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The UNESCO’s Memory of the World regional register has recently inscribed Bangladeshi feminist thinker, writer, educator, political activist and social reformer Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain’s ‘Sultana’s Dream’ in recognition of human innovation and imagination.  

The Memory of the World Asia-Pacific Committee newly inscribed 20 items during the 2024 cycle of the MOW regional register at the 10th general meeting of the MOW committee for Asia and the Pacific, which was convened from 7 to 8 May, in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, confirmed unesco.org.

Mofidul Hoque, Liberation War Museum trustee, received the certificate of recognition in Mongolia on Wednesday. 

Liberation War Museum on its Facebook page wrote that the museum feels proud for being able to play a role in achieving this recognition.

The general meeting was hosted by the cultural affairs ministry of Mongolia, the Mongolian National Commission for UNESCO, and the UNESCO regional office in Bangkok.

The 2024 cycle recognised Bangladesh’s sci-fi feminist author, Rokeya S Hossain, who imagined both helicopters and solar panels before they had been invented in her 1905 utopian narrative, Sultana’s Dream.

The 1905 utopian story in English, Sultana’s Dream was published in Madras-based English periodical named The Indian Ladies Magazine.

It depicts a science fiction feminist utopia called Ladyland, in which women run everything and men are secluded, in a mirror-image of the traditional practice of purdah.

In Sultana’s Dream, traditional stereotypes such as ‘men have bigger brains’ and women are ‘naturally weak’ are countered with logic such as ‘an elephant also has a bigger and heavier brain’ and ‘a lion is stronger than a man’ and yet neither of them dominates men.