Player Profile: Fatima Ghulam

The United Kingdom in the early 20th century witnessed some landmark feminist movements. In 1927, just a year before the British government granted women the right to vote, London saw another, relatively subdued form of feminist revolution: The Women’s World Chess Championship. By hosting this tournament FIDE formally recognized women’s participation in competitive chess.  

As women’s chess kept growing at a leisurely pace in the West, India was far more occupied with their internal political struggle. The tussle for absolute freedom against the British Raj had consumed India to such an extent that an Indian woman representing the country in Chess wasn’t in the struggling country’s periphery. However, one woman did rise to represent her country. A 21-year-old Fatima Ghulam had set Britain ablaze with her near-perfect (10.5/11) tournament win in the 1933 British Women’s Chess Championship. The data regarding Fatima Ghulam’s brief chess stint are scarce and full of contradictions, but some suggest that she was briefly trained by one of the strongest female players of the 20th century, Vera Menchik. 

Fatima Ghulam was also employed by the politically influential Umar Hayat Khan, who is famously known for endorsing and sustaining one of India’s earliest top-rated chess players, Sultan Khan. The promising start to Fatima’s career had abruptly ended as she was believed to go back to India after her brief stay in Europe.

It took India 27 years after its independence to endorse a women-only chess tournament on its soil. However, slowly and steadily the hype around women’s chess grew first with the Khadilkar sisters, and later with the likes of Koneru Humpy. 

Just a year ago, A young band of Indian women ran riot to secure the Gold Medal in the 2024 Chess Olympiad. Almost a century has passed since Ghulam’s historic win, the political and geographical landscape of the country has been permanently altered. But what has remained the same, be it a 21-year-old Fatima Ghulam in Hastings or a 19-year-old Divya Deshmukh in Budapest, is the hunger to prove their worth on a global stage, a hunger to prove the worth of this country to the entire globe.