A Secret Vigilance: Hakim Muhammad Yusuf Hasan’s Book, Do Shiza

The onset of teenage years and the subsequent exploration of sexuality is marked by certain difficulties. Especially for parents who are mistrustful of their children flirting with boundaries.

Hakim Muhammad Yusuf Hasan understood this sentiment all too well. In his (apparently quite popular) medical book on sexual science published in the early 1900s, Do Shiza (A Virgin), he prescribes a hyper-vigilance for parents who wish to protect their children from “evil”. There is a great emphasis on monitoring children secretly and at all times, eliminating any privacy from their daily rituals.

The book was supposedly an indignant response to Kokashastra, an erotic Sanskrit treatise which, according to Hakim Hasan, was corrupting the youth. The title itself (A Virgin) is perhaps meant to incarcerate those who do not fall into this specified category.

Lest you should derive any entertainment from this ridiculous manual, Hakim Hasan promptly warns the readers that the book is not meant to give any pleasure to “debauched people”. Since the original work is long out of print, let this short list serve as a guideline for what NOT to do as parents of teenagers.

 Ways of Protecting chhote bacche and naujawan:

  • Young girls should not be allowed to sleep together on the same bed.
  • Boys and girls should be watched so that they do not go to the bathroom together and do not stay there alone for too long. In whatever way possible, a secret vigilance has to be maintained.
  • Young boys should not be allowed to sit in a room alone. Privacy is destructive for the young.
  • Young girls who are friends often talk for hours alone in rooms or on the roof. It is essential that they be watched. However, there is no harm if they are alone for a short time.
  • Stories and novels about love and romance should not be available to them.
  • Husband and wife should not have intercourse in the presence of their children. In fact, they should sleep on separate beds.
  • When you are awake after the young boys and girls have gone to sleep, you should have a look at them. If, in the morning, the young stay tucked in their quilts for a long time, then trouble is possible. Therefore they should be awoken early and made to rise from bed.
  • Do not always consider them as angels, innocents or “only a child”. In the light of the true examples I have presented above, you should guard your children completely.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *