination by the West had led to the degradation of India.
The Fyzee sisters were active in some of the earliest Muslim women’s organisations in India. Atiya, Zehra and Nazli were among the 300 delegates to attend the inaugural All-India Muslim Ladies’ Conference (or Anjuman-i-Khawatin-i-Islam) when it was established in Aligarh in 1914. Zehra was elected to the working committee, one of the few women not from Aligarh. Their prominence in Muslim reform activities was in part, the result of their close association with Nawab Sultan Jahan Begum (1858–1930) who made Bhopal a centre of reform initiatives.
The second half of the book reproduces the Zamana-i-Tahsil (Atiya’s travel diary) and we here have the opportunity to listen to Atiya speak in her own voice.
The book is a fascinating account of an unconventional Muslim women, deeply engaged in public life. A woman artist who explored the worlds of music, drama, journalism and painting. It compels us to recognise the pitfalls of stereotyping groups and communities. Given half a chance, women, including Muslim women, would, do and did, explore the world of sport, music, painting, enjoy travel and social encounters. Atiya Fyzee-Rahamin was one such woman. The rich visual documentation in the book adds greatly to making the life and times of Atiya Fyzee more accessible.
Lambert-Hurely and Sharma describe Atiya Fyzee as one of the earliest individuals who straddled cultures in the twentieth century; ‘transnational citizens’ who feel at home in places beyond their nation and develop an identity which is cross-cultural. Increasing numbers of persons today belong to this category.
At the end of the read, some questions remain unanswered. What illness compelled Atiya Fyzee to abandon her programme of study in London and return Bombay? More significantly, what were the compulsions that made here and her sisters and husband decide to migrate to Pakistan and settle in Karachi? What led to their life in penury and their death in extremely straitened circumstances? We are left wanting to know more about Atiya Fyzee-Rahamin, especially about her later years. The adjectives used to describe Atiya Fyzee, even in her seventies say a great deal about her. ‘Youthful alacrity’, ‘curiosity’, ‘agility’, and ‘…though not beautiful’, stated her contemporaries, ‘…Atiya had style’! A tribute by any standards.
Books like Atiya’s Journeys bring back the excitement and creativity of lives lived fully, if often tragically. For one who had seen and experienced a big, wide, ever-changing world, what pain there must have been to see life shrink to mean and narrow spaces. And finally, tragically, to die in poverty, unknown and unsung, in a country and a city that cared little for her and her artistic achievements. Atiya, Zehra, Nazli and Samuel deserved a better end.