Secluded Scholars: Women’s Education and Muslim Social Reform in Colonial India

"This volume is a detailed and thoroughly documented account of the individuals, organizations and institutions that were influential in India in the promotion of education for Muslim girls in colonial India. Minault uncovers debates over the question of girls’ schooling in their historical context, placing emphasis on the colonial situation, Islamic reform movements of the time, and the expansion of the print media, especially in the form of magazines and books for and about women. She provides details of the arguments that raged, in print and in public speeches, over questions of whether girls should be educated and how. She reveals the efforts of Muslism women and men in various parts of India to establish schools for girls of their community. She delineates the all-India network of linkages among these individuals and considers some of the ‘products’ of the schools discussed and the effect that westernized education had on their lives. Secluded Scholars provides a wealth of information culled from a variety of sources in Urdu and other languages. In placing this material within a framework related to the construction of gender within Islamic societies, it is a book which will interest all who study women’s history, gender relations, Islam and the cultural history of the colonial period."