Sultana's Dream Read online

  I do not know whether the life of Hamida Khala is unusual or typical, even for her generation and class. But her story showed me how deeply the values and rules of purdah are embedded in a person’s life. Leaving purdah was not as easy as I had perhaps imagined; it was not a matter of throwing off the burqa like an overcoat in spring. Hamida Khala’s story of growth and change can be seen as her struggle to define a Muslim identity for herself, at a time when conflicting pressures from past and present, father and husband, made things hard for her.

  Famidabi: The Muslim Union Organizer

  Perhaps I was wrong: Not all changes were as dramatic or as difficult as Hamida Khala’s. In 1985, a friend told me another true story, about Famidabi, an organizer in the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), a trade union of very poor women in India. Famidabi had told the story herself, at a SEWA convention.

  Famidabi was the elected head of the SEWA group in Bhopal, organized by the women who earn low piecework wages rolling country cigarettes (bidi). Her home was a couple of rooms in a slum where she lived with her family. As a Muslim, Famidabi observed purdah and wore a burqa, as was customary among Muslims in Bhopal. Being in purdah was probably one reason she worked in a home industry, bidi making. When the invitation came to attend the regional SEWA meeting, Famidabi reluctantly agreed to the request of other union members that she go, but insisted that another woman travel with her.

  On the way to the railway station, with her son carrying her bag (as she later told the conference group), some of the women from her union called out to her: “And will you make revolution wearing a burqa?” Famidabi turned around, went home, and came back without the burqa, even though she saw from her son’s behavior that he did not approve. She told the conference: “I felt they had chosen me and I should go by their advice” but, looking at her disapproving son from the train window, she had wondered, “Have I done something bad?” She consoled herself by thinking that her son would not be so shocked later, when his wife or daughter also threw away her burqa.

  Another woman stood up at the conference and told of her advice to another group of Muslim women bidi workers: “You must leave your purdah! You are not even getting the benefit of minimum wage regulations because you won’t go yourselves to deal with the middlemen. You send your children. You deserve to be paid less!”

  Famidabi and Hamida Khala stand at almost the opposite ends of the social and economic spectrum, although Famidabi is not among the poorest of the poor and Hamida Khala not among the wealthy or the most sophisticated. Their stories show how purdah functions at these different points in society and, of course, in time. Famidabi acted in the 1980s, and most of Hamida Khala’s struggles came in the 1920s and 1930s. For Hamida Khala, earning an income from a job was neither an option nor a necessity; for Famidabi it was both. In both cases, purdah observance was tied up with religious feelings and with the respect accorded by others in the community, but the actions the two women were able to take reflected the differences in their circumstances.

  Projections of Purdah: Implications for Social Order

  Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain was not the first writer to describe purdah in South Asia nor the first to oppose it, but I know of none to equal the ferocity of her accounts and of only a few who also translated their concern into action. For the most part, of those who have written about purdah, “outsider” accounts tend to be critical and the “insiders” to adopt a moralistic tone. For non-Asian observers, purdah is usually as unique as it was for me, and it colors other perceptions of Asia. For those who have grown up in purdah-observing environments, it is often so unremarkable as to remain unmentioned except by moralists.

  In the early nineteenth century, an Englishwoman married to an Indian Muslim of high status wrote one of the earliest accounts of life in urban zenanas, to which she had access through her husband’s family connections.15 She was clearly fascinated by meeting women in seclusion but enjoyed her conversations with men more, especially those about comparative religion. Her attitude toward the women was one of kindly condescension and she was a bit ambivalent about Indian customs, although much more tolerant than many English residents who came to India later. Mrs. Meer Hassan Ali’s accounts make it possible to trace some of the changes and similarities in purdah practices in north India: For example, she makes no mention of anyone wearing a burqa or even knowing about it. This supports a view of purdah as an unstable institution.

  Nearly a century later, a very different account of purdah was written by another foreign observer. Katherine Mayo had an overriding political purpose: to ridicule Indian aspirations for national independence by writing a sensational account purportedly “exposing” issues relating to women, family life, sexuality, and seclusion. Her highly moralistic account focuses on purdah—which she calls “life imprisonment within the four walls of the home”—and early marriage. In a typical passage, she writes that Indians suffered from “undeniable race deterioration” brought on by “sexual indulgence,” which made “their hands … too weak, too fluttering to seize or hold the reins of Government” at the age when “the Anglo-Saxon is just coming into full glory of manhood.”16 Although Mayo’s account has been praised by modern feminist writers,17 her obvious political purposes and her racism make her a very unreliable witness. The tone of Mayo’s book on Indian society is remarkably similar, however, to some equally moralistic accounts of other societies by those South Asians who urged that purdah must be retained to prevent moral chaos.

  One of the most prominent Muslim writers to support purdah was Abul A’la Maududi, whose works have achieved wide circulation not only in South Asia but in many other parts of the world. Maududi’s work on purdah first appeared in 1939; an English version was published in Pakistan in 1972 as Purdah and the Status of Woman in Islam.

  Maududi’s dualistic view of humanity is expressed as follows: “All actions that take place in the world cannot take place unless there exists a passive partner for every active partner, and the passive partner possesses the qualities of yielding and surrendering.” The imagery of the male as cultivator and the female as his field is common among Muslims and recurs often in Maududi’s books. And although, like many other writers of hortative works, he takes the position that he is merely writing obvious common sense with which no reasonable person could possibly disagree, Maududi does add the following disclaimer: “‘Activity’ in itself is naturally superior to ‘passivity’ and femininity. This superiority is not due to any merit in masculinity against any demerit in femininity.”18

  If such statements sound familiar to Western readers, it is because the same type of dualism has been deeply embedded in the Judeo-Christian tradition since its earliest days. In the terms I have used in this essay, claims for women’s “special” nature also reflect the dualistic philosophical tradition; they are directly relevant to the contemporary challenges presented by revivalist movements that stress a dualistic view of women and men.

  Feminist theologians have been critical of the dualistic tradition in the Judeo-Christian heritage for some time. According to Rosemary Ruether’s analysis, for example, St. Augustine equated the dualism of body and soul with the dualism of male and female: “Thus the spiritual image of God … in man became essentially male and femaleness was equated with the lower, corporeal nature.”19 More recent arguments have been advanced with respect to the same kind of dualism within Islam. The Muslim feminist theologian Riffat Hassan argues that dualism found its way into Islam from the Judeo-Christian tradition by way of the commentaries on the Quran, even though this type of dualism appears to be alien to the Quran itself. Hassan also notes that the woman’s “body” is seen as her “essence” through the association of mind/body dualism with male/female distinctions.20 It is ironic to consider that the dualistic conception may be a legacy from the Judeo-Christian heritage, when it is precisely this heritage from which the new Islamic movements are trying to distance themselves at the present time.

  Maududi’s views abou
t women did not go unchallenged. For instance, in the early 1970s, a male Pakistani writer devoted a whole book to the analysis of purdah because he was convinced that “the questions of purdah and polygamy are, fundamentally, the questions of hindrances to the progress and development of the Muslim society, civilisation and culture.”21 This view was widely shared at the time, especially in urban areas.

  More recently, however, things have changed in a number of countries with large Muslim populations with regard to the position of women. The views of powerful social and political movements have influenced a number of governments to enforce policies that ensure the support of these movements at the expense of women. To take Pakistan as an example—although it is by no means the only country where this has happened—government directives made it clear beginning in 1980 that rights previously taken for granted would now be sharply limited or even withdrawn altogether. It began with orders to government employees to wear “Islamic dress” at work; this also applied to educational institutions. These directives were widely disregarded, but they encouraged “the more zealous to implement their subjective code of dress on women” whom they saw in public places. The policies were, at first, presented in terms of encouraging people to follow their own cultural norms and reject Western patterns, but critics soon argued that women were forced “to adhere to codes of conduct and dress which for men are considered antiquated, and of placing restrictions on the female half of the population exclusively.”22 In short, the revival of purdah norms was the beginning of widespread attempts to limit the rights of women and enforce the segregation of women and men. Women responded with protests and demonstrations organized by both existing and newly mobilized groups, but they were unable to prevent the enactment of legislation that sharply limited women’s legal rights.

  Sexuality and the Fear of Social Chaos

  Proponents of purdah are often explicit in their fears of the consequences of sexual attraction between women and men. They insist that only the most stringent controls over male–female interaction will preserve a society from what they see as moral chaos. As stated by Maududi: “Sexual attraction which naturally exists between the sexes as a strong instinctive urge becomes all too powerful, even rebellious, to transgress all limits with every impetus it receives from the free intermingling of the men and women.” In support of stringent sex segregation, proponents of purdah often recount examples of unusual sexual practices, prostitution, divorce, and pornography in Western countries. These accounts are taken from newspapers and magazines, particularly those with large international circulations, and are described as typical of everyday life. Maududi, whose works are important to note because they have been widely distributed, cites many such accounts, especially in writing of the “national suicide” of Western countries (especially France, England, and the United States), which he attributes to “the logical consequences of the movement which was initiated in the beginning of the 19th century for the rights and emancipation of women.”23

  Similar calls for a return to the “good old days” when they imagine social controls were strict is also common among fundamentalists in the Judeo-Christian tradition, but a preoccupation with sexuality among Muslims may need to be seen from another angle as well. According to some recent Muslim feminist writers, the association between sexual attraction and female passivity raises important questions about women and men in Muslim societies. “Why are silence, immobility, and obedience the key criteria of female beauty in the Muslim society where I live and work?” asks Fatna Sabbah, the pseudonymous author, a Muslim woman, of Woman in the Muslim Unconscious. “Why, according to the canons of beauty in Islamic literature, does a woman who does not express herself excite desire in a man?”24 Although this is a large and controversial issue that needs more careful discussion among Muslims than it has so far received, a peculiarly appropriate comment on Sabbah’s questions comes from Lila Abu-Lughod’s interpretation of honor and veiling among Egyptian Bedouins: “Sexuality is the most potent threat to the patrilineal, patricentered system and to the authority of those who uphold it … and women are those most closely identified with sexuality through their reproductive activities. Therefore, to show respect for that social order and the people who represent it, women must deny their sexuality. They do so by denying sexual interests—avoiding and acting uninterested in men, dressing modestly so as not to draw attention to their sexual charms, and veiling.” This interpretation is consistent with the same author’s depiction of “the honor of voluntary deference” as the “moral virtue of dependents,”25 which I discussed earlier. Stated in the terms used in that society, these are the ideas that underlie and reinforce the view of sexuality as a source of anarchy in an otherwise ordered society, an anarchy that lies close enough to the surface to require constant watchfulness and control.

  Beyond the psychological and symbolic significance of these concepts of women and sexuality, there is also the concrete material base of patrilineal, patriarchal societies that deeply affects both sexuality and reproduction. Among Muslims, for example, the legitimacy of children is of major importance in preserving a sense of order in the society and controlling the inheritance of property. Legitimacy is a major issue in Muslim personal law, particularly in connection with the regulation of marriage and divorce and in the inheritance of property. Sexuality poses a concrete threat to the social order because mutual attraction may upset careful parental plans for a future marriage alliance. Since women can legally inherit property under Muslim personal law (even if they do not always receive what they are entitled to), the property inherited by a daughter can potentially leave the control of the patrilineage. This is one factor in the preference for marriage arrangements with paternal kin, especially between the children of brothers who may jointly control family property. Sexuality, in short, has a legitimate place only in family life.

  Purdah and the Natural Rights of Women

  At the end, I return to the beginning, to Rokeya’s message to her readers to wake up to their self-interests and to regain their natural rights. To my mind, this is the real significance of her story and of all her later work. Purdah must be seen, as I think she saw it, not simply as a matter of veiling or not veiling female faces but as a way of putting half the population at a disadvantage in dealing with the world.

  In “Sultana’s Dream” Rokeya stood purdah on its head, shocking her readers and revealing, through “reverse purdah,” many of the implications of sex segregation. Reverse purdah was at least imaginable to Rokeya’s readers, in ways that a world completely without men (like Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland26) or an egalitarian world might not have been. Rokeya was not as explicit as she might have been about the cruel consequences of confinement for the men of Ladyland, concentrating attention instead on what life in Ladyland meant to previously confined women.

  Beyond its shock value, Rokeya’s story directly challenges the ideas by which her readers had been taught to live in family and society. This challenge took two main forms: a call for women to reconsider their self-interest and a demonstration of women’s competence in the world outside the home.

  The concept of self-interest that was instilled in South Asian women in Rokeya’s time—and that still prevails today among many people—is not that of an independent individual but of a member of the family, whose collective interests determine the actions of individuals. In this view, there is very little room for the “natural rights” that Rokeya may have had in mind in “Sultana’s Dream.” Where women’s interests are so tightly bound up with the interests of the family, it is hard to imagine a woman acting against family interests.

  But Rokeya, the rebel and reformer, was also a product of this environment, and who can say whether there were not others like her? The life histories women tell these days about their mothers and grandmothers and aunts suggest that streams of resentment and muted rebellion run deep in some unexpected places. If there were other Rokeyas, we will perhaps learn about them from the life histories n
ow being talked about and written down all over South Asia. And they will be worth waiting for.

  Notes to Afterword

  1. Meredith Borthwick, The Changing Role of Women in Bengal, 1849–1905 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984), is one of several authors making this point with specific reference to women’s position. See also Dagmar Engels, “The Limits of Gender Ideology: Bengali Women, the Colonial State, and the Private Sphere, 1890–1930,” Paper presented at the Seventh Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Wellesley College, June 19–21, 1987.

  2. John T. Platts, A Dictionary of Urdu, Classical Hindi and English (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1960), pp. 246–47.

  3. More details on purdah observance and the analysis of purdah practices can be found in many sources, as indicated in Carol Sakala’s comprehensive, annotated bibliography, Women of South Asia: A Guide to Resources (Millwood, N.Y.: Kraus International Publications, 1980). A collection of articles about purdah, by both U.S. and South Asian authors, appears in Hanna Papanek and Gail Minault, eds., Separate Worlds: Studies of Purdah in South Asia (Columbia, Mo.: South Asia Books, and Delhi: Chanakya Publishers, 1982). Another source on Muslim purdah is Patricia Jeffery, Frogs in a Well: Indian Women in Purdah (London: Zed Press, 1979). On Hindu purdah, see Ursula Sharma, “Women and Their Affines: The Veil as a Symbol of Separation,” Man (N.S.) 13, no. 2 June 1978): 218–33, and Women, Work and Property in North-West India (London: Tavistock Publications, 1980). Detailed descriptions of purdah in a very conservative Hindu household appear in a novel by Rama Mehta, Inside the Haveli (New Delhi: Arnold-Heinemann Publishers, 1977), also excerpted in Papanek and Minault.