page_title: Early life of Habib Bourguiba
section_title: Political beginnings
hierarchical_section_title: Early life of Habib Bourguiba / 1927–1930 : Early adult life in Tunis / Political beginnings
caption_attribution_description: English: Picture of Habib Bourguiba back in Tunisia after studying in France
context_page_description: Habib Bourguiba was officially born on August 3, 1903, in Monastir to Ali Bourguiba and Fattouma Khefacha. Being their eighth and last child, his birth was a shame to his mother and a worry to his father, who conceived him in an advanced age. Born into a modest family, the young Habib was raised in a female environment and was marked by gender inequality. Despite his financial conditions, Ali Bourguiba decided to invest his money in the education of his son and therefore, avoid him his fate of being enrolled in the army. Likewise, he sent his son to Tunis, circa 1907, to live with his brother M'hamed, in order to study in elementary school of Sadiki. Separated from his mother at 5, he lived in modest conditions in the capital city, and the Jellaz Affair made a deep impression on him. In 1913, he obtained his Certificat d'études primaires to the relief of his father, exempting him from military service and permitted him to pursue his secondary education in Sadiki. However, in the same year, he lost his mother at the age of 10, which marked his entire life.
  While Bourguiba began his secondary education, World War I started.
context_section_description: In that context of colonial oppression, Bourguiba felt the effects of inequality, mainly after he spent a whole year of unemployment. This inequality chocked him and led him to discuss these matters with both Tunisian and French friends, who agree with the necessity to start a reform process aiming to get Tunisia resemble France, that is, liberal, modern and secular.
  
  On January 8, 1929, Bourguiba attended a conference held in the cultural association L'Essor by Habiba Menchari, a young woman who advocated for women's rights. Since he could not come, Bourguiba went instead of his brother M'hamed. Many Destour members, French and Tunisians attended the event. Menchari complained about Muslim women's conditions and then threw her veil down, starting debates. The Muslim attendees denounced this act, according to the law and Islamic learnings then started to debate the length of the jilbab. Therefore, Bourguiba stated: 
  Let us put aside the jilbab distingo. The veil is certainly not aesthetic, but it is part of the Tunisian personality. In the hard times we live in, in this regime that we suffer, they want our personality destroyed and our people francizied. We are not strong. We do not have any power and we need to hold on to all the attributes, even decadent, of this personality. It is the only way to preserve our proper entity. We will discuss the veil the day it will not threaten the integrity of our national personality, like it was with the adoption of the European costume. But today, as long as our country is threatened with melting, deletion and destruction, consent to the abandonment of an attribute of our personality would be suicide.
  
  His speech surprised the liberal attendees like André Duran-Angliviel, his sister Eve Fichet, journalist using the nickname Eve Nohelle, the unionist Joachim Durel and the lawyer Mohamed Noomane. Durel criticized Bourguiba's thinking and wrote in Tunis socialiste that "Everything worked well and there he was talking about Tunisian personality. As if there even were a Tunisian personality! But we are dealing with a mix of Arabs, Muslims, Jews, Maltese, French...". Bourguiba, in response, was opposed to Durel's thinking as he demonstrated by his articles in L'Étendard tunisien. The controversy that followed opposed, for nearly a month, Bourguiba and Durel, who was astonished that Bourguiba ended up with a French woman. Bourguiba then wrote that he was there to raise their son as a proper Tunisian, according to their country's culture and education. In 1973, Bourguiba testified on this controversy that had been his political start: 
  The French Socialist Party, passed a motion declaring that by occupying Tunisia, France had not only rights but also obligations. It had a duty to raise the level of the Tunisian people, to create a nation by suppressing religious particularities. The word, however, did not apply to the current Tunisian people, amorphous amalgam of various communities, but of a people who had to be created in future generations. In that time the Socialist Party advocated the emancipation. There it was the emancipation they advocated! I denounced this hypocrisy. I denounced this colonial pseudo-ideology: in a hundred years, when all Tunisians will be French, we will see the Socialist Party resume its liberation crusade. The tussle between Durel and myself was violent.
  Bourguiba had also reacted to the statement of Maurice Viollette, governor-general of Algeria, who proclaimed "North Africa is an integral part of France and that it was impossible for France to abandon a bit of it". 1930 was the peak of French colonization in North Africa, which led France to celebrate the centenary of the French conquest of Algeria, by organizing a eucharistic congress in Tunisia. On this occasion, millions of Europeans invaded the capital city and went to the Saint-Lucien de Carthage cathedral, disguised in crusaders, which humiliated and revolted the people who protested against what they considered, as a violation of an Islam land by Christendom. The protestors, strongly repressed, were bro
caption: Picture of Bourguiba wearing his traditional dress, circa 1928, after his return to Tunisia.
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