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Outbyte Driver Updater FREEScan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →Outbyte PC Repair FREEClear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsFree Scan →Begum Rokeya’s 1905 story Sultana’s Dream imagines a world where women move freely through public life while men are secluded at home. More than a century later, artists are returning to its Ladyland to explore gender, political power, ecological crisis and feminist futures—though not everyone agrees that the story is best called science fiction.
What is Sultana’s Dream about?
Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain, widely known as Begum Rokeya, was a Bengali Muslim writer, educator, social activist and feminist. She published Sultana’s Dream in English in 1905 in the Madras-based The Indian Ladies’ Magazine, a publication aimed at and edited by Indian women. The story’s first-person protagonist, Sultana, falls asleep and dreams of Ladyland, where women hold public, scientific and political roles and men are confined to domestic spaces. Penguin Random House’s edition description introduces the tale alongside Rokeya’s work as an educator and founder of Sakhawat Memorial School for Girls.
The reversal turns purdah—the seclusion of women—into a way to expose the power relations behind it. Ladyland is not only a comic inversion: its imagined social order also makes room to question patriarchy, war, industrialization and environmental exploitation. That reading is an interpretation offered by the publisher and later feature coverage, rather than a single settled meaning of the story. The 1905 date also puts the phrase “a century on” in perspective: the story was 119 years old when Scroll published its feature in October 2024, and 121 years old in 2026.
Is Sultana’s Dream science fiction?
The story’s speculative setting and technological imagination make “science fiction” a useful label for many readers, and it is often discussed as an early feminist example of the genre. But that classification is not universal. The Indian Express quoted academic and activist Miratun Nahar objecting to the label: “I think she wrote about reality.” Her comment points to a productive tension: Rokeya invents a different world, yet the gendered restrictions it reverses were rooted in social conditions of her own time—and, as later readers argue, have not disappeared.
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How contemporary artists are reimagining Ladyland
Artists have taken up Rokeya’s imagined world in different forms. The works below do not offer one unified interpretation: some draw on the story’s reversal of gendered space, while others use its speculative possibilities to address present-day politics, ecology, history or community.
| Artist or project | Medium and relationship to the story | Documented emphasis |
|---|---|---|
| Chitra Ganesh | Black linocut portfolio; Scroll describes a 27-scene sequence drawing on the story. | Environmental disaster, gender inequality, economic struggle and geopolitical conflict. |
| Shehzil Malik | Digital artwork based on the story. | A feminist future connecting technology with nature, beauty, love and community. |
| Hina Saiyada | Ladyland or Kai’s Dream, a game project described as an open-world, first-person shooter. | Women-led protest, with Saiyada connecting the premise to anti-CAA/NRC protests. |
| Isabel Herguera | El Sueño de la Sultana, an animated film that combines the story with Rokeya’s life and a Spanish character’s search. | Multiple narrative strands and animation approaches involving Indian artists. |
| Specters of Sultana | A group exhibition and project bringing together artists, researchers and other contributors. | Queer feminist diaspora, anti-colonial history, and work with objects, images, sounds and texts. |
Chitra Ganesh: a sequence of prints for contemporary crises
The Memorial Art Gallery documents Ganesh’s 2018 black linocut portfolio and a 2020 exhibition that was shown again from December 17, 2021, to June 5, 2022. The museum describes the prints as drawing on Sultana’s Dream while engaging present-day concerns. Ganesh said the portfolio “connects with problems shaping 21st-century life: apocalyptic environmental disaster, the disturbing persistence of gender-based inequality, the power of the wealthy few against the economic struggles of the majority, and ongoing geopolitical conflicts that cause widespread death and suffering.” Scroll’s 2024 feature describes the work as a 27-scene sequence and reports Ganesh’s contrast between Ladyland’s structures of governance and contemporary authoritarian politics. The Memorial Art Gallery’s exhibition page documents the portfolio and its themes.
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Shehzil Malik: technology in a feminist future
Malik’s artwork looks to Ladyland as a future in which technology does not separate people from the natural world. “It’s meant to present a feminist future—one where humanity uses technology to connect to nature, beauty, love and community,” she said in an interview presented by Universität der Künste Berlin. The university’s page also notes her inspiration from Indian and Persian miniature painting. Read the university’s profile of Malik and the artwork.
Hina Saiyada: a game project linked to protest
Ladyland or Kai’s Dream adapts the story’s gender reversal to a game concept. Scroll described it in 2024 as a 2021 open-world, first-person shooter project. Saiyada connected its premise to women-led anti-CAA/NRC protests. The Indian Express reported in 2023 that the project was in development; those reports do not establish that it has since been released. The project’s significance here is as an example of how Rokeya’s imagined world can be used to consider protest and political participation, not as a finished game whose availability or reception is documented.
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Isabel Herguera: the story, its author and a search
Herguera’s animated film El Sueño de la Sultana premiered at the 71st San Sebastian International Film Festival in September 2023, according to The Indian Express. The paper describes a three-part film that brings together Rokeya’s story, her life and a Spanish character’s search. It combines mehendi, shadow-puppet and 2D animation approaches, with Indian artists involved. The reported premiere establishes a festival screening, not current streaming availability. The Indian Express’s feature on the film and the story’s afterlife gives further context.
Specters of Sultana: a collective, diasporic reading
Künstlerhaus Bethanien describes Specters of Sultana as a group project based on Rokeya’s story, with artists, researchers and other contributors. Its approach places the text in conversation with queer feminist diaspora and anti-colonial history through objects, images, sounds and texts. It is one later reception of the story, rather than evidence that all contemporary artists share the same reading. Künstlerhaus Bethanien’s project page lists its framework and contributors.
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Why the story continues to resonate
These works show how a compact speculative tale can travel across media without becoming a single fixed allegory. A reversal of who gets to occupy public space can prompt questions about political authority; a technologically imaginative utopia can become a setting for thinking about ecology and community; and an adaptation can connect the story to histories of colonialism, diaspora or protest. The artists’ choices differ, but Ladyland remains a flexible point of departure for examining who has access to power and who is asked to remain unseen.
That continued relevance is not proof that Rokeya was writing about every contemporary movement or crisis later artists associate with the tale. It is evidence of the story’s interpretive openness: later creators can use its central inversion to speak to their own moment while leaving room for disagreement about genre, history and meaning. As Maleka Begum, a professor at Central Women’s University in Bangladesh and feminist author, put it to The Indian Express: “In reality, women are still kept away from power corridors.”
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Read Rokeya’s original story
Readers who want to encounter the tale itself can find it in Penguin Classics’ Sultana’s Dream and Padmarag. The publisher’s page for the collection provides edition details.
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