Anowara Jahan

Anowara Jahan migrated to the UK in 1967 to pursue higher education at the London School of Economics. Her husband had arrived earlier in 1962, also for educational purposes. She was a mother to three children whom she raised to have a left-wing and Bengali nationalist identity.

Jahan was heavily involved in UK politics, where she worked to highlight discrimination in immigration policy and the state’s alienation of Asian immigrant women. Jahan was one of five racialized minority committee members on the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE). As a committee member of the CRE, Jahan handled the case of virginity testing on several South Asian immigrant women at Heathrow Airport. On 7 March 1979 Jahan and fellow CRE members passed a resolution condemning the use of gynaecological testing, medical and X-ray examinations on South Asian immigrant women, arguing that its specific focus on them was a blatant method of alienation. Jahan demanded intervention from the Home Office. The CRE produced a thirty-page investigative report and demanded a cease to all medical examinations by immigration control. Jahan worked with the North London Women against Racism and Fascism, and Rights of Women organizations on this case.

In 1980 Jahan was sacked from her position in the CRE alongside Bashir Maan, Pranlal Sheth and Courtney Laws. They were replaced by members of conservative organizations who had more moderate campaigning views, such as Tara Mukerjee, who had campaigned for the Conservatives, and Basil Lewis, a councillor for the West Indian Conservatives group in Haringey, London.

Jahan was also a founding member of the Bangladesh Women's Association (BWA) based in east London. Other committee members were activists Lulu Bilkis Bani, Jebunnessa Baksh, Ferdaus Rahman, Munni Rahman, Shefali Huq and Khaleda Uddin. They established advice centres that provided support on issues such as domestic violence, racial harassment, childcare and immigration. There was also training for unemployed women, work placement schemes, ESOL classes and under-5s playgroups.

During the movement for Bangladeshi independence, Bengali communities in the UK united to pressure the British government to support Bangladeshi liberation from West Pakistan. Jahan and the BWA played a major role in mobilizing this grass-roots activism. Their door-to-door campaign encouraged women to join them on the streets. They took sole responsibility for the safety of many of these women, dropping them off at their homes after campaigns as requested by their husbands. She encouraged South Asian women to establish themselves in politics, which had previously been restricted grounds for many of them. On 2 April 1971 BWA held their first demonstration in Hyde Park, which 300 women attended. They also arranged a mela, which raised £700 in a single day. Anowara Jahan wrote letters to world leaders, their wives and MPs in the House of Commons to support the fight for Bangladeshi liberation. She was closely associated with Labour MPs Michael Barnes and John Stonehouse.

Jahan was also a member of the Bengali Teacher Association and spoke out against the lack of government funding for state schools in east London, discrimination in hiring racialized minority teachers and racism amongst staff members.