Faizunnesa Choudhurani

Nawab Begum Faizunnesa Choudhurani (1834–1903) was zamindar of the Homnabad-Pashchimgaon Estate in present-day Comilla District, Bangladesh, and is most famous for her campaign for female education and other social issues. ¹ In appreciation of her social work, in 1889 Queen Victoria awarded her the title of "Nawab", making her the first female Nawab in South Asia. ^{1 2}

She was born in 1834 in the village of Pashchimgaon under Laksam in the Tipperah District of the Bengal Presidency, the eldest daughter of Khan Bahadur Ahmed Ali Chowdhury, zamindar of Homnabad-Pashchimgaon, and Arfannessa Chowdhurani. ^{1 2} Raised in a conservative Muslim family whose women kept strict purdah, she received no formal education but educated herself in her library in her leisure time, becoming proficient in Bangla and Sanskrit as well as Arabic and Urdu according to Banglapedia; the English article's prose lists Arabic, Persian, Sanskrit and Bengali. ^{2 1}

In 1860 she was married to a distant cousin and neighbouring zamindar, Muhammad Gazi, as his second wife; the marriage did not work, and after mothering two daughters, Arshadunnesa and Badrunnesa, she separated from him and returned to live with her paternal family. ^{1 2}

After her mother's death in 1883 she inherited her property and became zamindar of Pashchimgaon, and became increasingly involved in social and charitable work. ^{1 2} Already in 1873 she had established a girls' high school in Comilla, said to be one of the earliest female schools privately established in Bengal and now the Nawab Faizunnesa Government Girls' High School. ^{2 1}

She also founded a school at Pashchimgaon — Banglapedia specifies a madrasah — that was later upgraded to a college named Nawab Faizunnesa College. ^{2 1} In 1893 she established a charitable dispensary in her village for women in purdah, particularly disadvantaged women, and built a hospital for women, the Faizunnesa Zenana Hospital, in Comilla; in addition she built mosques and contributed towards the development of roads and ponds. ^{2 1} She patronised different newspapers and periodicals, including Bandhab, Dhaka Prakash, Musalman Bandhu, Sudhakar and Islam Pracharak. ²

In 1894 she performed hajj and is said to have founded a madrasah and an inn (musafirkhana) at Makkah. ² Before her death she gave away a large portion of her landed property to provide scholarships for needy students — a waqf fund that still continues to provide financial aid to students — and the English article says she donated her entire property to the nation before her death in 1903. ^{2 1}

Her educational and literary work belonged to the post-1857 era, when Muslims in India were at the nadir of deprivation and discrimination, and she embarked on establishing schools for women in that cultural context. ¹ Her Rupjalal, published from Dhaka in 1876, is a semi-autobiographical allegory written in part prose and part poetry which, in Banglapedia's account, depicts the social condition of Muslim society in the nineteenth century and describes her troubled conjugal life; Banglapedia's separate entry on the work calls it the first full-length literary piece penned by a Bengali Muslim woman. ^{2 1}

Her other literary pieces are Sangitsar and Sangitlahari in Banglapedia's list, to which the English article adds Tattwa O Jatiya Sangeet. ^{2 1} She cultivated Bangla at a time when it was not normally practised by upper-class Muslims. ²

This section sets out positions as reported in the sources. It is not a verdict by the museum.

The English article, following Fayeza S. Hasanat's edition and translation of Rupjalal, reads the work metaphorically as an attempt to rescue her community from despair by portraying a Muslim hero and so giving hope and confidence, and reports Sonia Nishat Amin's view of Rupjalal's publication year as a significant marker in the history of Bengali Muslim women's literary practice. ¹ Neither source names a school for her: the English article's infobox records no religion and Banglapedia names none, so the faith field in her data record remains unknown. ^{1 2}

She died in 1903 in her own village and was buried in the family graveyard there. ² She was awarded the posthumous Ekushey Padak for 2004. ² Her name survives in the girls' high school she founded at Comilla and in the college at Pashchimgaon. ^{1 2}

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