Latif’s Women, Today

Sindh has a curious way of loving its women. It has sung about them for centuries, turning Marui, Sassui, Sohni, Noori, Moomal, Lilan and Sorath into cultural icons, reciting their stories at gatherings and placing them deep inside its cultural imagination. Yet outside poetry, the freedom these women represent remains painfully unfinished. Perhaps the most uncomfortable way to read Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai today is not to ask what he said about women, but what his women would make of Sindh today. Would Marui accept a life in which a woman’s choices are treated as a family’s honour? Would Sassui seek permission before beginning her journey? Would Sohni quietly accept customs standing between her and the man she loved? Nepal turns to rehabilitation as hope fades for nearly 4, 000 missing after glacier disaster Latif’s women are remarkable because they do not remain where society expects them to remain. In Shah Jo Risalo, women occupy the centre of some of its most powerful journeys. Scholarship on Latif describes Marui, Sassui and Sohni through autonomy, agency, strength and resistance to patriarchal norms. His heroines are remembered for bravery, integrity, loyalty and their willingness to stand against oppressive circumstances. Marui is offered wealth, comfort and a palace by Umar, yet refuses to exchange her identity and homeland for privilege. Her strength lies in saying no when almost everything around her tells her to say yes. Sassui is not a woman waiting at home for the hero to return. She becomes the traveller, crossing mountains and wilderness in search of Punhun. Latif gives her movement in a world where women’s movement itself could be a transgression. Kazakhstan moves ahead with construction of first nuclear power plant Sohni crosses the river at night, repeatedly risking her life for a love society does not sanction. She is not simply the object of desire; she acts upon her own desire. Noori, a fisherman’s daughter, enters royalty without becoming ashamed of where she comes from, unsettling boundaries of caste and status. Latif’s women come from different social positions, but their inner worlds matter. This is why the Seven Queens have survived. They are not memorable simply because they suffered. They are memorable because they chose. And this is where the poetry begins to expose the present. Burnham and Macron agree to scale up action on small boats In April this year, protests were held across several Sindh districts following cases of violence against women, including the alleged honour killings of Khalida Chandio and Shumaila Chandio and the reported suicide of medical student Fahmida Laghari. Activists raised concerns about karo-kari, parallel jirgas, forced marriages and other forms of violence. The same month, a Shahdadpur court sentenced Ali Bux to death for murdering his daughter Uzma in the name of so-called honour in 2022. A father, who should have been his daughter’s protector, became her killer. These are not abstract statistics. They are the lives of women who, unlike Latif’s heroines, never had the privilege of becoming metaphors. The problem also extends beyond violence. The latest Labour Force Survey shows women’s crude labour-force participation in Sindh at just 12. 8 per cent, compared with 51 per cent for men. In rural Sindh it rises to 19. 5 per cent, while in urban Sindh it falls to just 7 per cent. Eleven people sentenced to death in Vietnam drug trafficking case There is a strange distance between the woman we celebrate and the woman we permit. We celebrate Marui’s refusal, but how much room does an ordinary Sindhi woman have to refuse? We celebrate Sassui’s journey, but how much freedom does a young woman have to decide where she goes, whom she marries or what she becomes? We celebrate Sohni’s defiance, but what happens when a living woman defies her family? These questions turn Latif from a cultural ornament into a mirror. There is, of course, a danger in making him into a twenty-first-century feminist before his time. He belonged to the eighteenth century, and his poetry exists within a deeply mystical universe. His heroines are both women of folk narrative and vehicles for spiritual longing. Modern readings have also noted caste and gender hierarchies within some of these stories. Toxic wildfire haze spreads across South East Asia as ‘super’ El Niño intensifies That complexity should not be erased. But neither should the extraordinary place Latif gave women. A 2024 study of Sassui argued that her portrayal can be read as a challenge to social, psychological and legal restrictions on women. In January this year, scholars at the Larkana Arts Council again gathered to discuss Shah’s heroines. The irony is difficult to ignore: we still celebrate their courage inside literary halls while women outside continue negotiating the consequences of exercising similar courage. There has been progress. Sindh’s conviction rate in rape cases rose from 5 per cent in 2020 to 22 per cent in 2025, aided by specialised investigation units, gender-based violence courts and improved evidence collection. Yet most disposed cases still ended in acquittal and a considerable backlog remains. Progress, certainly, but not victory. Perhaps this is Latif’s enduring lesson. His women matter because they are alive: they desire, doubt, travel, rebel, suffer and choose. For centuries, Sindh has remembered these women better than it has protected many of their living counterparts. The best way to honour Marui is not merely to sing about her love for her soil, but to create a society in which a woman can choose her relationship with that soil. The best way to remember Sassui is not only to admire the woman who crossed mountains, but to ensure that today’s women can walk through their own lives without fear. Latif’s heroines may have been telling us something about Sindh all along. We simply have not listened closely enough. Danish BhuttoThe writer is an author, researcher and columnist based in Lahore. He can be reached at danishalee017@gmail. com

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