INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF RESEARCH CULTURE SOCIETY

This paper discusses how Ismat Chughtai's Urdu writing depicts the complex relationship between women's cultural practices and changing gender identification. The research looks at Chughtai's portrayal of Indian women in the middle of the twentieth century negotiating both conventional cultural expectations and developing modern identities through a feminist literary analysis of her key works. Her female characters employ ordinary cultural performances, domestic rituals, and society rites as places of both compliance and resistance. The intricate relationship between tradition and modernity is depicted in Chughtai's works, where women's participation in cultural pursuits is both a means of revolt and a means of patriarchal control. Depending on how women manage their participation, traditional practices such as religious observances, marital ceremonies, and domestic routines may be both liberating and constrictive. The paper analyses important works including "Lihaaf," "Chauthi Ka Joda," and "Tedhi Lakeer," showing how cultural traditions transform into performative activities that enable women to create, question, and reinterpret their gender identities. Using postcolonial feminist theory and performance studies, the study shows how Chughtai's female characters use cultural practices to build their identities and critique society. The results imply that Chughtai's fictional writing uses cultural activities as liminal areas where conventional gender norms are both challenged and maintained. As shown in her portrayal of women's sexuality, independence, and domestic autonomy, this encourages the development of mixed identities that challenge the dichotomies of modernity and tradition. Chughtai's portrayal of cultural practices as dynamic performances that assist women's emerging selfhood foreshadows current debates on feminist agency and cultural authenticity.