• ISBN13: 9788189884437
• Binding: Hardcover
• Subject: History
• Publisher: Zubaan
• Publisher Imprint: Zubaan
• Publication Date: July 15, 2008
• Pages: 300
• Original Price: INR 595.0
• Language: English
• Edition: N/A
• Item Weight: 1000 grams
• BISAC Subject(s): General

Mahua Sarkar examines how Muslim women in colonial Bengal came to be more marginalized in nationalist discourse than their Hindu counterparts. She considers how their near-invisibility, except as victims, underpins the construction of the ideal citizen-subject in late colonial India. She argues that the nation-centredness of history as a discipline, and the intellectual politics of liberal feminism, have together contributed to the production of Muslim women as the oppressed, mute, and invisible other of the normative modern Indian subject. Drawing on extensive archival research and oral histories, Sarkar traces Muslim women as they surface and disappear in colonial, Hindu, nationalist and liberal Muslim writings. This compelling study concludes by tracing the complex links between past constructions of Muslim women, current representations, and the violence against them in contemporary India.

Sheila Sengupta is a freelance translator based in Delhi. Her research and translation interests range from contemporary Bengali literature to nineteenth century women's writing. Her translations have been published in various journals including Indian Literature, the Journal of the Poetry Society of India and Parabaas.