ROKEYA SAKHAWAT HOSSAIN AND WORLD LITERATURE: A CRITICAL LOOK AT SULTANA’S DREAM

The literature of any country has its own appeal in today’s world of Comparative Literature. To be recognised as a product of world literature brings recognition for most writers in the present day. For Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain, a colonised Muslim Indian woman in the late-nineteenth and early- twentieth century India, it would have been a colossal task to reach a global audience with her futuristic writings. Sultana’s Dream is a feminist utopian science fiction written by Rokeya, which provides an insight into the power of imagination of a fearless author ahead of her time. This paper argues that along with her other works, Sultana’s Dream places Rokeya in the map of Comparative Literature while her practice of translation and her modern world view about women’s emancipation earns her a position in World literature. Rokeya in her lifetime could not become part of the core or the European literary circle since she belonged to the periphery. Today the translation of Sultana’s Dream can mean her work has an opportunity to transcend local literary boundaries and move to a much larger global audience. Keywords: Muslim women, core and periphery, modernity, world literature, translation, local and global