Purdah and Polygamy

Purdah and Polygamy
Author: Iqbalunnissa Hussain
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2019-06-20
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780199407569

Originally published in 1944 by Hosali Press, Bangalore, this book is believed to be one of the first full-length English language novel by an Indian Muslim woman in the pre-Partition era. It has clear links with the biting criticism in the feminist Urdu fiction of writers such as Ismat Chughtai and Rashid Jahan. It mounts a scathing attack on the traditional systems of purdah and polygamy in which a man is treated as a virtual god and women, who are often barely literate, as chattel. Through its ironic tone, the novel demonstrates the corrupting influence of this patriarchal system and its power to warp the lives of the women who live under it. For this historically significant work, Jessica Berman of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, USA, has written the Introduction and provided contextual footnotes for the text. Also included are essays by literary critic Muneeza Shamsie (International Advisory Board, Journal of Postcolonial Writing) and academics, Suvir Kaul (University of Pennsylvania) and Arif Zaman (London School of Business and Management).

Changing India

Changing India
Author: Iqbalunnisa Hussain
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2015
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780199068364

Iqbalunnisa Hussain was born in Bangalore in 1897. She was married at the age of 15 to Syed Ahmed Hussain, an official in the Mysore government who encouraged her to acquire an education. She joined a school in Mysore and later the Maharanias College from where she obtained her BA degree and a gold medal by correspondence in 1930. In 1933, she travelled to the UK for her Masteras in Education at Leeds University, thus becoming one of the few middle class Muslim Women from India to obtain a degree from the UK. She represented India at the Twelfth International Womenas Congress at Istanbul in September 1935 and was a keen member of the All-India Womenas Conferences. In Bangalore she founded a school where she encouraged Muslim girls to acquire an education while also providing training in rug making, carpet weaving, embroidery, cutting and sewing. Her students participated in the Girl Guides, were good debaters, and keen performers in dramas and plays. She is the author of several books including Changing India: A Muslim Woman Speaks, Purdah and Polygamy: Life in an Indian Muslim Household.

Polygamy and Purdah

Polygamy and Purdah
Author: Varsha Joshi
Publisher:
Total Pages: 256
Release: 1995
Genre: Social Science
ISBN:

Study with reference to Rajputs from Rajasthan.

An American Bride in Kabul

An American Bride in Kabul
Author: Phyllis Chesler
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Total Pages: 262
Release: 2013-10-01
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1137365579

Few westerners will ever be able to understand Muslim or Afghan society unless they are part of a Muslim family. Twenty years old and in love, Phyllis Chesler, a Jewish-American girl from Brooklyn, embarked on an adventure that has lasted for more than a half-century. In 1961, when she arrived in Kabul with her Afghan bridegroom, authorities took away her American passport. Chesler was now the property of her husband's family and had no rights of citizenship. Back in Afghanistan, her husband, a wealthy, westernized foreign college student with dreams of reforming his country, reverted to traditional and tribal customs. Chesler found herself unexpectedly trapped in a posh polygamous family, with no chance of escape. She fought against her seclusion and lack of freedom, her Afghan family's attempts to convert her from Judaism to Islam, and her husband's wish to permanently tie her to the country through childbirth. Drawing upon her personal diaries, Chesler recounts her ordeal, the nature of gender apartheid—and her longing to explore this beautiful, ancient, and exotic country and culture. Chesler nearly died there but she managed to get out, returned to her studies in America, and became an author and an ardent activist for women's rights throughout the world. An American Bride in Kabul is the story of how a naïve American girl learned to see the world through eastern as well as western eyes and came to appreciate Enlightenment values. This dramatic tale re-creates a time gone by, a place that is no more, and shares the way in which Chesler turned adversity into a passion for world-wide social, educational, and political reform.

The Emancipation of Women

The Emancipation of Women
Author: Florence Abena Dolphyne
Publisher: Ghana University Press
Total Pages: 132
Release: 1991
Genre: Political Science
ISBN:

A former head of the Ghana National Council of Women and Development here explains, from her experience in Ghana and other parts of Africa during the UN Decade for Women, what she believes women's emancipation means to women in Africa. Although discrimination against women is worldwide, she believes that because of differences in social, educational and cultural backgrounds, women have differing perceptions of the meaning of emancipation. She discusses pertinent issues such as traditional beliefs and practices which keep women subjugated, including bride-wealth, child marriage, polygamy, purdah, widowhood, inheritance of property, fertility and female circumcision. She also examines specific women-in-development activities, and the role of governmental, non-governmental and inter- governmental organizations.

Women, Islam and Familial Intimacy in Colonial South Asia

Women, Islam and Familial Intimacy in Colonial South Asia
Author: Asiya Alam
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 369
Release: 2021-01-25
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004438491

Women, Islam and Familial Intimacy in Colonial South Asia offers an account of Muslim feminism in an age of nationalism and reform, and how it shaped debates on family, morality and society.