Changing India: A Muslim Woman Speaks

Description

One of the pioneering works by an Indian Muslim woman, this book is a collection of essays on a range of social reform topics including women’s education (especially of Muslim girls), dowry, beggary, the position of women in Islam, and the Indian woman’s status. It also touches on the Girl Guides Movement in which the author was an enthusiastic participant. The author’s eloquent pleas for the clearing away of religious dogma and the reassertion of the true Islamic status of womanhood are based on sound knowledge born out of her own rich experience and study. She explains her purpose, ‘The disparity between the real Islamic theory about womanhood and the actual practice has been one of the causes that led to the degeneration of the Muslims.’ With Muslim women still struggling with this dichotomy, what she wrote seventy years ago is no less relevant today.

Table of Contents

1. Foreword
2. Foreword by John Spiers
3. Introduction
4. Islam and Muhammadanism
5. Ijtihad: The Basic Principle of Islam
6. Prophet Muhammad (PBUH): The Most Modern Thinker
7. The Causes that Led to the Degeneration of the Muslims
8. There is no Polygamy in Islam
9. The Psychological Treatment of Man in Islam
10. The Position of Woman in Islam
11. The Present Condition of Girls in Islam
12. Purdah and Progress
13. The Service of Islam to Humanity
14. Changing India: Basis of Cultural Relationships and the Case for Communal Award
15. The Position of Women in India
16. The Differences Between Muslims and Hindus
17. The Unemployment Problem and Mysore
18. Beggary in India
19. Is The Present Dowry System Justified?
20. The Effect of Early Marriage on Indians
21. The Importance of the Mother Tongue
22. Polygamous Marriages
23. Educated Girls in Uncivilized Families
24. HH The Maharaja of Mysore
25. Tribute to The Deccan Times
26. Group Psychology and India
27. Impressions of a Visit to Europe
28. My Experience in an English University
29. Women of East and West in Cooperation
30. Progress of Women’s Education Abroad
31. Muslim Women’s Education
32. Character and Education
33. The Educative Value of the Girl Guides Movement
34. The Girl Guides’ Movement in India
35. Heredity
36. Woman as an Individual
37. Potentialities of the Future
38. Appendix
39. Index

Author Biography

Iqbalunnisa Begum was born in Bangalore in 1897. She was married at the age of 15 to Syed Ahmed Hussain, an official in the Mysore government who encouraged her to acquire an education. She joined a school in Mysore and later the Maharani’s College from where she obtained her BA degree and a gold medal by correspondence in 1930. In 1933, she travelled to the UK for her Master’s in Education at Leeds University, thus becoming one of the few middle class Muslim Women from India to obtain a degree from the UK. She represented India at the Twelfth International Women’s Congress at Istanbul in September 1935 and was a keen member of the All-India Women’s Conferences. In Bangalore, she founded a school where she encouraged Muslim girls to acquire an education while also providing training in rug making, carpet weaving, cane weaving, embroidery, cutting, and sewing.

Her students participated in the Girl Guides, were good debaters, and keen performers in dramas and plays. She later became headmistress of a primary school and managed to have it established as an Urdu Girls’ Middle School. She also instituted a school of Home Industries for Muslim women in Bangalore, formed a Teachers’ Association for Muslim women teachers, and, against great opposition from her community, started the Girl Guides Movement among Muslim girls in which she remained active. She is the author of several books including Changing India: A Muslim Woman Speaks (Bangalore, 1940) and Purdah and Polygamy: Life in an Indian Muslim Household (Bangalore, 1944).