Sufia Kamal

Begum Sufia Kamal (Bengali: সুফিয়া কামাল; 20 June 1911 – 20 November 1999) was a Bangladeshi poet and political activist. Kamal was an influential cultural icon in the Bengali nationalist movement of the 1950s and 60s and an important civil society leader in independent Bangladesh. She died in 1999 and was the first woman to be given a state funeral in the country.

Early life

Sufia was born in Shaestabad, Barisal. She was a daughter of a Zamindar family. During her childhood, women's education was prohibited and she could not afford to get academic education. But she learned Bengali, Hindi, English, Urdu, Arabic, Kurdish and Persian language from her house tutors. In 1918, she went to Kolkata with her mother where she came to meet with Begum Rokeya. She was first married at the age of 11 to her cousin Syed Nehal Hossain, then a law student. Together they had a daughter, Amena Kahar. Hossain died in 1932. Five years later, Sufia married Kamaluddin Ahmed.

In addition to her first daughter, Sufia later had two other daughters, Sultana Kamal and Saida Kamal, and two sons Shahed Kamal and Sajed Kamal.