Acknowledgements
This book would not have been possible without the gracious support and generous help of friends, teachers and family through the years. The project commenced when I began my graduate study at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. The graduate program at unc, Chapel Hill introduced me to the discipline of history where I completed my Masters thesis under the guidance of Yasmin Saikia. My graduate training continued at University of Texas, Austin where I finished my doctorate. The department of Asian Studies at Austin introduced me to a world of students and faculty excited by the study of South Asia allowing me to cultivate and hone my interests. My teachers, guides, and advisors at Austin were of immense help. The warmth and encouragement of Gail Minault and Syed Akbar Hyder opened up the intricacies of studying Muslim history in South Asia. Gail Minault’s intervention in Muslim history of the subcontinent particularly her work on women provided a crucial foundation on which to build my own work. Akbar ’s love of Urdu poetry and passion for aesthetics taught me to appreciate beauty and to read words closely for their intricate meaning. Kamran Ali in anthropology ensured that I remain attentive to social theory and to bring interdisciplinary focus to my research questions. Cynthia Talbot raised questions for my thesis that I had not anticipated earlier. Shahnaz Hasan who is always ready for a warm chat and conversation helped me in reading Urdu, and became a wonderful friend and teacher. Outside Austin, Rochona Majumdar at University of Chicago, who allowed me to audit her courses and familiarized me with social theory at an early stage of my studies, provided valuable insights in my work. My postdoctoral fellowship at Yale was immensely valuable and permitted an intellectual environment where I started expanding my dissertation along the themes of the book. I thank Sivaramakrishnan for giving me this opportunity. I should also express my gratitude to Inderpal Grewal who was a supportive mentor and guide. No mention of Yale can be complete without Kasturi Gupta, whose joyful humor combined with high administrative skills kept South Asia Center alive and running. Her friendship sustained me throughout the year and I enjoyed the company of other scholars at Yale as well.
At the research end, I must express my thanks to various libraries and institutes that housed my archive. The help of staff at Khuda Bakhsh Oriental library in Patna, where I worked for several months and spent long hours cannot be overstated. They graciously provided scanned photographs of hundreds of pages from Urdu women’s magazines housed in their collection. I am grateful for their commitment to research and to preservation of archive. The Bihar Urdu Academy in Patna also provided me crucial source materials. Besides Patna, I also worked in libraries of Delhi, Bhopal, Hyderabad, Aligarh and Mumbai. In Delhi, I regularly visited Jamia Millia Islamia and spent time in the rare books section of Zakir Husain Library. Amira Khatoon, a close family friend, was of special help not just at the library but also in giving me valuable primary sources from her family’s personal collection. Professor Ghazanfar Zaidi led me to some unexplored materials preserved in Jamia Premchand Archives where the Director Dr. Sabiha Zaidi was generous with her help. In Bhopal, I am thankful to Iqbal library and in Hyderabad, a treasure trove of Urdu texts, I am thankful to the staff of Osmania University library, Iqbal Academy, Salar Jung Museum library and Idara-e Adabiyat-e Urdu. I benefited considerably from my visit to Maulana Azad libray in Aligarh, where I also had an opportunity of discussing my work with Professor Asghar Abbas. Trip to District Library at Mall Road of Shimla also revealed unusual finds that I could not locate anywhere else. In Mumbai, I was fortunate to access and find several old and rare novels at the Anjuman-e Islam School. I am also thankful for the valuable help I received from the staff of the British library in accessing the important and relevant literature there.
I am also indebted to several friends and colleagues for useful discussions around issues related to this work. Siobhan Lambert-Hurley has been the most wonderful of mentors and friends, and working with her on the women’s autobiography project connected me to historians and scholars of Middle East. The three conferences that emerged out of the project were joyful events and great learning experiences. I have greatly benefitted from the deliberations and discussions at these conferences. Thanks also due to Anshu Malhotra, who I came to know at the conference. I am also thankful to Ishita Pande who invited me to a seminar on sexuality at Queens University. The seminar provided me an opportunity for thinking critically about my sources. My interaction with colleagues at the seminar particularly with Douglas Haynes helped me to improve one of the chapters of the book. The comments on my work of Indrani Chatterjee, who has always been a supportive mentor for women scholars, were of great value. Conversations with Margrit Pernau, Sylvia Vatuk, Mrinalini Sinha, cm Naim, Francis Robinson and Ramya Sreenivasin also helped me to ask and explore a number of significant questions. Interactions with Dipesh Chakravarty and Sudipta Kaviraj over the years have been both a source of fun and learning. Back home in India my grateful thanks are due to Charu Gupta, Seema Alavi and Tanika Sarkar who always showed keen interest in my work that aided my research.
I must also express my gratitude to my professional home of the last 6 years, Louisiana State University. I joined the university in 2014 with my fellow colleagues, Brendan Karch and Catherine Jacquet, and their friendship made the transition to academia much easier. Guidance and conversation with Margherita Zanasi and Maribel Dietz alleviated the tensions of completing the book. Both my former chair Victor Stater and current chair Aaron Sheehan Dean have been supportive of junior colleagues in the department, and I thank them for their support. I am also grateful for the Summer Fellowship grant by Office of Research and Economic Development at lsu that covered my expenses of overseas accommodation and international travel during research.
Selections from this book have appeared elsewhere as well. I am thankful to Modern Asian Studies for permitting me to reproduce my article on polygyny, and to B.N Verma at Primus, which published my article on Urdu advice literature in the edited volume Hidden Histories. I am also indebted to my reviewers for their critical evaluation of my manuscript. I am deeply appreciative of Patricia Radder, my editor at Brill, who worked with me with great patience, diligence and care particularly given the stresses in my family.
A note of appreciation also goes to friends I have made throughout the years. In graduate school, Emilia, Natasha, Suzanne, Ali, Dharatri, Arup and Imran all made doctorate study fun and a learned experience. Andrew and Max continue to enrich social sciences in Urdu, and I have gained immensely from my interactions with them. Special thanks go to Timsal and Isabel, some of my closest friends in academia. Isabel has nourished my intellectual life and shown that women can do both career and family exceptionally well. I should also acknowledge Sadia Saeed, who I met at Yale. Long chats with her about politics have become my survival kit in this tumultuous world.
No work is complete without the love of family. My brother Adnan and sister-in-law Sahba provided much needed humor, warmth and love always reminding that there was more to life than just work. My nephew Omar brings me indescribable joy and his unusual talent in art and encyclopedic knowledge of animals never ceases to amaze me. None of this of course would be possible without the support of my parents. They have believed in me more than I ever could and trusted my ability to keep at my work till the end. My mother’s love, her insistence that I strive for higher education and her enormous sacrifice for our family as we shifted to US made my graduate study and academic career possible. My father’s life, as a self-made man, from its humble beginnings in a small town of India remains an inspiration. He exemplifies the disciplined life of a scholar with deep knowledge and wisdom, and has taught me how to read the complexities of the past. Lastly, an acknowledgement in a book on Muslim women and their struggles is not complete without the mention of my maternal grandmother, Mushir Fatma. Her idealism and devotion to children’s education is part of the dynamic history of Muslim women in the subcontinent and I dedicate this work to her memory.