Above: Still from Sultana’s Dream 2023
“One evening I was lounging in an easy chair in my bedroom and thinking lazily of the condition of Indian womanhood. I am not sure whether I dozed off or not. But, as far as I remember, I was wide awake. I saw the moonlit sky sparkling with thousands of diamond-like stars, very distinctly.
All on a sudden a lady stood before me; how she came in, I do not know. I took her for my friend, Sister Sara.”
…
“‘What is the matter, dear?’ she said affectionately. ‘I feel somewhat awkward,’ I said in a rather apologizing tone, ‘as being a purdahnishin woman I am not accustomed to walking about unveiled.’
‘You need not be afraid of coming across a man here. This is Ladyland, free from sin and harm. Virtue herself reigns here.’
By and by I was enjoying the scenery. Really it was very grand. I mistook a patch of green grass for a velvet cushion. Feeling as if I were walking on a soft carpet, I looked down and found the path covered with moss and flowers.”
…
“‘Will you care to see our kitchen?’ she asked me.
‘With pleasure,’ said I, and we went to see it. Of course the men had been asked to clear off when I was going there. The kitchen was situated in a beautiful vegetable garden. Every creeper, every tomato plant was itself an ornament. I found no smoke, nor any chimney either in the kitchen — it was clean and bright; the windows were decorated with flower gardens. There was no sign of coal or fire.
‘How do you cook?’ I asked.
‘With solar heat,’ she said, at the same time showing me the pipe, through which passed the concentrated sunlight and heat. And she cooked something then and there to show me the process.
‘How did you manage to gather and store up the sun-heat?’ I asked her in amazement.”
…
“‘In the capital, where our Queen lives, there are two universities. One of these invented a wonderful balloon, to which they attached a number of pipes. By means of this captive balloon which they managed to keep afloat above the cloud-land, they could draw as much water from the atmosphere as they pleased. As the water was incessantly being drawn by the university people no cloud gathered and the ingenious Lady Principal stopped rain and storms thereby.'”
…
“‘When the other university came to know of this, they became exceedingly jealous and tried to do something more extraordinary still. They invented an instrument by which they could collect as much sun-heat as they wanted. And they kept the heat stored up to be distributed among others as required.'”
…
“‘Please let me know, how you carry on land cultivation and how you plough the land and do other hard manual work.’
‘Our fields are tilled by means of electricity, which supplies motive power for other hard work as well, and we employ it for our aerial conveyances too. We have no rail road nor any paved streets here.’
‘Therefore neither street nor railway accidents occur here,’ said I. ‘Do not you ever suffer from want of rainwater?’ I asked.
‘Never since the “water balloon” has been set up. You see the big balloon and pipes attached thereto. By their aid we can draw as much rainwater as we require. Nor do we ever suffer from flood or thunderstorms. We are all very busy making nature yield as much as she can. We do not find time to quarrel with one another as we never sit idle. Our noble Queen is exceedingly fond of botany; it is her ambition to convert the whole country into one grand garden.'”
…
“‘How do you keep your country cool in hot weather? We regard the rainfall in summer as a blessing from heaven.’
‘When the heat becomes unbearable, we sprinkle the ground with plentiful showers drawn from the artificial fountains. And in cold weather we keep our room warm with sun-heat.’
She showed me her bathroom, the roof of which was removable. She could enjoy a shower bath whenever she liked, by simply removing the roof (which was like the lid of a box) and turning on the tap of the shower pipe.”
…
“I was very much delighted to make her acquaintance. In the course of the conversation I had with her, the Queen told me that she had no objection to permitting her subjects to trade with other countries. ‘But,’ she continued, ‘no trade was possible with countries where the women were kept in the zenanas and so unable to come and trade with us. Men, we find, are rather of lower morals and so we do not like dealing with them. We do not covet other people’s land, we do not fight for a piece of diamond though it may be a thousand-fold brighter than the Koh-i-Noor, nor do we grudge a ruler his Peacock Throne. We dive deep into the ocean of knowledge and try to find out the precious gems, which nature has kept in store for us. We enjoy nature’s gifts as much as we can.'”
…
“After visiting the above places of interest we got again into the air-car, but as soon as it began moving, I somehow slipped down and the fall startled me out of my dream. And on opening my eyes, I found myself in my own bedroom.” (Hossein 2005)
“Sultana’s Dream” is a short-story exploring what matriarchy would look like in colonial Bengal where women had strict gender roles and no formal education. The future Sultana dreams of is unique not just because it is woman-centered, but because it is a society entirely reliant on renewable energy.
One of my main criticisms is that we know systems of class exist in Hossain’s world (because she herself is described as upper class), however class wasn’t addressed in her dream. Perhaps the logic is that class is a man’s invention and therefore it is a system that wouldn’t exist in matriarchy. While there is intersection between class and gender, class is not entirely a gendered issue, and therefore can’t be easily written away when we drop patriarchy. Because of this, I caution against reading this piece through a western lens, because without context, this Hossain’s concept of matriarchy could easily be mistaken as a form of white feminism, where all women’s experiences, despite race, class, etc, are generalized as the same, therefore marking sexism as the only form of oppression all women suffer from.
There are many ways to dream of a more sustainable future, but reality is, it is not necessarily a lack of innovative science and technology that withholds us from that future, but rather the generalization that a sustainable future looks the same for everyone despite race, class, sex, etc. More explicitly, the ways in which a wealthy, white, upper class person would be able to participate in sustainability initiatives are vastly different from the ways a low income person of color would be able to participate in sustainability initiatives. This is relevant to my capstone because there are generalizations that once you leave Columbus and enter ‘rural’ Ohio, you enter a land entirely occupied by white, conservative, christians. And while that may be true for some regions, the larger picture is diverse in background.
Herguera, I. (Director). (2023, November 17). Sultana’s Dream.
Rokheya Shekhawat Hossein. (2005). Sultana’s dream. Penguin. (Original work published 1905)
