Fragments from the body torn: Fahmida Riaz’s fearless legacy

Banned and exiled, but never silenced—Fahmida Riaz’s poetry stood against dictatorship and patriarchy.

“Amma, why do we associate women with love and heartbreak?” my 13-year-old self asked my mother, the reason I know my language.

“Because they’re very soft, and they know how to love,” she replied, braiding my hair for school. I had more questions, but she hurried us all to school before I could ask them.

But the question never left my mind. Whenever we talk about revolution, independence, politics, communism—anything that alters society—it is associated with men. All the "meaningful" art, the kind that has the potential to change society and people, is linked to male artists, while female poets are often sidelined, their work reduced to themes of love and heartbreak.

Personally, I don’t see love as a problem—I believe in it. My issue is with the limitation placed on women’s work. And so, at 13, I began searching for feminist writers. I did not fail.

Hence, this International Women's Day, I bring you the first episode of Poetry Beyond Romance, where you embark on a journey to explore poetry through my lens.

To begin with, I completely agree with my mother—women do know how to love, and they are very soft. Which is why, no matter what theme they choose for their art, they create magic. My first lesson of ambition, hope, resistance and resilience was Fahmida Riaz, whose poem ‘Kuch Log Tumhe Samjhayengey’ is my guide to life. 

Defiance, poetry, and unyielding courage

Riaz, one of the pioneers of feminist thought in Urdu poetry, was born on July 28, 1946, into a literary family from Meerut, British India. Her father, Riaz-ud-Din Ahmed, an educationist dedicated to shaping Sindh’s modern education system, passed away when she was only four. In the years that followed, it was her mother who raised her, nurturing within her a love for literature. 

From a young age, Fahmida immersed herself in Urdu and Sindhi poetry, later mastering Persian—an influence that would shape her poetic expression. She took her first steps into the literary world as a newscaster for Radio Pakistan, her voice carrying words that would one day shake the foundations of tradition.

Despite her fiery intellect, society still demanded that she conform. After graduating from college, she was persuaded into an arranged marriage and spent years in the United Kingdom with her first husband, working with BBC Urdu and earning a degree in filmmaking. 

But life had other plans. After a divorce, she returned to Pakistan, reclaiming her independence with her young daughter in tow. In her second marriage to Zafar Ali Ujan, a leftist political worker, she found not just companionship but a shared ideological fire. Together, they raised two children while navigating political resistance and personal trials.

Riaz’s poetry was never just about love—it was about defiance, survival, and the unbreakable spirit of a woman who refused to be silenced. Her personal struggles—of loss, displacement, love, and rebellion—were etched into every verse she wrote. She spoke not just of heartbreak but of revolution, not just of desire but of freedom. In a world that sought to confine women to soft whispers, her poetry roared.

Her poem ‘Kuch Log Tumhain Samjhayengey’, particularly my favorite verses, truly embodies the fighter's spirit she had.

کچھ لوگ تمہیں سمجھائیں گے

وہ تم کو خوف دلائیں گے

 

جو ہے وہ بھی کھو سکتا ہے

اس راہ میں رہزن ہیں اتنے

 

کچھ اور یہاں ہو سکتا ہے

کچھ اور تو اکثر ہوتا ہے

 

پر تم جس لمحے میں زندہ ہو

یہ لمحہ تم سے زندہ ہے

 

یہ وقت نہیں پھر آئے گا

تم اپنی کرنی کر گزرو

 

جو ہوگا دیکھا جائے گا

The Urdu word ‘Rahzan,’ roughly translated as ‘thief,’ implies that when a woman decides to pursue something, she must endure countless obstacles—whether in the form of people or intangible barriers. Women are bound by so many chains that hold them back when making decisions.

But this poem? It embodies hope, resilience, and a ‘woman-to-woman’ message—an unwavering reminder to never give up on your dreams, no matter how difficult the path may seem. 

And the best part? I'm going to take you on a journey through her life—after which, this poem will make even more sense.

A rebel in verse 

Before Riaz became a name etched in history, she was a woman who defied the boundaries imposed on her—both in life and in poetry. She worked in an advertising agency in Karachi before daring to launch Awaz, her own Urdu publication. 

But in General Zia-ul-Haq’s Pakistan, where fear was law and silence was survival, Awaz became a target. Its bold, politically charged content made the state uneasy. As punishment, Riaz and her husband, Ujan, were charged with multiple offenses. Awaz was silenced. Ujan was imprisoned.

Yet, silence was never an option for Riaz. She believed that art must remain sincere and uncompromising. “There is something sacred about art that cannot take violation,” she once said. “One should read extensively to polish expressions. I read Platts' Urdu-Hindi to the English Dictionary like a book of poems. I love words.” Words—her chosen weapon, her unwavering rebellion.

But the system had declared war on her. More than ten criminal charges were filed against her under Zia’s dictatorship, including sedition under Section 124A of the Pakistan Penal Code. The state wanted to erase her voice, but an admirer of her work bailed her out before she could be imprisoned. With her sister and two small children, she fled to India under the pretense of attending a mushaira. It was there that Amrita Pritam, her friend and a literary giant in her own right, reached out to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi to secure asylum for her. In exile, Riaz found solace in Delhi, teaching at Jamia Millia Islamia, where she also learned to read Hindi.

But exile is never just a physical displacement—it is the ache of being torn from your soil, the longing to return. For seven years, she lived away from home, her children attending school in India, her husband eventually joining them after his release from jail. Then, as history shifted, Zia-ul-Haq’s death paved the way for her return. She came back to Pakistan on the eve of Benazir Bhutto’s wedding reception, stepping onto her homeland once again—welcomed not just by friends and admirers but by the echoes of the battles she had fought.

Yet, the war against her hadn’t begun in exile. It had started years earlier, when she first dared to write. When she first dared to speak.

Zia emerged on the political scene, brandishing a version of Muslim nationalism the likes of which the country had never witnessed. In 1979, the Hudood Ordinances were enacted—laws designed to discipline women into submission, forcing them into narrowly defined ideas of morality and obedience. But Fahmida had never fit into the spaces drawn for women, and she wasn’t about to start now.

She was thirty-two then. Just five years earlier, she had published Badan Dareeda (Torn Body), a collection of poetry that shattered the silence around female desire, autonomy, and agency. And all hell had broken loose.

To men, Badan Dareeda was obscene, an attack on the so-called values of “Muslim culture”—whatever that meant to those who dictated it. But to Fahmida, it was simply her truth.

She had written it in London, where she found herself trapped in an unhappy marriage, one that had been arranged shortly after her graduation from the University of Sindh. At the time, she did not think of herself as politically conscious. She had settled into life and marriage with the quiet resignation of a passenger taking an empty seat on a moving train. But poetry has a way of awakening even the quietest of souls.

And once she had found her voice, she refused to give it up.

Poetry as resistance

Riaz’s poetry was never confined to love, romance, and heartbreak—the themes often imposed upon women poets. Her words tore through the fabric of oppression, speaking of politics, feminism, freedom, and the human condition. For her, feminism was not just an abstract ideal but a lived reality. 

“Feminism has so many interpretations. What it means for me is simply that women, like men, are complete human beings with limitless possibilities. They have to achieve social equality, much like the Dalits or the Black Americans,” she declared. 

“The discrimination is very obvious, very subtle, very cruel, and always inhuman.” She demanded a woman’s right to walk freely, to write without being branded immoral, to exist without fear.

Decades later, as intolerance grew in India, she stood once more with her poetry as her resistance. On March 8, 2014, she recited Tum bilkul hum jaisey nikley (تم بالکل ہم جیسے نکلے) at the Hum Gunahgaar Auratein (ہم گنہگار عورتیں) seminar. The poem, a mirror held up to both nations, compared the rise of Hindutva in India with the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in Pakistan. 

تم بھی کرو گے فتویٰ جاری

ہوگا کٹھن یہاں بھی جینا

 

دانتوں آ جائے گا پسینا

جیسی تیسی کٹا کرے گی

 

یہاں بھی سب کی سانس گھٹے گی

بھاڑ میں جائے شکشا وکشا

 

اب جاہل پن کے گن گانا

آگے گڑھا ہے یہ مت دیکھو

 

واپس لاؤ گیا زمانہ

Safe to say, many of the brave decisions I’ve made in my life—including becoming a journalist in a country riddled with censorship, where I am often unable to say what I truly want—stem from Riaz’s poetry. She refused to bow to decaying norms and held her head high.

She was the true embodiment of how women, when they escape confined cages, can achieve wonders and bring about the change the world once told them they couldn't. ‘Women will conquer the world, and they’ll do it with all the sensitivity and love they contain,’ my 25-year-old self recently told my mother.