Begum Editor Nurjahan no more

Staff Correspondent: Nurjahan Begum, pioneering Bengali woman journalist and editor of the country`s first illustrated women`s weekly ‘Begum, has died.

She died in the capital’s Square Hospital on Monday morning. She was 91 years.

Nurjahan Begum who was admitted to the Square Hospital on May 5 with respiratory problems, including pneumonia, and later she was shifted to the hospital’s intensive care unit  as her condition deteriorated.

Nurjahan earned repute as the pioneering woman journalist as she edited the weekly “Begum” for over six decades as a mouthpiece of Bengali women.

The magazine mainly carried write-ups of women as part of its motto to promote the backward Muslim womenfolk.

 

Born on June 4, 1925, she is a daughter of prominent journalist Mohammad Nasiruddin, editor of Bangla literary journal Saogat and awarded the Ekushey Padak in 2011. Saogat, also called Saugat, (meaning Presentation) was a leading Bengali literary journal, first published in Kolkata in 1918.

The weekly Begum was first published in Kolkata on July 20, 1947, when India was ready to attain freedom from the British colonial rule. Many Hindu women, at the time, were involved in the struggle for freedom, where Muslim women were kept behind doors. But even at a time like that there were some Muslim women who were pioneering the feminist movement, like Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain, who consistently wrote about women`s education and worked tirelessly for it.

 

The first editor of the magazine was Begum Sufia Kamal, while the founder was Mohammad Nasiruddin. Subsequently, the journal was edited by his daughter Nurjahan Begum.

Risingbd/DHAKA/May 23, 2016/Mukul