Occupation Writer Role Writer Nationality Indian Died January 25, 1998 | Genre Novels Children Waris Hussein Name Attia Hosain | |
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Books Sunlight on a Broken Column, Phoenix fled Education Isabella Thoburn College, University of Lucknow, La Martiniere Lucknow | ||
Attia hosain
Attia Hosain (1913–1998) was a writer and broadcaster who hailed from Undivided India and worked for many years in the UK. She wrote two acclaimed books, being the semi-autobiographical Sunlight on a broken column and a collection of short stories named Phoenix fled.
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Background and education
Attia was born in 1913 in Lucknow into a rich, feudal land-owning Sunni Muslim family. Her father, Sheikh Shahid Husain Kidwai, was the taluqdar of Gadia, a large estate in Barabanki district. Her mother, Nisar Fatima, daughter of Syed Maqbool Hussain Alvi of Kakori, hailed from a family of educated professionals rather than land-owners. Attia was the third of five children. She had two elder sisters, Zakia and Razia, and two younger brothers, Reshad Husain and Fuad Hussain. Reshad, who remained a citizen of India, became a diplomat and served as India's High Commissioner to Ceylon (Sri Lanka) in the 1960s. His wife, Asif Begum, was a daughter of Sir Fazl-i-Hussain, a prominent politician of undivided Punjab, belonging to the Unionist Party. Fuad (1928-68) emigrated to Pakistan at partition, became a fighter pilot in the Pakistan Air Force, and witnessed active duty during the Indo-Pak war of 1965.
Attia's father died when she was less than eleven years old, and she was raised by her mother. She was schooled at La Martiniere Girls' College in Lucknow. At the same time, her mother arranged for her to be tutored at home by Muslim clergymmen in the Quran and other Islamic texts. After completing school at age 15, she attended Isabella Thoburn College and Lucknow University.
Marriage
In 1933, aged 20, she was married to her first cousin, Ali Bahadur Habibullah, the second son of her mother's sister. Ali's father was the Taluqdar of Saidanpur, another large estate in Barabanki district. They were blessed with two children, a son Waris Ahmed Habibullah and a daughter, Shama Habibullah, both of whom are film-makers based in the UK.
Attia's husband and in-laws were active in politics as leading members and financiers of Jinnah's Muslim League, which championed the idea of creating a Muslim-majority country by partitioning India. The family were closely allied with the Raja of Mahmudabad (Attia's father-in-law had served as manager of that vast estate for twenty-six years, 1905-31) who was the chief financier of the Muslim League. Attia's mother-in-law, Begum Enam Habibullah, became in 1938 the founding president of the womens' wing of the Muslim League. The efforts of that couple bore deadly fruit in 1947, when India became independent and was partitioned at the same time, creating a new Muslim-majority country, Pakistan. Attia's in-laws, who had so actively promoted that cause, found themselves in something of a fix, because their ancestral lands and properties lay in UP), in the heart of Hindu-majority India, and they had little to do with the provinces that became Pakistan. With good foresight, Attia and her husband solved this dilemma by moving to Britain in 1947, immediately after partition. She moved to Britain in 1947 and became a broadcaster for the BBC, hosting a popular women's radio programme.
Attia's niece is the Pakistani author Muneeza Shamsie and her great-niece is author Kamila Shamsie. British television director Waris Hussein is her son and film producer Shama Habibullah is her daughter.