Re-animating Muslim women's auto/biographical writings: Hayat-e-Ashraf as a palimpsest of educated selves. Issue 4 (3rd September 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Khoja-Moolji, Shenila
• Is Part Of: Third world thematics. Volume 4:Issue 4/5(2019)
• Page Start: 345
• Page End: 359
• Publication Date: 2019-09-03
• Subjects: Gender -- Muslim women -- decoloniality -- women's education -- biography; Developing countries -- Economic conditions -- Periodicals; Developing countries -- Politics and government -- Periodicals; Globalization -- Periodicals; 338.90091724
• DOI: 10.1080/23802014.2019.1622443
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2379-9978

Abstract

ABSTRACT: The dominant image of Indian Muslim women of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is one of being uneducated, silent, and secluded. This trope has crossed temporal and spatial borders, making its appearance even today in representations of Muslim girls in international development policy literature and media. Often Islam is blamed for women's conditions, and limited attention is paid to their contextual specificity. One way to decolonize this imaginary is by excavating female Muslim subjects who defied these logics, with careful attention to how within the right circumstances Muslim women have been able to experience empowerment, however tentative. In this paper, I do so by re-purposing elite Muslim women's auto/biographical writings from the turn of the twentieth century to intervene in dominant knowledges about their silence. I center an under-studied auto/biographical text Hayat-e-Ashraf (The Life of Ashraf) compiled by Muhammadi Begum (1878–1908), a pioneer female Muslim writer and editor from the turn of the twentieth century. Hayat-e-Ashraf includes not only Muhammadi Begum's account of Ashraf-un-Nissa's (d. 1903) life, but also articles written by Ashraf herself and her daughter. I therefore theorize the text as a palimpsest, layered with multiple performances of educated selves.