The editor and publisher of the weekly magazine Begum, Nurjahan Begum, passed away at a Dhaka hospital today. She was 91.
She breathed her last at the Square Hospital around 10.15 a.m., Mohammad Akash, an official of customer service department of the hospital, was quoted by the Daily Star, as saying.
Nurjahan was admitted to the hospital with respiratory problems on May 4. She had been on life support since May 7.
President Abdul Hamid and Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina have both expressed profound shock and grief over her death.
In separate messages, they conveyed deep sympathy to the bereaved family members and prayed for eternal peace of the departed soul.
Born on June 4, 1925, Nurjahan was the daughter of prominent journalist Mohammad Nasiruddin, the editor of the Bangla literary journal Saogat and was awarded the Ekushey Padak in 2011.
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Saogat, also called Saugat, (meaning Presentation) was a leading Bengali literary journal, and was first published from Kolkata in 1918.
Nurjahan Begum's father inspired her to join journalism.
Her husband, Rokonuzzaman Khan, who she married initially against her father's will, later became a renowned journalist himself.
The weekly Begum was first published in Kolkata on July 20, 1947, when India was ready to attain freedom from the British colonial rule.
Many Hindu women, at the time, were involved in the struggle for freedom, where Muslim women were kept behind doors but even then there were some Muslim women who were pioneering the feminist movement, like Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain,
Begum provided an outlet for women writers, mainly Muslim women, who had very little opportunity at the time.
The first editor of the magazine was Begum Sufia Kamal, while the founder was Mohammad Nasiruddin. Subsequently, the journal was edited by his daughter Nurjahan Begum.