Women and Identity in Chand Grehan

In Chand Grehan especially with respect to women we see that identity is extremely important and very contextual. In fact we can see that all the women in the drama are engaged in a struggle between competing identities, the culmination of which is that each is forced to choose one identity at the expense of another.

For example, Sheher Bano’s biggest dilemma is her inability to conform to her class. Her association with and love for Nasir, a middle class journalist, helps her to see the world from a different perspective. Thus, she contends with the feudalistic views of her father in several ways and is constantly reproached by him in words such as “yeh middle class soch tum ne uss se seekhi hai.” At first Sheher Bano gives in to the pressure of her feudalistic background by marrying Amjad, a marriage arranged by her father in order to make a political alliance with the bureaucrat Babar Sahab. Later, when questioned by Amjad in a fit of rage that why she did not refuse to marry him at the time of their nikah, Sheher Bano replies that it was a moment of weakness for her and she was suffering for it ever since.  Here we see that Sheher Bano acknowledges giving in to the pressure of the wishes of her feudalistic father and sees it as her weakness. As the play progresses we see that her mindset is increasingly being inclined towards the middle class identity that she admires and wants. When Gul Bahar’s son is kidnapped, Sheher Bano says that she is ready to give up her claims of inheritance in order to get him back. In the end, when Sheher Bano marries Nasir we see her making an explicit choice where she clearly chooses the middle class identity over the aristocratic, feudalistic one.

Next we have the example of Gul Bahar, whose dilemma is between her identity as a “kothi wali” and “Laal Hussain Shah’s bivi”. In the first half of the drama she openly negates her association with the kothi and lives in perpetual fear of this ghost rising from her past. She associates herself with Laal Hussain so that she may get izzat, but soon realizes that she is not really getting  the izzat that she expected from the identity of being Laal Hussain’s bivi. She says to Sheher Bano,

“Iss tarhan tu udher bhi nahin hotaa jahan din raat insaan biktaa hai.”

In the end we see Gul Bahar leaving Laal Hussain and choosing her other identity.

Similarly with Shireen, she makes a choice to go along with Nasir and her other journalist colleagues, in search of truth, rather than to conform to her identity as Babar Sahab’s wife’s niece.

The most blatant expression for this identity struggle the drama shows in the character of Ameer un Nisa, when Khanum changes her name to Meera once she starts working at the kothi and Ameer un Nisa replies,

“Lekin hum apnay liye tu Ameer un Nisa hain naa.”

And from this we can say that Chand Grehan shows how important a person’s identity is and that realizing this people consciously shape their identity according to their own idea of self and according to what they wish to be. Moreover, since identity is shaped consciously in accordance with people’s wishes and sense of self, it is naturally very contextual. In other words, while Gul Bahar can be the most popular kothi wali, she can also be Laal Hussain’s wife.