The Prime Minister's Second Marriage

On 8 April 1955, the Pakistani press announced that the Prime Minister, Muhammad Ali BograFootnote ¹⁰ had married his former social secretary, Aliya Saddy, in Beirut while en route to a meeting held at Montreux of Pakistani diplomats based in the Middle East.Footnote ¹¹ Saddy, a vivacious Canadian-born Lebanese woman, was reported to have met Bogra when the latter had been High Commissioner in Canada. The news caused a great stir in the major cities and towns of Pakistan, though the reaction was most intense in the capital Karachi, seat of Pakistan's central government.Footnote ¹² The prime minister's first wife, Begum Hamida Muhammad Ali, like many other politicians’ wives, had become a stalwart supporter of APWA, and many of its members consequently rallied to offer her moral support during what they perceived as her hour of need. On 15 April a large meeting was held, attended by representatives from major women's organisations as well as a number of prominent social workers. President of APWA's Karachi branch, Begum Chaudhri Muhammad Ali,Footnote ¹³ took the lead, urging that women form a new organisation specifically charged with seeking to safeguard their legal rights. While she acknowledged their collective debt to APWA and was prepared for the proposed board to be affiliated to it, she also emphasised that the new organisation would be totally independent in terms of its actions. The meeting then called for a boycott of second wives, as well as the parents of such women and their relatives, and insisted that the prime minister treat both his wives with complete equality, including their participation in social functions, as Islamic justice dictated. Interestingly, the meeting also presented its criticism in patriotic terms, insisting that the official status of ‘first lady’ should remain with Begum Hamida alone. This was not merely because she was the senior wife, but because ‘she is a Pakistani [and] Pakistani women [would never] tolerate, leave alone recognise, a non-Pakistani as their “first” lady’. Hence, in its view, the prime minister was honour-bound to obey the dictates of both his religion and national feeling.Footnote ¹⁴

The following day, a delegation of the so-called ‘feminist leaders’, raising slogans and carrying placards reading ‘Down with Polygamy’, ‘Go Back Aliya Saddy’ and ‘You should Marry a Bachelor’, marched on the prime minister's house, where they delivered a strongly-worded anti-polygamy letter to Bogra (who was not there to receive them).Footnote ¹⁵ Meanwhile a meeting held under the joint auspices of various women's organisations, including the Karachi Khawateen Muslim League, the Anjuman-e-Taraqqi-e-Urdu, the Khawateen-e-Pakistan and the Khawateen-e-Anjuman-e-Tablighul Islam, passed a unanimous resolution expressing their resentment over the second marriages of some of the country's politicians, and demanded that the Government pass a law to force polygamous husbands to accord equal treatment to all their wives.

On 22 April the League for the Rights of Women was duly formed. Begum Chaudhri Muhammad Ali was chosen as its President. Sub-committees were established, with Begum Anwar Ghulam Ahmad the chair of its committee on women and family laws.Footnote ¹⁶ It was decided unanimously that the League would remain an independent body. Duriya Shafiq, the well-known Egyptian female activist, sent the League a telegram offering it her whole-hearted support.Footnote ¹⁷ On 24 April, the women's branch of the Anjuman-e-Taraqqi-e-Urdu issued a statement in which it expressed its indignation over what it viewed as the ‘abnormal increase’ in polygamy taking place in Pakistan, and warned that if people did not resist this trend, then the future for women would be dismal. While grateful for the lead taken by Begum Chaudhri Muhammad Ali, it interestingly deprecated the attitudes of some of those whom it described as the most outstanding leaders of the country.Footnote ¹⁸

The protest quickly spread from Karachi to other cities. The Hyderabad branch of APWA, for instance, added its voice to the clamour on 26 April, urging women to launch a strong campaign to fight polygamy.Footnote ¹⁹ Likewise, women in Quetta complained about the practice in the press, while in East Pakistan there were calls for the complete prohibition of the practice. Comment in Lahore was also adamant in its criticism of polygamy.Footnote ²⁰ Back in Karachi, on 4 May, Begum Hamida attended an APWA College meeting where she had already been due to preside over its annual prize-giving ceremony. There she reportedly received a lengthy ovation from the large and enthusiastic gathering of Karachi women, some of whom burst into tears when they saw the Begum and succeeded in crying themselves hoarse. Against a background chorus of ‘Hamida Muhammad Ali zindabad’ (long live Hamida Muhammad Ali) together with occasional cheers, she delivered a short presidential address in Urdu in which she praised APWA for its invaluable service in creating the right atmosphere in the country and putting Pakistan on the road to progress.Footnote ²¹ As it was the month of Ramadan (fasting), an iftar (or breaking fast) party in her honour was organised for 9 May, at the not-inconsiderable, for its time, cost of six rupees per head.Footnote ²²

Eventually, on 10 May, a five-member deputation from the League was permitted to meet the prime minister face-to-face. As a result of their 90-minute interview, about which they refused to speak with the press afterwards, the prime minister issued a public assurance on 14 May that he would continue to act fairly towards his first wife, who would be completely free to act according to her own best interests at all times. He also promised to announce during his next ‘first-of-the-month’ Radio Pakistan broadcast to the nation the establishment of a high-powered commission that would consider the need for reform to the country's marriage and family laws and report back within six months of being constituted. On the grounds that their only objective had been to fight for the ‘Islamic rights’ of women, the League's Executive duly accepted the prime minister's offer.Footnote ²³ Shortly afterwards, Bogra departed for Indonesia to participate in the Bandung conference, where he may well have been tempted to exchange notes on the whole incident with President Sukarno who, the previous year, had married a second wife and come under a similar barrage of sustained criticism from the Indonesian women's organisation Perwari on the grounds that his was a case of ‘polygamy based on passion’.Footnote ²⁴

Reactions by women in Pakistan to the prime minister's marriage revealed interesting fault-lines. Not all were as quick to criticise his actions as members of the newly-formed League. One early public dissenter was Princess Abida Sultana, heir to the ruler of the Indian princely state of Bhopal, who had migrated to Pakistan in 1949 and had represented Pakistan at the United Nations shortly before the controversy broke. Her response was perhaps coloured by the fact that she enjoyed cordial relations with the prime minister and his new wife. In a lengthy statement to the press, she ‘underscored the rights of women in Islam and concluded that Islam admitted a man's right to take more than one wife, provided the conditions prescribed were met’.Footnote ²⁵ Likewise, she criticised the interpretation placed on the relevant Quranic verses by the protesting women, suggesting instead that those who could not tolerate polygamy were ‘free to make this stipulation in their nikahnama [marriage contract] before marriage or even later if they can influence their spouses to agree to do so’, and adding the comment that the results of western monogamy did not appear themselves to be very attractive.Footnote ²⁶ The impact of her statement was affected, however, by its coincidence with rumours in the press that she was in line to be appointed (by Bogra) as the first female minister in the Pakistan government.Footnote ²⁷ According to Abida Sultana herself, this appointment was eventually shelved on the grounds that, by including her in his Cabinet, the prime minister would have appeared to be rewarding her for support over the matter of his marriage.Footnote ²⁸ Yet, Abida Sultana, despite her high profile, had not been especially active in women's circles, and she had refrained from involvement in APWA or any other women's organisation for that matter. Hence, a statement issued by some one hundred women in Karachi in response to her comments on polygamy rejected any claims that she might have to speak for them: in their words, they did ‘not consider her their true representative and would in the future oppose any move to make her their representative in any capacity’.Footnote ²⁹

More serious, perhaps, for those spearheading the campaign against male access to unregulated polygamous marriage was the stance taken by APWA's founder and life-president Begum Liaquat Ali Khan. As British officials remarked at the time, the agitation against the prime minister's second marriage was led by those among ‘the better educated women of Pakistan who [were] not themselves second wives’.Footnote ³⁰ Individual personal circumstances were thus capable of creating divisions within the ranks of Pakistan's more prominent womenfolk. The Begum, as a second wife herself, was understandably placed in an awkward position by reactions to Bogra's marriage. Abroad at the time—she had been appointed Pakistan's first female ambassador (to the Netherlands) in September 1954—she quickly despatched a ‘discouraging letter’ from The Hague that was published in the national press on 14 May, firmly disassociating APWA as an organisation from the controversy.Footnote ³¹ Urging women to exercise dignity at all times, she called on the protesters to keep entirely free from, and above, personal attacks on others, and to make sure (in her words), that commonsense and reasonableness prevailed at all times. Hinting at strains that already seemed to be threatening the unity of APWA in her absence, she promised to sort things out when she visited Karachi later in the year: ‘we can all sit down together calmly and take final decisions . . . in the meantime nothing should break up the unity work and good name of APWA’. In her view, it was a matter of principles over personalities.Footnote ³²

Some of the responses to the Begum's directive proved to be very supportive. Begum Asghari Rahim, a long-established APWA leader in Karachi, for instance, issued a statement confirming that APWA was in no way connected with the ongoing agitation against polygamy. Instead, she stressed, it was an entirely separate body—the League—that had been conducting the campaign, and hence, while some APWA members might be involved in their individual capacity, APWA as an organisation had nothing to do with it. In fact, according to her, ‘the APWA Committee [had] decided against taking up the issue of polygamy in the form and manner in which it has been done’.Footnote ³³ In reply, supporters of the agitation felt the need to clarify whether or not they were conducting the kind of personalised attacks for which Begum Liaquat Ali Khan and others had criticised them. In a letter dated 20 May, a less high-profile campaigner, Arshia Alwi explained that,

Begum Liaquat Ali Khan's concern that personalities should not override principles was perhaps not so surprising bearing in mind the extent of personal criticism that she, together with her husband, had received for her public activities in earlier years.Footnote ³⁵ Yet, as a second wife herself, she was not comfortably-placed to condemn others who had undertaken polygamous marriages.

Women as Symbols of Community Identity

Polygamy in Pakistan in the 1950s, however, was not widespread. Rather, it had always been a restricted practice amongst South Asia Muslims, with only a small proportion of marriages ever falling into this category. Even so, by the end of the nineteenth century polygamy had fallen under the scrutiny of reformers addressing the ‘plight’ of Muslim women and the possible adjustment of Muslim personal law. With the decline of formal Muslim power in British India, the home—so-called private space—and those who occupied it—women—came to assume an enhanced significance in the eyes of many. Indian Muslim reformers across the religio-social spectrum identified a common need to enhance community identity through processes that prioritised the private sphere, which, for them, represented the one place that remained firmly under Muslim autonomy.Footnote ³⁶ Fashioning a reformed Muslim woman, who was as competent when it came to her religious duties as her male counterparts and who could be called upon to defend the wider interests of the beleaguered community to which she belonged, became all-important. Knowledge was central to this process, whether this meant women becoming the equivalent of a male ‘alim as far as religious expertise was concerned, or whether it involved increasingly accessing new western-style forms of education via schools and colleges.Footnote ³⁷ For some reformers, women could perform their revised duties while still observing a purdah, or secluded lifestyle. For others, the logic of reform demanded greater interaction with people, both male and female, outside the home.

For such reformers, polygamy represented an additional pressing problem that required action in order to strengthen the legal position of Muslim women within their communities, as well as to silence critics who argued that the practice reflected, and confirmed, the second-class status of women within Islam. They blamed the distortions of tradition and custom for the fact that, while safeguards existed within Islam to limit potential male abuse of this right to be married to four wives simultaneously, these could be disregarded by men at women's expense. Thus, ‘modernising’ Islam, along with Muslim society, was presented as the eradication of un-Islamic practices, rather than as any rejection of Islam itself. So far as polygamy was concerned, this meant calling for legal limits on the male prerogative, with proposed changes usually presented as being in line with the spirit of Quranic teachings.Footnote ³⁸

To begin with, it tended to be male advocates of reform who raised these issues in public. But during the first decades of the early twentieth century, whether in specifically Muslim organisations such as the Anjuman-i Khawateen-i Islam (f. 1908) and the All-India Muslim Ladies’ Conference (f. 1915), or in the cross-community All-India Ladies’ Association (f. 1918), Muslim women from different points along the ‘seclusion spectrum’ participated in forums where they discussed enthusiastically the question of women's rights, including whether or not there should be restrictions on polygamy. Rather than seeking to reject the practice altogether, however, they preferred to minimise its negative effects.Footnote ³⁹

The first recorded occasion on which a Muslim women's organisation made a public statement on the matter of reforming this aspect of Muslim personal law was as early as 1918, when, as Minault has highlighted, the annual meeting of the Anjuman-i Khawateen-i Islam, attended by more than 500 women, passed a unanimous resolution criticising the way in which polygamy was practised in India for being ‘against the true spirit of the Quran’. The arguments used by these women were not particularly novel: for instance, like male reformers before them, they emphasised that it was impossible for a man with multiple wives to treat all of them equally and hence that he should marry only one. But, as Minault points out, what is interesting is that a number of male reformers, who personally opposed polygamy and had themselves earlier used similar kinds of criticisms of the practice, expressed outrage that women had dared to speak so publicly on the issue. Indeed, the Anjuman's resolution generated such an outcry within the Indian Muslim press of the day, that those who had drafted it were forced to defend themselves against accusations that they had been unduly influenced by the western women with whom they may have come into contact. In the end, the organisation was able to resist calls to jettison the resolution, but equally it did not proceed to lobby actively in its favour. It was only after independence, with the creation of the Muslim state of Pakistan, that the issue became the subject of a campaign that was pursued, to a very large extent, by women drawn from similar kinds of backgrounds to those who had been active within the Anjuman a generation earlier.Footnote ⁴⁰ But with a state for Muslims—Pakistan—now in existence, the circumstances, if not the arguments deployed, had shifted decisively.

Muslim separatist politics of the 1930s and 1940s courted the support of Muslim women. League leaders such as Jinnah were very aware of the value of drawing women into the movement for a ‘Pakistan’.Footnote ⁴¹ Hence his well-publicised backing for a resolution moved at the League's 1938 annual session that argued for opportunities to enable women to participate in the development of the ‘Muslim nation’, and called for more Muslim women to take part in ‘nationalist’ activity. As he put it,

Meanwhile, Jinnah's involvement in securing the passage of the Shariat Application Act of 1937—which targeted the customary laws depriving Muslim women of their inheritance rights with respect to immovable property—meant that, even if it achieved little in terms of concrete change, a growing number of supporters of the League became convinced that his vision of ‘Pakistan’ offered Muslim women a better, brighter future, as far as their rights as enshrined in Islamic law were concerned. Likewise, the Muslim Dissolution of Marriage Act of 1939 further reinforced awareness of the possibility of challenging existing interpretations of religious law in order to improve the relative position of women vis-à-vis that of men.

For historians of women's lives in colonial India, the years from 1896 to 1947 have been characterised as a period of awakening. It was during this half century that boundaries for acceptable female behaviour were re-drawn, at least for women from elite family backgrounds. Social work, that was often later ‘looked down upon by women activists as something indulged in by the rich and as an activity that militates against a struggle for rights’, was one kind of respectable concern that allowed some elite Muslim women to widen their horizons and escape the apparent confines of their homes.Footnote ⁴³ Once they had crossed the threshold in this way, it was not surprising that against a backdrop of nationalist struggle their activities became more overtly political, with parties such as the Muslim League keen to make them symbols of the Muslim ‘nation’. By the time that the Second World War was over, with the noticeable advance in support for the League's Pakistan movement in Muslim-majority provinces of British India, female participation had certainly increased. Just as in Egypt and Iran earlier in the century, where campaigns for political change linked with nationalism had brought women out on the streets, so Muslim women took part in pro-League demonstrations in the run-up to independence. Willmer has described the appearance of female supporters of the League on the streets of Lahore during the winter of 1946–47 as the first mass public mobilisation of Muslim women anywhere in pre-independence India.Footnote ⁴⁴

Like nationalist movements in other parts of the world, the Muslim League regarded the ‘mothers (and perhaps sisters and daughters) of the nation’ as a natural constituency that could be mobilised to good effect. But by appealing to Muslim women for their support along these gendered lines, Jinnah and other League leaders were asking them to add their weight to a political movement that had come to speak for a growing proportion of their menfolk. Hence, while Jinnah's words may have encouraged women, it does seem that he and his colleagues did not expect them to deviate from the path already identified for them by their male counterparts. In other words, it was assumed that they would accommodate, if not subordinate, their needs to the demands of the community as a whole, and, in effect, be content that, in this way, their rights as Muslim women would be enhanced and protected. Either way, Jinnah, in the final run-up to independence and partition, frequently discussed the need to awaken and harness Muslim women's political consciousness, while leading female Muslim League activists emphasised just how aware Muslim women were of their responsibilities, and just how impatient they were for Pakistan.Footnote ⁴⁵

Jinnah, as Pakistan's first leader, continued to appeal to women to play their part in helping to consolidate the new state following its creation in August 1947. Groups of well-connected women duly emerged to oversee the provision of practical and moral support for the large numbers of distressed and often destitute refugees produced by the enormous dislocations involved in Partition. Just as on the Indian side of the new border, the urgent need for ‘social work’ presented women from privileged backgrounds with the opportunity to extend their former philanthropic concerns into new areas of activity, sanctioned by the argument that they were acting in the interests of the nation and its new, needy, citizens. The Pakistan Women's Volunteer Service (PWVS) set up by Begum Liaquat Ali Khan soon after independence channelled this involvement into rehabilitation and nation-building work. Under the PWVS banner, groups of women in the Punjab, the province in West Pakistan most directly affected by the violence and dislocation of Partition, emerged from their homes and involved themselves in the day-to-day challenges of organising relief in refugee camps, collecting and distributing food, clothing, blankets, medicines and money; running and helping in clinics and hospitals; and opening and operating dispensaries, schools and what came to be known as industrial homes. One of the specific tasks that they undertook was to arrange the marriages of unattached women in refugee camps with the aim that ‘no woman left the camp single’.Footnote ⁴⁶ Whereas the Pakistan Women's National Guard (PWNG) and the Pakistan Women's Naval Reserve (PWNR), formed in January 1948 and June 1949 respectively, aimed to train their members in the basics of nursing, physical fitness and methods of defence, and were sometimes criticised for allowing women to march with their heads uncovered, the PWVS received generally good reports, largely because its social welfare work was viewed as the natural extension of a woman's domestic role.Footnote ⁴⁷ Newspapers of the time frequently praised the good deeds performed by these ‘social workers’ or ‘gallant ladies’, without whose assistance, so it was claimed, ‘the stupendous task [of recovering abducted women] could not have been successfully tackled by the authorities’.Footnote ⁴⁸

However, that this female activism was not completely accepted—or given the backing that these women expected—was highlighted by the formation of APWA on 22 January 1949, in large part, as Jalal has suggested, as a ‘protest’ against the exclusion of women from the inner circles of Muslim League party organisation.Footnote ⁴⁹ It may have become permissible for respectable women to participate in relief work. It was less acceptable for them to take on a more overtly political role. All the same, APWA's ‘Life President’, Begum Liaquat Ali Khan repeatedly stressed that the primary duty of Pakistani women was,

The resolutions passed at APWA's first meeting called for free and compulsory primary education for women; a women's bureau to collect statistics on working women; maternity and child welfare centres; a college for nurses and a prohibition on children begging. More generally, the meeting made it clear that Pakistani women, in their different ways, were expected by APWA to ‘fight till the end’ to defend Pakistan's interests. On the one hand, the status of women had to be enhanced if Pakistan was going to be able to claim to be a modern Muslim state. On the other hand, women's rights clearly had to be articulated in such a way that would not undermine the ‘Muslim-ness’, or Islamic identity, of the new state, since this was after all the basis on which its creation had been supported and sanctioned.

There is little question, as suggested earlier, that APWA represented narrow class interests. Begum Liaquat Ali Khan after all was the wife of Pakistan's then prime minister, and, until her husband's assassination in 1951, APWA's national committees regularly met in their family residence in Karachi.Footnote ⁵¹ The close ties between APWA and the state were also reflected in its organisational framework which developed into what was almost a parallel bureaucratic structure of officers and organs: that is, namely, Patron, Founder Life President, Governing Body, National Chairman, Chairman of the National Executive Committee, National Executive Committee, Regional Units, Overseas APWA Units and Affiliated Bodies. The Patron, for instance, had to be the wife of the head of state, or the head of state himself could be invited to assume this honorary position. Similarly, the governor of each of Pakistan's provinces became APWA's local patron, while the wives of the chief administrators in each district nearly always were honorary chiefs at the grass roots level.Footnote ⁵²

Thus, while APWA was not an official organisation, the extremely close links that it possessed with governments of the day affected how it interacted with the state and what it interpreted its duties to be. Throughout this early, transitional period, Begum Liaquat Ali Khan consistently stressed APWA's national responsibilities. For her, it was women who could do the most to make or break a nation. Taking advantage of opportunities such as that provided by the annual commemoration of Jinnah's death, APWA would hold meetings at which appeals were made to the women of Pakistan to create ‘faith, unity and discipline’ among their ranks, and to be ready always to serve the country.Footnote ⁵³ APWA's authority, however, did not go completely unchallenged. Jinnah's sister, Miss Fatima Jinnah, often referred to as Madar-i Millat (Mother of the Nation), maintained a more than discreet distance from the Association, and concentrated instead on acting as the country's conscience when its rulers seemed to be deviating from what she regarded as her brother's vision, for instance rallying people during times of crisis (such as when flooding periodically hit East Pakistan or the Punjab) and heading up Pakistan's girl guide movement.Footnote ⁵⁴ From the outset, hers was a more overtly confrontational stance, and she was prepared to berate politicians in ways that APWA's leaders were generally loath to do.Footnote ⁵⁵ APWA's activities also generated opposition from among more orthodox or conservative Pakistanis. Just because APWA's members operated with the blessing of the state did not protect them from being criticised harshly for the challenge symbolised by them to perceptions of correct moral behaviour:

Challenging Purdah

Much debate during Pakistan's early years, thus, centred on the question of the appropriate public role for women in this new Muslim state. Initially, it was the practice of purdah that fell under the spotlight, in particular whether or not it was the correct ‘patriotic’ practice for women to follow. As one columnist in Dawn made it clear in January 1948, Pakistan's creation had raised complex and perplexing questions for women:

The arguments presented here by Zaibunissa Hamidullah, who became a regular contributor to Dawn writing frequently during the early 1950s under the by-line of ‘Thru’ a Woman's Eyes’, underlined some of the complications involved in the debate.Footnote ⁵⁸ As her columns made clear, the practice of purdah was under attack as ‘unpatriotic’, but the fact remained that women were still expected to monitor their own behaviour so that they did not compromise their moral—that is Muslim—credentials in pursuit of a more active—public—lifestyle.

Indeed, throughout the years following the creation of Pakistan, a great deal of heartfelt discussion took place on the pages of newspapers such as Dawn on how to overcome the restrictions that purdah placed on women's activities, while at the same time ensuring that they would be able to preserve their respectability. In a lengthy article published in Dawn in September 1951, for instance, the female contributor in question, Masudah Jawad, wrote in response to what she perceived as a critical American report on Pakistani women's ‘enclosed lives’. Instead she emphasised ‘the achievements of our women’ who ‘do not just live in closed houses!’:

Not surprisingly, since Dawn was a newspaper with many close links to the new political and bureaucratic establishment, Jawad praised the sterling role taken by the Pakistani government to enhance female education. Yet, despite having boasted enthusiastically about the range of public roles that were now being undertaken by women, she still felt it necessary to conclude with the following comments:

The public airing of these kinds of opinions in Dawn underlined how far Pakistani women (like those in other parts of the world where nationalist struggles had produced new nation-states) carried a double burden: they were expected to be dutiful, energetic citizens of the new state to which they now belonged at the same time as remaining true to their womanly and religious responsibilities.

Dawn's letter pages allowed for discussion to take place between its readers (or at least this was ostensibly the case—the identity of those who wrote in anonymously cannot be verified). Again in 1951, for instance, the wearing of the burqa came under the spotlight, with an anonymous ‘Begum’ arguing that the Quran did not require of women the kind of covering that burqas provided: in her view,

She went on to criticise the ‘few idle women who have taken a fancy to wearing burqas for fashion's sake to cause attraction by putting on a thin muslin piece to make their faces look more pretty than ever’. More seriously perhaps, she asked why women had to suffer in agony wearing the burqa ‘on account of the weakness of certain men who think that unveiled women are a source of temptation to them and put forward baseless arguments that purdah alone checks immorality and maintains chastity’. Instead, she called on women to give up purdah in order to ‘freely help our state in these days of trial, by doing all the jobs they possibly can to help to save the country from outside attack’.Footnote ⁶¹ Personal well-being combined with the security of the state to make purdah a thing of the past.

Such letters as these plugged away repeatedly during this period at making connections between, on the one hand, a more active, less physically restricted, role for women outside the home and, on the other hand, the needs of the nation. It was the latter that, to a great extent, were deployed to legitimise the former. In another contribution to the burqa debate, a Mrs Shireen Mirza from Karachi, had the following points to make:

In late October 1951, the Prime Minister, Liaquat Ali Khan, was assassinated. This national loss was keenly felt by many female activists associated with APWA because of their close personal connections with his wife, their ‘leader’. Their identification with her personal sorrow was reflected in a collective grieving process, in which many participated, both physically by attending mourning ceremonies at her home and symbolically by what they had to say on the pages of sympathetic publications such as Dawn. In her ‘Thru’ a Woman's Eyes’ column that described in some detail the female mourners who assembled at Begum Liaquat Ali Khan's home, Zaibunissa Hamidullah referred repeatedly to the Begum's manner. Stoical and calm, courageous and admirably composed in her grief, Hamidullah painted a portrait of the Begum as a woman of whom the nation—and Islam—could be proud. In other words, she symbolised the extent to which all Pakistani women needed to be prepared to make sacrifices on behalf of their country—their sacrifices might be somewhat different to those of men, but they were required all the same.Footnote ⁶³ Begum Liaquat Ali Khan herself reinforced this image by the press statements that she issued at this time, in which she vowed to devote herself to the service of her nation with even greater vigour and determination, and called on other women likewise to redouble their efforts in the field of social work.Footnote ⁶⁴

Women as Citizens

The call for Pakistani women to widen their public horizons, however, was not limited to social issues or individual mobility. What is interesting is how over the period from the late 1940s into the early 1950s, it gradually extended into the more overtly political sphere as well, where it became closely linked to wider debates that were taking place on the subject of citizenship. Although it took until 1956 for Pakistan to put together its first constitution, it was generally taken for granted that Pakistani women would receive the vote—universal adult franchise was assumed to be an integral part of Pakistan's new political framework—so, unlike other places in the world, where there was no automatic guarantee that women would receive the right to vote when independence took place, Pakistani women did not need to agitate in order to acquire this specific and very fundamental aspect of citizenship. Instead, what became increasingly important to female activists during the early 1950s was to ensure that women would be empowered to participate on the same political terms as men: as equal citizens, they had to be part of the same political equation as men. In particular, concern centred on the number of women in the Constituent Assembly that was functioning as the de facto national legislature as well as the body charged with producing a constitution for the new state.Footnote ⁶⁵

By the early 1950s, while the provincial legislative assemblies contained a handful of women, there were only two female members of the Constituent Assembly, namely Begum Jahanara Shahnawaz and Begum Shaista Ikramullah. Both women, belonging to well-established political families, had been politically active before 1947.Footnote ⁶⁶ They had then proceeded to lobby vigorously after independence to secure the 1948 Shariat Bill that represented at least a symbolic achievement with its recognition of women's right to inherit property including agricultural lands. But while the bill came into effect in 1951, its impact in practice was limited by efforts to circumvent its provisions made by those whose interests it adversely affected.Footnote ⁶⁷ Anyway, by 1951, as discussion in the Assembly over future constitutional arrangements gathered pace, including the question of restructuring the political balance between East and West Pakistan, the paucity of female involvement at the highest level within the country's political decision-making process had become untenable for an increasing proportion of female activists. As a letter to Dawn from Begum Soghra Raza reflected, there was growing impatience for greater female representation at this level:

Accordingly, she called on the Central Parliamentary Board of the Pakistan Muslim League to select at least one suitable ‘lady candidate’ for what were then six vacant Constituent Assembly seats.Footnote ⁶⁸ But her pleas fell on deaf ears, and by the time that the Assembly was dismissed in October 1954 there had been no increase in its female membership.

1954, however, proved to be a significant year as far as discussions about connections between women and citizenship were concerned. The unsettled political atmosphere created by discussions over the constitution and the holding of elections in East Pakistan in the spring raised dilemmas for APWA and its policy of distancing itself deliberately from overt political activity. Hence, Begum Aminullah, wife of the Punjab Governor and APWA member, in her speech to the Purdah Club in Lahore in February 1954 tried to re-assert that the Association was most definitely not a political organisation: its primary sphere of interest remained, improving the circumstances of women and children. Yet, ‘though politics was not their field’, she considered it ‘imperative’ that women clearly understood the meaning of democracy and exercised their right to vote ‘properly’. She conceded that it had now become APWA's responsibility to bring home to women their duties as ‘good citizens’, and arouse in them ‘a real political consciousness’.Footnote ⁶⁹ ‘Good citizenship’ was the objective similarly stressed by Begum Liaquat Ali Khan at a large gathering of women organised by the Karachi branch of APWA as part of its ‘Founder's Week’ programme later the same month. Women, she argued on this occasion, had an important part to play in making citizenship an active, efficient and dynamic force, not just a remote, ill-understood or passive ideal.Footnote ⁷⁰ Likewise, APWA's annual conference held in Sukkur (Sindh), again in February, stressed the need to cultivate what it termed ‘responsible citizenship’ among the nation's womenfolk, and it urged the Pakistani authorities to bring in experts from abroad to train a cadre of women in leadership to work in the field of not just social but political rights as well. Indeed, it could be argued that the Sukkur meeting marked the beginning of efforts to expand APWA's work from its emergency beginnings to the more enduring task of building up ‘an active and intelligent public opinion on the side of a better life and a better nation’.Footnote ⁷¹

To many of those who participated in these debates of the mid-1950s, it was very important that Pakistani women, as equal citizens, should enjoy the same rights as Pakistani men. Just as custom and social conservatism were believed to prevent them from playing a full part in the political life of the nation, so these same factors were blamed for undermining the position of women in other ways. It was precisely in this context that disquiet had already surfaced among some female activists over the question of polygamous marriages well before Bogra's marital faux pas hit the headlines. Not surprisingly, however, they presented their arguments on the subject primarily in terms of what would be best for the nation.

In February 1954, in an open letter to the prime minister (by then Bogra), leading APWA organiser, Begum Anwar Ghulam Ahmed spelt out in no uncertain terms what she regarded as the long-overdue need for reforming marriage laws. Despite more women entering the professions, marriage continued to be their generally accepted career ‘option’, and so, according to her, the gravest danger to the well-being of the Pakistani home, and by extension the nation, was the ‘unintelligent operation’ of existing marriage laws:

Since, in Begum Ghulam Ahmed's view, the security of the home had to be preserved for the nation to develop and prosper, she urged the government to set up a commission, comprising eminent jurists as well as women's representatives, to produce recommendations on the reform of Muslim personal laws.Footnote ⁷²

The same kind of argument, albeit delivered in a more spirited way, appeared on the pages of Dawn at the end of 1954 in response to the call by a female member of the Punjab Legislative Assembly for a bill that would require judicial consent before a man could be allowed to contract a polygamous union.Footnote ⁷³ Under her ‘Thru’ a Woman's Eyes’ by-line, Zaibunissa Hamidullah proceeded to highlight the extremely strict conditions demanded by Islam before a man was allowed to put into practice what she described as ‘his polygamous instincts’. In Pakistan, however, it had become more

What was called for, she argued, was not any change to the laws of Islam, nor their discarding, but rather their full enforcement: if a man was to marry a second wife, it had to be done properly, and be vetted by a board of mullahs, with a court of appeal to which first wives might turn for support. Interestingly, Hamidullah refrained from placing all the blame for plural marriages on men alone. Women also had to take responsibility for the problem, particularly those second wives who considered themselves as progressive, educated and enlightened, and who as a consequence were, in her view, even worse than their polygamous husbands.Footnote ⁷⁴ As she reminded her readers, citizenship was not only about rights, but about exercising responsibility too. Women had to make it

Towards the end of 1954, APWA as an organisation was drawn more directly into the discussion over polygamy when its ‘Status of Women’ Committee, concerned by an apparent rise in the number of second marriages, called for drastic revision to the country's marriage laws. Pressure to reform Pakistan's marriage laws received a further boost when the Egyptian female activist Duriya Shafiq paid a short visit to Karachi in January 1955. During her stay, during which she met APWA members as well as Fatima Jinnah, she called for the complete prohibition of polygamy, describing it as a traditional practice that had nothing to do with religion: asserting the close links between women and the nation, she underlined that it was only ‘when women are free, the freedom of a country is ascertained’.Footnote ⁷⁶

Shaista Ikramullah (by now an ex-Constituent Assembly member) took up the issue herself not long after. Describing the increase in second marriages as an ‘epidemic’, she called for public opinion to turn against polygamy backed by legal measures to reduce the suffering of first wives. In her view, the establishment of Pakistan had had a lot to do with the current problems. It had brought about a rapid rise in social position for many men, who consequently felt that their existing wives were not suited to playing the role demanded of them by their husbands’ new positions. Hence, it had become ‘incumbent to have a new wife to go with the rest of their newly-acquired possessions’. It was not just second marriages that worried her, however. She was also concerned about the increase in the number of divorces taking place, and called for amendments to existing divorce laws in order to make it less easy for men to rid themselves of unwanted wives. None of this reform, she emphasised, was against Islam. Rather it was absolutely in accordance with it. As Ikramullah asked,

APWA itself next addressed the question of the status of women, including the specific problems posed by polygamy, at a conference that it organised in Karachi in February 1955. Although it expressed satisfaction that women in Pakistan enjoyed equal rights to men in the political field (at least as far as the franchise was concerned), it advised women to exercise their voting rights in such a way that ‘really deserving’ people were elected. It also called on the government to ensure that marital disputes in courts were resolved more quickly. While it acknowledged that the status of women derived from a combination of both written laws and unwritten, but equally binding, rules of custom, usage and convention, it blamed the latter for the comparatively low status of Pakistani women. However, with a female literacy rate of only four percent, however well-placed women were, legally-speaking they were bound to remain ignorant of their rights. Hence, the meeting demanded further educational provision for girls, including free schooling up to matriculation irrespective of family income.Footnote ⁷⁸

But the focus on polygamy that took place at this conference exposed the extent to which there were already noticeable differences of opinion within APWA ranks before reactions to Bogra's second marriage underlined them still further. A speech delivered by Begum Asif Islam on its second day, for instance, argued that the most effective and lasting safeguard of women's rights lay not in banning polygamy but rather in inculcating a true Islamic spirit and fear of God. Mothers had to mould the outlook of their children along these lines. In this way, not only would the evils of polygamy be rooted out, but other corrupt practices that had become rampant would be eradicated.Footnote ⁷⁹ Begum Islam also included a plea for special treatment of the problem in East Pakistan where she claimed that there was an excess of women as compared with men. Not all the delegates agreed with her on this. Indeed, as some noted, the 1951 census figures had revealed a shortfall of women (1101 men for every 1000 women), and so Begum Islam was accused of seeking to justify polygamy in the eastern wing of the country. Instead, her critics pointed out, if ‘happy homes were to be built for the growth of a healthy nation’, and ‘if reform [was] sincerely desired’, then polygamy had to be prevented by law, ‘otherwise the colossal misuses by men will not be reduced or removed’.Footnote ⁸⁰ Another delegate, Begum Rashida Hamid, similarly argued that although the Quran allowed polygamy under exceptional circumstances, it was now necessary to ban it legally because of the way it was disrupting many formerly happy homes.Footnote ⁸¹ Only with a drastic revision of the country's marriage legislation, would women be able to ‘play their part in the national life . . . shoulder to shoulder with their menfolk’.Footnote ⁸²

Thus, it was against this background of animated discussion centring on polygamy within the wider context of establishing and enhancing women's rights as ‘Pakistani citizens’ that Bogra's second marriage took place. And while the outcry against Bogra's actions died down to some extent following the meeting between the prime minister and the League for the Rights of Women and his promise to set up a commission of enquiry, the controversy over the broader question of citizenship did not go away. The dissolution of the first Constituent Assembly that, as mentioned earlier, had taken place in October 1954 meant that a new body had to be formed to take its place. This in turn renewed attention on the extent of female representation among its members.Footnote ⁸³ Shortly before the marriage furore, in March 1955, a meeting of various women's organisations in Karachi, held under the auspices of the Karachi Khawateen Muslim League, had called for women to be given separate representation in any forthcoming constitutional commission.Footnote ⁸⁴ But in June 1955, when members were selected for what was initially intended to be the new ‘constituent convention’ but which later reassumed the name of ‘Constituent Assembly’, not a single woman was returned from any of the electoral colleges involved in this process.Footnote ⁸⁵ Female involvement in the national body charged with finally producing Pakistan's long-awaited constitution thus plummeted from a meagre two in 1954 to zero the following year.

The Muslim League's Khawateen Sub-Committee lost little time in signalling its obvious disappointment:

Begum Liaquat Ali Khan cabled the Governor-General, Ghulam Muhammad, from The Hague. While she took pains to emphasise that she was not criticising her government, she expressed profound shock at the omission of women from Pakistan's re-formed constitution-making body. The Governor-General, as APWA's patron, was the only person, she believed, who could constitutionally do anything to rectify the situation.Footnote ⁸⁷ Echoing her leader's arguments, Begum Akhtar Hussain from Karachi highlighted the problem for more public consumption,

A range of women's organisations added their voices to the criticism of the government. The Executive Committee of the League for the Rights of Women expressed its ‘deep regret’ at the absence of female representatives: Begum Abdul Hafiz, General Secretary of the Women's Refugee Rehabilitation Committee, appealed to the new members of the Constituent Assembly to elect two female members (one representing East Pakistan, one representing West Pakistan): Begum Najma Jafari, convenor of the Anjuman-i Tahafuuz Huqooq-i Niswan, deplored in even stronger terms women's non-representation, and urged women of the country to come forward to fight for their democratic rights: the Professional and Business Women's Club likewise called for special provisions to ensure that women took their place in the Assembly.Footnote ⁸⁹ A gathering of the representatives of women's organisations that was brought together in Karachi by Begum Haroon, APWA's acting President, cited Jinnah—‘let it not be said that women have lagged behind and failed to do their duty'—in support of its demand that the government rectify its error.Footnote ⁹⁰

Discussion about the role of women in the second Constituent Assembly, together with developments that were taking place in relation to the actual drafting of the constitution, stimulated further demands for any forthcoming arrangements to address their needs specifically. Accordingly, a meeting of the ‘Women's Rights Committee’ that was held in Lahore in August called for 15 per cent representation for women in provincial assemblies and 10 per cent in the national Parliament. Its 10-point memorandum to Constituent Assembly members emphasised the importance of Pakistani women not suffering from any inequality within the proposed constitution. Instead, they should be given the right to vote, and participate, in all elections in ways that allowed them an equal footing with men. It also pleaded for the introduction of all internationally-accepted facilities for women workers, and that ‘the fair sex’ be given their proper share at all levels within the (proposed) One Unit set-up.Footnote ⁹¹

By the autumn of 1955, the political situation in Pakistan had moved on still further. Political manoeuvring, accelerated by Ghulam Muhammad's replacement as Governor-General by Iskander Mirza, had resulted in a Muslim League-United Front coalition assuming office and Bogra's replacement by Chaudhri Muhammad Ali.Footnote ⁹² Sufficient votes were then mustered in the Constituent Assembly to bring about the merger of the provinces of West Pakistan into ‘One Unit’ on 14 October.Footnote ⁹³ Now that the central government had resolved this ‘provincial’ issue to its satisfaction, the focus shifted to the actual content of the proposed constitution. Women's groups lobbied hard, even if it felt at times fruitlessly. As one activist later explained, their protest was just as much about protecting the rights that women already possessed as obtaining new ones: in Begum Jalil Asghar's words,

In late October, a 12-member delegation representing the ‘United Front of Women for Freedom and Protection of the People's Rights’, led by the veteran activist (and former President of the Muslim League's Women's Committee), Fatimah Begum, now President of the Binat-i Islam (established in 1952), submitted a six-part memorandum, or ‘Manifesto and Charter of Women's Rights’, to I.I. Chundrigah, the Central Minister of Law, for inclusion in the country's future constitution:

1. 1. All citizens without any discrimination of sex should be eligible for public posts and offices on the basis of merit and qualifications;

   1. a. No privileges for anyone on the basis of birth, relationship, sex, social affinities, wealth, political ideals and religious beliefs;

   2. b. All exceptional provisions in respect of the admission of women to the superior services of Government and to the diplomatic cadre must be abolished; salaries should be on the basis of merit and qualifications;

   3. c. Equal pay for equal work;

2. 2. The nomination or selection of women delegates for various delegations to the United Nations must be made purely on merit;

3. 3. More provision for seats for women in the legislative assemblies;

4. 4. Free and fair elections so that the electorate has the chance to elect true representatives to Parliament and the Central Assemblies;

5. 5. Wives of high government officials, whose husbands are entrusted with overall administration of a particular territory or unit or district, must be disqualified and declared ineligible for elections to the Legislative Assemblies or Parliament, with a view to

   1. a. Enabling people to elect their true representative;

   2. b. Avoiding undue influence or duress of officials;

   3. c. Seeing that government officials remain aloof from politics and do not identify themselves with any political party, even indirectly, in the elections;

   4. d. That candidates for elections should have residential qualifications in the constituency from where he/she is contesting the election to ensure that the candidate is the true representative of the people there;

6. 6. Separate divorce and juvenile courts should be established in the country.Footnote ⁹⁵

While this list integrated the demand for more seats for women, as well as the reform of the legal system in relation to family issues, it also pointed to divisions among women themselves. Its explicit condemnation of women who were personally connected with men in positions of power, together with the implication that they took advantage of this in ways that privileged them unfairly, for one, revealed a tangible level of frustration with organisations, such as APWA, whose leading members fell firmly into this category.

The following months witnessed intense lobbying on the part of female activists. By now there were six female members elected unopposed to the newly-formed West Pakistan Assembly, but there was still no female representation in the Constituent Assembly itself.Footnote ⁹⁶ Addressing the question as to whether or not 1956 would be ‘A happier new year for women?’, a Pakistan Times article at the beginning of January suggested that the need for an independent party for women was greater than ever. Rather than operating as the appendage of existing parties, such as the Muslim League or the Awami League, what women urgently required was a separate political organisation of their own that would be prepared to struggle for the full realisation of their basic rights. APWA, in this particular (anonymous) correspondent's view, was not up to the task. A semi-official body, run for the most part by the wives of bureaucrats, lacked both the necessary independence and intent:

But while this contributor urged a separate political voice for women, she (or perhaps he?) categorically rejected separate electorates: under no circumstances would these ever be acceptable to the women of Pakistan since their impact would only be to marginalise them in political terms.Footnote ⁹⁷

By 9 January 1956, the second Constituent Assembly, minus any direct female involvement, had finished drafting Pakistan's constitution. Once its contents became known, women activists were quick to criticise them. Begum Shahnawaz, for one, was ‘surprised and pained that certain basic rights for women [had] either been left out or nullified by [its] provisos’. Ending discrimination on the grounds of sex had found no place in the constitution. Nor had equal pay for equal work been mentioned. Accordingly, she called on ‘all the prominent women workers and women's organisations to protest strongly against these omissions’.Footnote ⁹⁸

During the last week of January, a large number of women representing a variety of organisations gathered in Lahore to discuss their constitutional rights. Resolutions passed there exposed just how far they were conscious of the limitations of the draft constitution from the point of view of how it promoted (or failed to promote) women's rights.Footnote ⁹⁹ They also appealed explicitly to the members of the Constituent Assembly whose job it was, they pointed out, to represent both sexes equally, to ensure that Pakistani women secured basic rights of equality with men.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ Article 5, for instance, which talked about all citizens being equal before the law, was not specific enough in their view, and should have incorporated a direct reference to sexual discrimination. Article 43, which dealt with the composition of the future National Assembly, similarly came under fire. According to the wording of this section, ‘for a period of ten years from Constitution Day, ten seats in addition to those specified in clause 1—five from West Pakistan and five from East Pakistan—shall be provided in the National Assembly for women who shall be elected from women's territorial constituencies delimited for this purpose’. But in the eyes of its female critics, it was not sufficiently clear as to whether women would vote for the 300 seats not earmarked specifically for them, or whether, and if so for how long, their representation would be confined to just those 10 female seats. Until and unless this point was clarified, the provisions of this Article, it was feared, would remain vague and might be subsequently interpreted either way.Footnote ¹⁰¹

On 2 March 1956 the new constitution that declared Pakistan to be an ‘Islamic Republic’ was given its assent by the Governor-General, and three weeks later, on 23 March (Republic Day), it came into force. The Constituent Assembly accordingly re-organised itself into the country's new legislative body, or National Assembly, thus averting any immediate need for a general election in which women alongside men could have voted. Female activists associated with the Pakistan Federation of Women's Rights expressed their disappointment openly. While women had obtained full voting rights, they had also been allocated the reserved seats for which they had not been calling. After all, it reminded politicians, they had not demanded special privileges, only women's fundamental rights as ‘workers, housewives and citizens’, but it did not seem that their pleas had been heeded:

As this quote reveals, by the time that the new constitution was finally enacted, the thrust of the rationale being put forward in support of equality—and reform—was a complicated one. Full citizenship rights remained uppermost on the agenda, but, according to these female activists now, the Charter that they had submitted the previous October had always recognised ‘women's primary duty’ to lie in the home: hence, its demand that the rights of mothers ought to be ‘safeguarded by placing the family under the special protection of the state, to ensure happiness of the home and the welfare of future generations’.Footnote ¹⁰³

In addition, it was not just male legislators who were viewed with scepticism. The six existing female custodians of women's rights within the West Pakistan Assembly were accused of having betrayed the trust placed in them by the ordinary women whom they represented. Instead of attending to their responsibilities, they, like most other members of the assembly, had been too ‘busy with thoughts of changing seats and swopping loyalties’ or caring only for their immediate personal interests:

Palpable irritation existed with those female MPAs whose elite connections meant that they were not prepared to prioritise women's issues ahead of their other interests. Indeed, the Pakistan Federation of Women's Rights had deliberately barred its office-bearers from belonging to any of the political parties precisely in order to avoid this kind of clash of competing loyalties.Footnote ¹⁰⁵

By June 1956, however, it had become clear that women's organisations such as the Federation were not going to get the kind of reform for which they were lobbying, neither in relation to female representation in the country's legislative assemblies, nor as far as any bold changes in the content of Muslim personal law were concerned. When the Rashid Commission produced its report on 23 June 1956, it did recommend that second wives were only permissible with official consent. It likewise advised the setting up of special matrimonial courts, and proposed equal rights in divorce matters for men and women alike. But the Commission, which included two women (Begum Shahnawaz and Begum Anwar Ghulam Ahmed) among its members, was unable to move as far as recommending the complete prohibition of polygamy that women's organisations, such as the Federation (though not APWA), had urged. Instead it was felt by those who gave the report a warm reception that it represented ‘a sensible first step towards a society where monogamy would be the general rule’. In this way, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan would be allowed to ‘justify its name by reverting to the original dynamic, liberal and creative spirit of Islam’.Footnote ¹⁰⁶ Pakistani women by the middle of 1956, therefore, may have acquired some improvements in terms of their legal rights when it came to marriage laws, but, in the view of a large proportion of female activists, they remained second-class citizens as far as the political role that they were empowered to play in the life of the state was concerned: for these activists, nothing symbolised their continuing subordinate status more than the 10 reserved seats that had been ‘gifted’ to women by the 1956 Constitution, which they felt had conspicuously failed to address other equally pressing issues that were disadvantaging their lives on a daily basis.Footnote ¹⁰⁷