Hasan Ara Begum [Begum Hakkm]

Hasan Ara Begum was born in about the year 1890-1 in the British Guiana where her father was running a business concern. She received the traditional education at home under the supervision of her father.

In 1906, her parents left Guiana and settled in Calcutta. The following year, Hasan Ara was married to Muhammad Mukhlasur-Rahman Abul Hakim, a landlord of Calcutta. In 1910, she became a member of the National Indian Association Club and later took keen interest in the formation of the All-India Muslim Women's Conference, founded by the Begum of Bhopal. It was due to her untiring efforts that a branch of the Conference was established in Calcutta. In 1927, Begum Hakim joined the All-India Women's Conference.

She was the pioneer in starting female social gatherings such as meena bazars in Calcutta which gave an opportunity to purdah observing ladies to enter into conversation and parleys of personal and social nature with one another.

The Begum was the first woman honorary magistrate in Calcutta in the late twenties and performed her duties deligently mixing up with men, keeping herself in veil throughout her life. By the 30s, she started taking part in the League activities and was taken on the Women's Central Sub-Committee in 1941 and helped in strengthening the provincial sub-committee of which she was a leading member since its formation. Two years later, she was again nominated on the central sub-committee and during this period she worked incessantly for the famine-stricken people in Bengal. She made donations, collected food, clothes, medicines etc., for the suffering people. About this time she also founded an orphanage known as Bait-ul-AfJal, at Calcutta, which was shifted to Dacca after independence.

She made a number of tours in the province popularising the League cause and helped in enrolling a large number of Muslim women in the Muslim League. In 1945, she toured the NWF Province as a delegate of the Central Sub-Committee for the League election campaign. The following year, she went to Bihar where she helped the provincial women's sub-committee in its relief work.

During partition, she supervised the women refugee relief committees working for the penniless and disabled people