The subversive feminism of Umrao Jan Ada grew from indigenous fatigue, not Western influence

Evidence

The scandal of Rusva’s early-twentieth-century text is its proposition that since such a woman depends upon no one man, and because many men depend on her, she is the only relatively free woman in our society. He obviously did not like Nazir Ahmed’s work, but I must also emphasize that the ironic and incipient ‘feminism’ of this text is not a reflection of any Westernization. Rusva was a very traditional man, and he was simply tired of certain kinds of moral posturing. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 198

Categorization

• XREF: Complicates the common assumption that progressive gender views in colonized literatures are derivative — connects to debates about indigenous modernities.