(21 August 1915–24 October 1991)
Ismat Chughtai was born on 21 August 1915 in Badayun, Uttar Pradesh to Nusrat Khanam and Mirza Qaseem Baig Chughtai; she was ninth of ten children–six brothers, four sisters. The family shifted homes frequently as Chughtai's father was a civil servant; she spent her childhood in cities includingJodhpur, Agra, and Aligarh, mostly in the company of her brothers as her sisters had gotten married while she was still very young. Chughtai described the influence of her brothers as an important factor which influenced her personality in her formative years. She thought of her second-eldest brother, Mirza Azim Beg Chughtai, a novelist, as a mentor. The family eventually settled in Agra, after Chughtai's father retired from the Indian Civil Services.
Chughtai attained primary education from the Women's College at the Aligarh Muslim University and graduated from Isabella Thoburn College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1940.Despite strong resistance from her family, she completed her Bachelor of Education degree from the Aligarh Muslim University the following year. It was during this period that Chughtai became associated with the Progressive Writers' Association, having attended her first meeting in 1936 where she metRashid Jahan, one of the leading women writers involved with the movement, who was later credited for inspiring Chughtai to write "realistic, challenging female characters".Chughtai began writing in private around the same time, but did not seek publication for her work until much later.
was an Indian Urdu language writer. Beginning in the 1930s, she wrote on themes like female sexuality and femininity, middle-class gentility, and class conflict, often from a Marxist perspective. With a style characterised by literary realism, Chughtai established herself as a significant voice in the Urdu literature of the twentieth century, and in 1976 was awarded the Padma Shri by the Government of India.
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