Lifting Ismat Chughtai’s Lihaf in Search of Alternative Sexuality

Abstract

In 1942, the Imperial Court of Lahore impounded Lihaf (The Quilt). The charge was against the theme and its treatment as being a propagator of obscenity and homosexuality in established Urdu literature. The Court wanted a supplicant Ismat but instead of entreating, she and her family opted to contest the Court. However, the judge could not pluck out any specific phrase or word from the narrative to implement the verdict against Ismat and repudiate her writing. In this paper I would concentrate only on one short story of Ismat Chughtai which fetched her less renown more controversy. Lihaf (The Quilt) began, disqualifying the proscription from the parochialists, an era of probing into the territory of taboo of feminine psychosexuality of middle-class (Muslim) Indian family. To be more specific, Ismat Chughtai remains the first writer to venture upon lesbianism.