national movement. This was demonstrated at a
public meeting in Punjab. When arguing that the
whole audience was after all part of her family, she
lifted the veil of her burqa≠and came out of purdah
(Minault 1982, 252–4).
The formation of non-partisan women’s groups
enabled Muslim and Hindu women to fight to-
gether for their rights and to steadily recognize the
irrelevance of purdah. Sultan Jahan Begum, the
politically active ruler of Bhopal, shifted from a
position of support for purdah to its renunciation.
Early in her rule she opposed coeducational institu-
tions because of the prevalence of purdah. In 1922
she reportedly wrote that “to expect Muslim girls
to go to schools and colleges with open faces or
with veils on with boys to obtain instruction... is
tantamount to the death of their finer sentiments,
morality and religion” (Roshini1946, 11, 92).
Several years later, in a report of the AIWC, she is
quoted as having said: “The present strictness of
purdahsystem among Muslims does not form part
of their religious obligations. The Mussalmans should
coolly and calmly decide whether by respecting a
mere custom should they keep their women in a
state of suspended animation” (Kaur 1968, 26). It
was only in 1929, when she presided over the
AIWC session, that she publicly and symbolically
removed her purdah. At that session a resolution
against purdah was passed (Caton 1930, 123).
Though purdah had already been identified as
the chief impediment to the progress of women in
the nineteenth century, it was not till the formation
of the women’s movement in the twentieth century
that women leaders belonging to politically active
families were able to render purdah irrelevant and
to center women’s issues within the goals of the
national movement. In turn, the national move-
ment with its broad alliance of communities pro-
vided women leaders with a platform that gave no646 political-social movements: protest movements
importance to their traditional roles or purdah but
instead supported them in promoting issues that
increased their social and political participation
and created links between communities and regions
across the subcontinent, even when political aspira-
tions of male leaders and political parties diverged
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