A Stroll to the Times of Muslim Bhadramahila in Colonial Bengal.

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The history of the victims of the domineering gender has been occupying the minds of several historians and pages of several books. The 19th and 20th century have their own place in the history of colonial Bengal; with the cultural awakening, rise of nationalism and the transition from age old traditions to modernity, these two centuries have kept the scholars quite busy. This transition led to the changing position of women in the society through various reform movements, undertaken initially by the Hindus and Brahmos and then by the Muslims. This paper will deal with the Muslim bhadramahila, their condition in the society, reform movements and the mindset of the reformers and finally focus on the new women of the society. Before dwelling deeper into this topic, let’s first have a look at how the term bhadramahila was popularized. The term bhadrolok and the resistance to it, found its way in the Muslim society; which is well illustrated in an article titled “Bhai Musulman Jago” (Brother Muslim Rise) by Ibne Maaz in 1907- “They (educated Muslim youth) feel obliged to admire the ways of cultured, educated Hindus and to imitate them… Many Muslims in the hope of becoming ‘bhadralok’ shave off their beard, discard their Muslim identity and even look down their noses as pious men”. Acceptance of the term bhadralok in the Muslim context logically legitimizes the term bhadramahila as used by Ghulam Murshid and Meredith Borthwick. According to Borthwick in her book The Changing Role of Women in Bengal (1849-1905), the bhadramahila were “in broad terms, the mothers, wives and daughters of the many school masters, lawyers, doctors and government servants who made up the English educated professional Bengali “middle class” or bhadralok”. But she also pointed out that the bhadramahila were new social entities in their own right as well- “by the end of the 19th century there

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