The following excerpt has been taken from the chapter, “Women organising for change: Late 19th and early 20th century”
Education was a key social reform issue in the subcontinent during [the late 19th and early 20th century]. Concern extended to female education as well, with at least some reformers advocating a change in women’s role. Many advocates formulated their appeals as a return to previous traditions: Muslims referring back to the glorious days of a pristine Islam, Hindus to a golden Vedic age.
Women patrons played a key role in establishing institutionalised education for girls. The Begums of Bhopal, rulers of their own princely state, promoted schooling for both girls and boys. Begum Sultan Jahan was also a patron of the emerging women’s organisations in India. She funded the Anjumani-i-Khawatin-i-Islam (Association of Muslim Women), from its inception in 1914 until just before her death in 1930, and was deeply involved with the All-India Women’s Conference.
A keen supporter of girls’ education in the fullest sense and opposed to limiting and equating education with literacy only, Sultan Jahan maintained:
“It is a stupid thing, to my mind, to teach the girls to read and write, and then leave them to their fate. The very least that should be done for them, is to give them a thorough grounding in things that matter, and to awaken the dormant soul in them.”
Further east, in Bengal, Nawab Faizunnessa Chaudhrani (1834-1903) of Comilla, who was granted the title of Nawab even though she was a woman, was a pivotal player. Born into the aristocracy and herself brought up in purdah, Faizunnessa founded one of the earliest free madrassahs for girls. This school later developed into the Faizunnessa Degree College and granted bachelor’s degrees. Long before this, Faizunnessa opened schools for girls in each administrative centre of her estate.
She also opened an English-medium school, Faizunnessa Girls’ Pilot High School, in 1873. The high school catered especially to pardanashin, or purdah-observing girls. It took a while for this unique institution to gain acceptance but it did eventually flourish.
Girls’ schools were opened in other cities of Bengal, such as Calcutta (1882), and Dhaka (1879) as well. Not all of these schools enabled the girls to sit for formal educational examinations, however, and some scheme aimed at providing female education within homes by means of mobile women tutors in keeping with the earlier traditions. Women, however, persevered in their pursuit of female education and in 1896 Latifunessa became the first Muslim woman to graduate from the Campbell Medical School in Calcutta.
This same period saw the emergence of a flurry of magazines and periodicals in India, as had been the case in the Arab world and in Turkey a little earlier. Attesting to women’s sense of solidarity across cultures and continents, the first journal for women in 1884, titled Rafiq-i-Niswan (Women’s Friend, or Companion), was funded by American women. Publishedbi-monthly, the journal appeared in Urdu, Hindi, Tamil, and Bengali. Its impact does not compare, however, with that of indigenous journals.
The first Urdu journal specifically intended for a female Muslim readership, Akhbari (Women’s Newspaper), was launched by a man, Maulvi Sayyid Ahmed, in 1887. Male reformers were also involved in establishing three of the most influential Urdu language journals of this period: Tehzib-i-Niswan, Khatun, and Ismat; but Tehzibi started in 1898, was a joint venture of Maulvi Sayyid Mumtaz Ali and his wife, Muhammadi Begum.
Muhammadi Begum would become the first sole woman editor of an Urdu journal. That same year Shaikh Abdullah, a lawyer and a well-known reformist based in Aligarh, started Khatun (‘Lady’ or ‘Gentlewoman’), as a platform to advance women’s education. Khatun regularly reported on the proceedings of the All India Muslim Education Conference’s annual meetings, and successfully elicited financial support for a proposed girls’ school in Aligarh.
Another long lived publication for women was Ismat (Chastity), edited by Rashid-ul-Khairi and published in Delhi. Khairi was an immensely popular novelist and many of his books, aimed at promoting a better status for women, were adopted by state schools as textbooks.
In Bengal, women started contributing to magazines and journals sympathetic to their cause and point of view. These included a host of journals edited by progressive Muslims such as Mussalman, Nabanoor, Sadhana, Bulbul, and Saugat.
Amongst the earliest women contributors of the late 19th century were Bibi Taherunissa (in 1864), Latifunessa (in 1897), and Nawab Faizunessa (in 1876), all writing for Bhamabodhini, a journal that right from its inception, dedicated a separate section for new women writers. By the turn of the century, Bengali women included powerful writers such as Rokeya Hossein publishing scathing critiques.
Women’s journals were an important means for women to voice their concerns, to engage with their social environment, and to link up with each other. They were also a means of inspiring and being inspired by other women.
Excerpted with permission from Great Ancestors: Women Claiming Rights in Muslim Contexts(HISTORY) By Farida Shaheed and Aisha Lee Shaheed Oxford University Press, KarachiISBN 978-0-19-547636-1220pp. Rs795