Rukhsana Sultana

Early years

Rukhsana was born as Meenu Bimbet, the daughter of Group Captain Madan Mohan Bimbet by his wife Zarina Haque. Group Captain Bimbet was a Hindu and an officer in the Indian Air Force. His wife Zarina was a Muslim, and the daughter of Mian Ehsan-ul-haque, sometime Chief Justice of the princely state of Bikaner in northern Rajasthan. Ehsan-ul-haque came from a landowning family, originally from Jalandhar in Punjab. His other daughter (Sultana's maternal aunt) was the actress Begum Para, wife of actor, Nasir Khan, a brother of Dilip Kumar and mother of the actor Ayub Khan.

While Zarina's family was vastly rich and even had aristocratic pretentions, Group Captain Bimbet belonged to an educated family of professionals. Zarina, who was used to a level of luxury in her father's house, found it difficult to adjust to being the wife of an Air Force officer. Meanwhile, Ehsan-ul-haque had never reconciled himself to the fact that his daughter had married a Kafir and a Hindu. At an opportune moment, he made an offer to the Bimbets: If the Group Captain turned Muslim and swore to raise his children as Muslims, a large sum of money and significant property would be turned over to them, and many of the couple's problems would thus be solved. This inducement did not work with the Bimbet, who remained a Hindu. However, the marriage deteriorated further and Bimbet and Zarina grew estranged. Finally, Zarina returned to her father's house, re-affirmed her faith in Islam, baptized her daughter a Muslim, and gave her a new name. Meenu Bimbet thus became Rukhsana Sultana, and eventually inherited significant assets after her grandfather died.

As a college student, Rukhsana met and married Shivinder Singh Virk, a Sikh officer in the Indian Army who belonged to an aristocratic and educated family. Shivinder's mother, Mohinder Kaur, was a sister of the celebrated writer Khushwant Singh and a daughter of Sir Sobha Singh, a construction magnate who made his fortune as a building contractor much favored by the British while the city of New Delhi was being built. Shivinder's father, Jaspal Singh Virk, belonged to a prominent land-owning family of Jandiala Guru near Amritsar. Shivinder's own sister, Sukriti Kumari, was the Rani of Nalagarh, being the wife of Raja Vijayendra Singh, ruler of Nalagarh princely state in the Simla Hills

Again, Shivinder was a Sikh while Rukhsana was a Muslim. However, there were relatively fewer problems regarding money in the marriage because of Shivinder's background. The problems were more of temperament and values rather than of either money or religion. Shivinder's family was educated, traditional and reserved, detesting exhibitionism or gregariousness. Rukhsana was a 'party animal' and gregarious to a fault. The unmatched couple had one child, a daughter who received the Sikh/Hindu name Amrita Singh and was brought up formally in the Sikh religion, but essentially without much grounding in any religion. Amrita entered the same profession as her grand-aunt Begum Para, and became a Bollywood actress. She enjoyed significant commercial success and was the heroine of several block-busters, including her debut film Betaab. In October 1991, aged 33, Amrita married Saif Ali Khan who was fully twelve years younger than her. Saif, at that time a struggling actor, was a Muslim and the son and heir of the nawab of Pataudi, a princely state located not far from Delhi. His father, Nawab Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi, was a former captain of the national cricket team, and his mother was the famous actress Sharmila Tagore, a Hindu by birth and a relative of the Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore.

Facts

Career

promoted and motivated people in the Sanjay Gandhi’s "Indiri Bachao” a sterilisation programme in Delhi's politically hypersensitive Muslim quarters around Jama Masjid during the Emergency period in India. Rukshana was a boutique owner before she started working closely with Sanjay Gandhi She induced 13,000 vasectomies in less than a year, the campaign erupted in rioting and violent clashes with the police and resulted in bloody deaths. Rukshana was referred as Sanjay Gandhi’s right hand.