Zaib-un-Nissa Hamidullah (Bengali: জেবুন্নেসা হামিদুল্লাহ, Urdu: زیب النساء حمیداللہ; 25 December 1918 – 10 September 2000) was a Pakistani writer and journalist. Begum Hamidullah was a pioneer of Pakistani literature and journalism in English, and also of feminism in Pakistan. She was Pakistan's first female editor and publisher, and the country's first female columnist writing in English. Zaibunnisa Street in Karachi was named after her.
Before independence in 1947, she wrote for many Indian newspapers, and was the first Muslim woman to write a column in an Indian newspaper. After independence, her column in the newspaper Dawn made her the first female political commentator in Pakistan. After she left Dawn, she became the founder and editor-publisher of the Mirror, the first social glossy magazine in Pakistan. Due to her status as Pakistan's first female editor, she became the first woman to be included in press delegations sent to other countries. On one of these delegations, in 1955, she became the first woman to speak at the ancient al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt. She also repeatedly represented Pakistan at the United Nations, including by serving as the deputy chief of the Pakistani delegation to the special 1970 session.
Zaib-un-Nissa was born in 1918 to a literary family in Calcutta. Her father, S. Wajid Ali, was the first person to translate the writings of the well-known Urdu poet Muhammad Iqbal into Bengali, and was an avid Bengali and Indian nationalist and writer. She had two brothers, and one half-brother from her mother's second marriage. She grew up in a tightly knit Anglo-Indian household filled with Bengali thinkers and philosophers of the age, as her father's house at 48, Jhowtalla Road, was something of a meeting place for the Calcutta literary circle. She started to write at an early age, and received considerable support from both her English mother and Bengali father. A lonely child, Zeb-un-Nissa took to writing poetry as a means to express her thoughts and emotions. Her later writing was affected by her trips to rural areas of Bengal and the Punjab, including her father's birthplace, the Bengal village of Borotajpur (a village near Janai, Hooghly). She was educated at the Loreto House Convent, where she completed her Senior Cambridge qualifications. She published her first poem in The Illustrated Weekly of India in 1933, at age 15. At 18, she won a poetry competition sponsored by England's Daily Mirror for a poem she had published in The Star of India − a publication that later became part of the Dawn group of papers, for which she eventually wrote.
In 1940, Zaib-un-Nissa married Khalifa Muhammad Hamidullah. Unlike most marriages of the time, hers was not an arranged marriage. After their marriage, she moved with him to the Punjab Province, where he worked as an executive for the Bata shoe company. During independence in 1947, she and her husband helped refugees coming across the border from India.
Her husband belonged to a well-known Punjabi family. His father, Khalifa Mohammad Asadullah, was the librarian of the Imperial Library in Calcutta (now Kolkata). Hamidullah was the head of Bata's operations in Pakistan, and was sent to head Bata in Ireland in 1972.
All of her books were dedicated to him, proof of their devotion to one another. They had two children, Nilofar (b. 1943) and Yasmine (b. 1949), and six grandchildren, including journalist Akbar Shahid Ahmed.
After moving to the Punjab in 1942, Zaib-un-Nissa was shocked. Raised in an Anglo-Indian household, she found it hard to adjust to the very different lifestyle of her husband's large Punjabi family. It took time for her to adjust, as she admitted in the foreword to The Young Wife.
Zaib-un-Nissa first came into prominence in 1936, when a poem of hers was accepted for publication by Bombay's Illustrated Weekly of India. From then on, she was a regular contributor to that newspaper, until independence in 1947. In 1943, her first book of poetry, Indian Bouquet, was published by her father's publishing house and proved to be very popular. All copies of the first edition were sold in three months. She followed up on her early success with Lotus Leaves, another book of poetry.
In 1945, Zaib-un-Nissa and her husband were in Simla at the time of the Simla Conference. It was here that she met Fatima Jinnah. They became friends, and Jinnah soon managed to get her an exclusive interview with her brother, Muhammad Ali Jinnah. This was a landmark in the young Zaib-un-Nissa's career, and it brought her India-wide fame. Her stories, poems and articles also began to bring her more fame around this time.
After independence in 1947, Zaib-un-Nissa decided to work in the field of journalism, and soon established herself as an outspoken writer in her column "Thru a Woman's Eyes", in the Karachi daily newspaper Dawn. This column began in December 1947. After some time, she rebelled against the limited scope of the feature, declaring that women should have the right to comment on every subject, including politics. Altaf Husain, then editor of Dawn, eventually agreed to give her a wider scope. He recognised the merit of her work by giving her a new assignment – that of a columnist appearing on the editorial page. Zaib-un-Nissa became the first female political commentator of Pakistan. Her column established her reputation as an honest columnist who was not afraid to voice her opinions. It was also a huge step for the women's rights movement in Pakistan.
In 1951, she left Dawn, after editor Altaf Husain demanded that she focus her writing on "issues relating to women," an apparent reference to an earlier message in which he suggested she write about "cooking, child-rearing, and other matters of feminine concern." Hamidullah founded a monthly magazine called the Mirror, and became its editor and publisher in 1952. She became a businesswoman as well as the first female editor and publisher in the nation. Her glossy social pictorial, with its courageous and sincere editorials, was an instant success.
The Mirror became very popular, and Zaib-un-Nissa soon became quite famous as a journalist and editor. The Pakistani government included her in numerous press delegations during this period.
She was one of the founding members of the Pakistani Working Women's Association, as well as a close friend of Fatima Jinnah, sister of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, and Begum Ra'ana Liaquat Ali Khan, wife of Pakistan's first prime minister, Liaquat Ali Khan. Some of her other friends were: Hakeem Saeed, Salima Ahmed, Ardeshir Cowasjee, Syed Hashim Raza and Jahanara Habibullah, the mother of Muneeza Shamsie.
She was a founder member of the Karachi branch of Business and Professional Women's Foundation, and served as its first chapter-president. She held this position for two consecutive terms. She was also the first president of the Women's International Club of Karachi, a member of the Horticultural Society, and first woman-president of the Flower Show Committee. Another organisation Hamidullah played an important role in was the All Pakistan Women's Association, founded by her friend Begum Raana Liaquat Ali Khan.
In 1955, as part of a press delegation to Cairo, she became the first woman to speak at the ancient Al-Azhar University. Her speech was controversial, as she discussed Pakistan's Kashmir issue. However, it was a great distinction for her.
In 1956, Zaib-un-Nissa wrote a travelogue entitled Sixty Days in America, about her trip to the US as part of a World Leaders Program, during which she befriended people like Marilyn Monroe and Jean Negulesco, and appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show. This travelogue consisted of columns she had written for a newspaper, The Times of Karachi, during her trip. The editor, ZA Suleri, gave her permission to reprint the columns in book form as a travelogue which she did.
The following year, she represented Pakistan at the United Nations sponsored seminar on Civic Responsibilities and Increased Participation of Asian Women in Public Life.