Roquiah Sakhawat Hossein was born in 1880, Kazi Nazrul Islam in 1899. Apart from their difference in gender, there could not have been more differences in the circumstances of their class and upbringing.
Writing at a time of imperial Britain’s preoccupation with downtrodden Indian and Muslim women, she was not particularly impressed with the Western model of women’s emancipation or the efforts of some Indian male reformers to usher in modernity simply by unveiling women.