The Home and the World

1. The Home and the World Bengali Muslim Women's Writings in the Early 20th Century Presented by Irteza Binte-Farid

2. Historical Importance Why Study Bengali Muslim Women? Women as Historical Actors Countering Erasure: Highlighting the Hidden Voices of Women Writers The Power of Individual Voices: Women as Actors with Agency How did women enact the Bengali Muslim identity? Which women were they? Creating Women's Spaces

3. Historical Actors The British Colonialists Hindus Bengali Muslims The Women Themselves

4. Who are the Bengali Muslims?

5. “The Woman Question” Fatima Mernissi: Muslim societies undergoing change in the face of colonial encounter have been unable to generate a competent ideology designed to cope with the accompanying economic, social, and political changes. Therefore, amidst a great deal of social and economic change, Muslim communities viewed the private sphere of home as a place for maintaining tradition.

6. Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossein Education Religion Social Service Nationalism Literature

7. “So you see that these religious scriptures are nothing but regulations made by men. The thing that you hear in the prescriptions of the sages might be contrary in regulations made by a lady sage...anyway, in the name of religion now we should no longer bear the unjustifiable mastery of the males with heads bowed down.” “Amader Abanati,” published in Motichur Anthology, 1904

8. Other Notable Writers Sufia Kamal, Poet and Social Worker Shamshunnahar Mahmud, Biographer FazilatunNessa, Math Professor MahmudaKhatunSiddiqua, Poet and SaogatWriter

9. “Mother used to love listening to songs. Sometimes after the Zohr [afternoon] prayers, she would summon all the maids to the verandah [porch] and bid them to sing...Mother would sometimes request particular songs...about weddings, bridal toilette, the coming of the groom, songs of farewell. Sometimes Mother wanted to hear spiritual or marfati songs, or ancient ballads, etc. Many of us would cry with emotion, at the beauty of the legends—the pathos...such as that of Princess Kamalmani” Syeda Monowara, Bengali Muslim Writer, Early 20th Century

10. Women's Spaces The Inner Space Saogat Women's Magazine Rokeya's Literature Sultana's Dream Padmarag

11. AgencyAgency is the capacities and skills required to undertake particular kinds of moral actions that are bound up with historically and culturally specific disciplines through which the subject is foundIt is not Emancipatory Politics.Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety

12. Significance Today Reclaiming Identity Reshaping Agency Reemphasizing Continuity

13. Works Cited Amin, Sonia Nishat. The World of Muslim Women in Colonial Bengal, 1876-1939. E.J. Brill: Leiden, 1996. Azim, Firdous and Zaman, Niaz (eds.) Infinite Variety: Women in Society and Literature. Dhaka: University Press Limited, 1994. Borthwick, Meredith. The Changing Role of Women in Bengal, 1849-1905. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984. Chakraborty, Ashoke Kumar. Bengali Muslim Literati and the Development of the Muslim Community in Bengal. Shimla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study, 2002. Hossain, RokeyaSakhawat. Sultana's Dream and Padmarag: Two Feminist Utopias. Translated and introduction by BarnitaBagchi. London: Penguin Books, 2005. Jahan, Roushan. Inside Seclusion: the Avarodhbasini of RokeyaSakhawatHossain. Dhaka: BRAC Printers, 1981. ShaheenAkhtar and MoushumiBhowmik (eds.) Women in concert: An anthology of Bengali Muslim women's writings, 1904-1938 (Kolkata: Stree, 2008).