In 1905, Bengali Muslim writer Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain published Sultana's Dream in English. The story imagines Ladyland, a feminist utopia where women govern through education, science, and nonviolence while men live in seclusion. Its playful reversal exposed the absurdity of gendered confinement in colonial South Asia.

Sultana's Dream widened the imaginative possibilities available to women writers in South Asian literature. Its mixture of satire, science, reform, and dream-vision influenced later feminist poets and speculative writers who used fantasy to challenge purdah, patriarchy, and empire.