Author: Eunice de Souza
Editor(s): Eunice de Souza
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Year: 2004
Language: English
Pages: 552
ISBN/UPC (if available): 0195666615
Description
This collection brings together writings on the theme of purdah not just in terms of the burqua worn by Muslim women, but more broadly as the elaborate codes of seclusion and feminine modesty used to protect and control women's lives across the religious divide.
The focus is primarily on purdah as a lived experience. What was it like to live in seclusion? What did the women do with their time? What did they know of the outside world? What implications did the practice of purdah have on their health and education? How did their husbands and families help them break out of purdah? And what was it like for a man to grow up without women after a certain age?
Using nineteenth and twentieth century texts, including personal accounts, biographies, poetry, fiction, satire, and essays, this collection puts together a picture of the hidden aspects of women's lives in all its complexity. The variety of western perspectives on purdah presented here challenge the simplistic postcolonial assumption that they all speak with one voice. Similarly, Indian perceptions vary from a strict adherence to purdah to a belief that the seclusion of women is responsible for societal decay. There are biographical pieces by major reformers, quotations from contemporary newspapers, and apiece on film images of purdah. First-person accounts include the redoubtable Begums of Bhopal who, in or out of purdah, were excellent and enlightened rulers. And finally, there is Purdah in fiction, notably the tragic failure of an experiment in bringing one's wife out of purdah, depicted by Tagore.
This book will be an important resource for scholars of cultural studies, gender studies, and will interest the general reader of religion, culture and society in South Asia.
REVIEWS
When I put on the burqua, my depraved brothers had roared so much with laughter that I came to blows with them, and instead of taking them to task, Amma has smacked me.
-Ismat Chugtai, More from the Autobiography, 1981.
The toes (of a Chinese lady) are crushed up under the foot, so as to render the person perfectly lame: this is a less expensive mode of keeping a woman confined to the house, than having guards and a zenana-the principle is the same.
-Fanny Parkes, Wanderings of a Pilgrim, 1850
My aunt was already furious with me. She used to call me nasty names for reading the Quran so much: she would say, Thank God, this girl hasn't learned anything else, otherwise she would have time for nothing al all.
-Bibi Ashraf, How I Learned to Read and Write, 1899
The Young wives were never allowed to see their husbands during the day; but often when I played in the front courtyard I heard my name called softly and would be asked to convey love-letter between the temporarily separated couples.
-Sunity Devee, Maharanee of Cooch Behar,
The Autobiography of an Indian Princess, 1921
Contents
INTRODUCTION
WESTERN ACCOUNTS
Mrs Meer Hassan Ali
Introduction
Observations on the Mussulmans of India
Fanny Parkes
Wandering of a Pilgrim in Searach of the Picturesque
Mrs Colin (Helen) Mackenzie
Funeral Scene in a Zenana
Louis Rousselet
Bhopal-India and Its Native Princes
Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava
Our Viceregal Life in India
Sir Monier Monier-Williams
Modern India and the Indians
Sir Lepel Griffin
Introduction
Mrs Marcus Fuller
The Zenana
Rev Edward Storrow
Daily Life
J K H Denny
The Beginning of the Work
Wives and Widows
Annie Besant
The Education of Indian Girls
Sister Nivedita (Margaret Noble)
The Hindu Woman as Wife
Woman in the Natoinal Life
Kathleen Olga Vaughan
Osteomalacia in Kashmir
Frieda Hauswirth
Women in the Zenana
Some Helpless Women of India
Charlotte Wiser
Four Families of Karimpur
Gail Minault
Urdu Women's Magazines in The Early Twentieth Century
Dr Meredith Borthwick
Dress Reform and Ideas of Modesty
INDIAN PERCEPTIONS
Sir Syed Ahmed Khan
The Education of Mohammedan Girls
Chirag Ali
The Position of Woman
P N Bose
Social Condiation
Maulan Ashraf Ali Thanavi
The First Book of the Bihishti Zewar
S Khuda Bukhsh
Thoughts on the Present Situation
Sultan Jehan Begum
Al Hijab or the Necessity of Purdah
Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain
The Secluded Ones
Ameerali Syed
The Status of Women in Islam
The Spirit of Islam
Dr Rukhmabi
Purdah-The Need for its Abolition
Dr Kalikinkar Datta
Education of Women
Husain B Tyabji
Social Reform
Malavika Karlekar
Constructions of Femininity in Nineteenth Century Bengal
Maithili Rao
Screen Image
FIRST PEROSN ACCOUNTS
C M Naim
How Bibi Ashraf Learned to Read and Write
Shah Jahan Begum
The History of Bhopal
Rassundari Devi
The Sixth Composition
Nawab Sultan Jahan Begum
An Account of My Life
Sunity Devee Maharanee of Cooch Behar
My Childhood-The Autobiography of an Indian Princess
Bipan Chandra Pal
In the Days of My Youth
Mohamed Ali
My Life: a Fragment
Shaista Suhrawardy Ikramullah
Adjustment
Twilight of an Empire
Ismat Chugtai
More from the Autobiography
Sahibzada Ata Muhamed Khan
Quoted in Lives of the Princes
LITERARY EVOCATIONS
Ardersir F J Chinoy and Mrs Dinbai A F Chinoy
Rabindranath Tagore
Bimala's Story
Romesh Chunder Dutt
What the Women-folk Said
Rashid Jahan
Behind the Veil
Yashpal
The Curtain
Rajinder Singh Bedi
Lajwanti
S J Joshi
Anandi Gopal
Iqbalunnissa Hussain
Purdah and Polygamy
Sarojini Naidu
The Pardah Nashin
B P Sathe
Face-showing
Bibliography