What's in the name - or is it in the name?

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The writer is a Lahore-based academic currently associated with Forman Christian College, a chartered university

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To Women Who Inherit this Anthem,

With due humility, this khaksar offers a few reflections on how the phrase, Hum Gunahgar Aurtain (We Sinful Women), by Kishwar Naheed, continues to resonate and is purposefully reclaimed as part of our shared social history.

I begin by invoking Juliet's timeless question: "What's in a name?" Yet, as our own history attests, names in our feminist struggle are never mere labels. They are banners, battlegrounds and badges of honour. Reclaiming the word gunahgar - sinful - was not a simple rhetorical gesture. It was a bloody and deliberate battle fought on the streets of Lahore. That struggle still echoes in the hearts of women who march - or rather, advance, grow and develop - today, whether in protest or in poetry and dance.

In recent years, I have observed with admiration and a measure of critical affection the proliferation of Naheed's title across the landscape of Pakistani art, literature and activism. What is most striking is how each artist approaches the label of gunahgar in a distinct manner - some embracing the title, some negating it and some employing inherent sharp sarcasm. Hamama Tul Bushra's women are the very embodiment of the type of woman celebrated by Naheed: thriving, unapologetic, in control and wholly unthreatened - her canvases (O'Art Space, 2026) transform the label of "sinful" into a visual anthem of joy and autonomy. In contrast, Sania Samad strips away all representation, colour, size and even mindset from her female forms, reducing them to the simple silhouette of a shirt (1x1 Gallery, 2024). In doing so, she questions the very grounds on which women are defined, categorised and often excluded. Meanwhile, Salima Hashmi and Manmeet Walia's curatorial vision (The Library Project, 2025) uses Naheed's title as a platform for like-minded women to present their diverse perspectives on womanhood, femininity and feminism - the exhibition becomes an intertextual arena where solidarity and difference are held in creative tension. Be it the aesthetic endeavours discussed above or Rukhsana Ahmad's anthology (1991) with the same title, each instance is an act of allusion, intertextuality and sometimes, deliberate reappropriation.

Yet, I must pause to ask: Is the use of Naheed's title today a meaningful intertextual dialogue with our feminist past or has it become a convenient allusion? The proliferation of the phrase across art forms and disciplines invites us to examine its continued relevance. When artists today use Hum Gunahgar Aurtain to describe modern Pakistani society, are we honouring Naheed's legacy or are we diluting it? Has the phrase become a shorthand, a cliché or does it still carry the original sting and defiance? Is it used as a rallying cry for collective action or as a fashionable slogan devoid of its original context? We must ask ourselves whether the title serves as an invitation for nuanced conversation or merely as a convenient vessel for contemporary anxieties. The power of language lies not just in repetition, but in the ways we reinterpret and challenge it for each new generation.

I believe the answer lies in renewal. Naheed uses "sinful" not to confess immorality under "popular" colonial or religious constructs, but as sarcasm to champion women's autonomy. For her, the real "sin" means refusing roles forced on women from outside. In her poetry, "sinful women" claim dignity and agency, not commit wrongdoing as some novice, unfamiliar with Kalam-e-Inkesarana - humility and self-deprecation, might consider it. Today, the word gunahgar may resurface in new forms but the poem's irony and voice remain as potent now as when authorities met women with batons and tear gas in 1983.

Our literary tradition reminds us that humility is the highest adornment of language. Therefore, I offer this reflection in the spirit of inkesari and niyazmandi not to rebuke but to invite us all to recognise our responsibility: Let us wield these borrowed words with gravity and not just reject them as a cliché. Let us actively uphold homage, pastiche and intertextuality not only as academic concepts, but as vital practices that sustain our literary traditions as well as the feminist lineage, keeping it alive and relevant for generations of "sinful women" to come.

Bano

June 2026