{"id":174,"date":"2023-10-10T11:50:55","date_gmt":"2023-10-10T09:50:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/womenandthecourt\/?page_id=174"},"modified":"2023-11-15T15:32:37","modified_gmt":"2023-11-15T14:32:37","slug":"abstracts","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/womenandthecourt\/conference\/abstracts\/","title":{"rendered":"Abstracts"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Nicholas Abbott<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Making and Negotiating an Inter-Polity Legal Forum in Early Colonial India: Female Was\u0324\u012bqad\u0101r<\/em>s in the Court of the Awadh Residency, c. 1840\u201350<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the most distinctive facets of the tumultuous alliance between the British East India Company and the North Indian polity of Awadh (c. 1722\u20131856) was the legal-cum-<\/em>financial institution of the was\u0324\u012b<\/em>qa<\/em>. Comprising permanent investments in Company securities, was\u0324\u012b<\/em>qa<\/em>sprovided hereditary, interest-funded pensions\u2014as well as certain guarantees of British protection and legal immunities from the Awadh \u2018state\u2019\u2014to designated recipients and their heirs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As historians have noted, by placing pensions and protections under the control of the Company and its local resident, and by funneling massive sums into British coffers through often coercive means, the was\u0324\u012b<\/em>qa <\/em>spurred the expansion of indirect rule in North India and provided critical support to the Company\u2019s public finances. However, as this paper also contends, the was\u0324\u012b<\/em>qa <\/em>was not simply a product of unilateral British pressure. Rather, it was fundamentally shaped by gendered fissures within the Awadh ruling dynasty, and by the aims and aspirations of female elites as they maneuvered within a narrow, \u2018inter-polity\u2019 legal space between the courts (darb\u0101r<\/em>s) of Awadh\u2019s male rulers and the Company\u2019s resident in the capital of Lucknow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Focusing on an inheritance dispute between female pensioners (was\u0324\u012b<\/em>qad<\/em>\u0101r<\/em>s) and the king of Awadh in 1844, the paper uses Persian, Urdu, and English wills and petitions to chart how women in Awadh envisioned and engaged a burgeoning legal order oriented around the court of the British resident in Awadh. In so doing, it illustrates not only how female elites were integral to the creation of colonial institutions like the was\u0324\u012b<\/em>qa. <\/em>It also demonstrates how they repurposed precolonial concepts and strategies for the colonial court, thus helping to transform what has recently been termed \u2018Mughal law\u2019 Anglo-Islamic jurisprudence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Raziuddin Aquil<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Women\u2019s Roles in Mughal Imperial Household (Gulbadan Begam\u2019s account)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This paper offers details and inferences drawn from a fresh reading of Gulbadan Begum\u2019s Humayun-nama<\/em>, with a focus on women\u2019s roles in the Mughal household mainly during the volatile period of the Mughal-Afghan encounter. As Babur\u2019s daughter, Humayun\u2019s sister, and Akbar\u2019s aunt, Gulbadan Begam knew Mughal political practices inside out for the major part of the sixteenth century – from early struggles of empire-building to establishing the Mughal system on a firm footing in the large parts of the Indian subcontinent. Her book was primarily written as a source text for the early period to be covered in the Mughal official account, Abu\u2019l Fazl\u2019s Akbarnama<\/em>, which was commissioned in late 1580s. Gulbadan Begam\u2019s work presenting a gendered perspective on Mughal tents, camps, courts and forts in the early sixteenth century has been valued in modern studies. A renewed discussion focusing on her narrative, presenting a close and critical account of the workings of the Mughal family and the place of women in it, whether private or public, will be a fruitful exercise. The paper will especially examine Gulbadan Begam\u2019s account of the presence of women during Humayun\u2019s troubles with his brothers during the period of his struggle with Sher Khan\/Sher Shah: Bengal, Chausa, Kanauj, and after. It will look at Hindal\u2019s rebellion, Humayun\u2019s request to Gulbadan Begam and her mother to bring Hindal to his presence. It will also discuss Kamran\u2019s suspicions, rebellion and chastisement. Gulbadan Begam takes different positions in the troubles within the extended family, depending on the gravity of offence and the nature of relationship such as full brother or half. Gulbadan also provides interesting details regarding Humayun\u2019s marriage with the reluctant Hamida Banu Begam, whose family descended from the Iranian Sufi scholar and reformer Ahmad-i Jam. This was presented as part of a prophecy of the birth of Akbar, descending from his mother and paternal grandmother who belonged to the high saintly lineage of Ahmad-i Jam. The Safavid Shah Tahmasp\u2019s sister\u2019s fine rapport with the fugitive Mughal family adds another dimension to the saga of exile. Refashioned and recharged, Humayun was able to undertake the victorious and sometimes brutal march to reconquer the Mughal kingdom of Hindustan. This involved pacifying anxieties and politics within the extended Mughal harem also.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Blain Auer<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hindu-Muslim Political Marriage Alliances and the Formation of the First Indo-Islamic Empire<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the late medieval period, marriage alliances were generally created within the royal family household to protect the privileges of the ruling dynasty, reinforce political relationships, and maintain the social hierarchy. A major change in political marriage alliances occurred at the end of the 13th<\/sup> and beginning of the 14th<\/sup> centuries under the reign of the Delhi sultan \u02bfAl\u0101\u02be al-D\u012bn Khalj\u012b (r. 1296 \u2013 1316). He was the first Muslim ruler of India to establish marriage alliances with Hindu rulers of vassal courts. He first achieved this when he married the daughter of the Seuna king R\u0101madeva (r. c.\u20091271 -1309), following his conquest of Devagiri. Later he married his son Khizr Kh\u0101n to Deval R\u0101n\u012b, the daughter of Kar\u1e47adeva (r. c.\u20091296 \u2013 1304), the last Vaghela ruler of Gujarat, a marriage that was celebrated in Am\u012br Khusraw\u2019s poem \u02bfAsh\u012bqa <\/em>(The Beloved<\/em>). These marriages radically influenced the course of history during the reign of \u02bfAl\u0101\u02be al-D\u012bn Khalj\u012b. While later marriage alliances between Mughal and Rajput courts are well-known, the transformative alliances of the Khalj\u012b period are much less studied. This talk considered the impact of Hindu-Muslim marriage alliances under \u02bfAl\u0101\u02be al-D\u012bn Khalj\u012b and their consequences for Indian history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nadia Cattoni<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Imagining the Court of Amber: Space as Women\u2019s Networks<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the second half of the seventeenth century, at the court of Amber, the courtesan Mohan Rai wrote a panegyric to her king, Ram Singh I (r. 1667-1689). The text, a poetic work written in Brajbhasha, is titled Kr\u012b\u1e0d\u0101vinoda<\/em>, \u201cThe pleasures in sports\u201d. It is a collection of short poems in the style of a pra\u015basti<\/em>, describing various moments in Ram Singh\u2019s life, from Holi festivities to the celebration of his birthday. Mohan Rai\u2019s descriptions are framed within a discourse of legitimising sovereignty by merging Ram Singh\u2019s reign into Krishna\u2019s mythological realm. In addition to poems about the king himself, the work also includes poems about women living at the court: a new bride, a co-wife, a woman in love, the queen, etc. They are described in specific emotional states. This paper argues that the poems about palace women are not only illustrations of courtly poetry. They are also a way of giving a voice to the women of the Amber court. Placed alongside descriptions of the king’s life, they show women’s involvement in and perceptions of court events. Taking advantage of the codified poetry of her time, Mohan Rai invites her audience to enter women\u2019s lives, emotions, and experiences. By revealing networks of women, by showing relationships building among women of the court and by including herself in her writing, she offers alternative imaginaries and definitions of the space of the court.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mehreen Cheeda-Razvi<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Re-claiming Imperial Geographies of Power: Nur Jahan Begum\u2019s Place in the Mughal Court<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nur Jahan Begum, the last and favourite wife of the Mughal emperor, Jahangir (r.1605-27), was granted rights and powers by him that no Mughal queen previously had, including some that overtly proclaimed her as co-sovereign. In Nur Jahan we therefore see, for the first time, a Mughal consort acting as a co-ruler. In doing so, she reformulated what passed as sovereign authority, decentring what we commonly understand as the concentration of power in the person of the emperor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This singularity of her position at the Mughal court, however, is lost in the historical record. Character assassinations carried out in contemporary histories memorialised Nur Jahan as a cunning, manipulative woman who rendered Jahangir a puppet-ruler while she took control of the reins of government. The contemporary writers who claimed this, however, were writing for patrons who disliked, even hated, Nur Jahan, and so went out of their way to vilify her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This paper will re-assert Nur Jahan\u2019s position of authority in Jahangir\u2019s court through what might seem a surprising medium: architectural space. In the Mughal context, royal patronage of built space was rife with symbolic meaning, and like Jahangir, Nur Jahan commissioned buildings to project her own political power. I will argue that she also intended to project the power of the state, and, by doing so, further legitimised her role as co-sovereign. By mimicking Jahangir\u2019s imperial mode of architectural style and decoration, including symbolically visualising aspects of Mughal imperial ideology on her buildings, Nur Jahan equated her architecture with Jahangir\u2019s. The discussion will centre on two of Nur Jahan\u2019s architectural commissions, the Sarai Nur Mahal and Jahangir\u2019s mausoleum. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Furthermore, in building Jahangir\u2019s tomb, Nur Jahan equated herself with previous Mughal emperors who patronised the imperial mausoleums of their predecessors, for her construction of a Mughal emperor\u2019s tomb remains a unique undertaking. An act of architectural patronage laden with political, dynastic, and imperial symbolism, it certainly was intended to convey her power and longevity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rohit<\/strong> De<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sisters-in-law: Legal Biography and the Women’s Question in Postcolonial Courts<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What can lawyer\u2019s lives tell us about the how legal innovations, procedures, ideas, and cultures evolved across South and Southeast-Asia? Moving away from legislative or jurisprudence centered studies of legal change, this paper will focus on the lawyerly lives of women civil liberty lawyers in India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Malaysia tracing how their legal practice and politics evolved from the moment of decolonization through to the early 1990s, with the emergence of international human rights organizations. Histories of the legal profession in Asia have shown how native elites emerged as interpreters between colonial state and society and were well positioned to take leadership after independence. These narratives often leave out new demographics within the legal profession, such as women lawyers, who remained a minority with limited access to postcolonial power. The emergence of women civil liberty lawyers created forms of female public citizenship and allowed the use of new legal vocabularies to make and shape claims. Following the careers, a generation of women litigators and jurists,  as they navigated colonial emergencies, postcolonial authoritarianism, majoritarian ethnic politics and patriarchies, the maps how a common mode of insurgent lawyering emerged that centred gender inequality as a question that was central to the courts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Heena Heena<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Female Servants and the Court of Awadh: Sustenance and Hierarchies in Pre-Colonial North India (1720s-1850s)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This research article delves into the historical intricacies of female servitude system at the Court of Awadh during the pre-colonial period in North India, spanning from the 1720s to the 1850s. It aims to shed light on the lives and experiences of female servants within the socio-political structure of Awadh, offering insights into their sustenance and complexities of hierarchies which they navigated. Drawing upon an extensive analysis of Urdu, Persian and English archival documents, including historical records, court chronicles, travellers\u2019 accounts, and official correspondence, the article explores diverse functions that female servants performed within the court’s complex service hierarchy. These roles encompassed tasks as diverse as caregiving and safeguarding duties to more prominent positions that afforded them direct access to the royal family and the power structures of the court. Through careful examination of social norms, economic conditions, and political frameworks, it explores how the court’s structure both facilitated and constrained the agency of female servants, and how their experiences varied depending on factors such as class, caste, and the preferences of the rulers they served. The article contributes to the historiography of servitude, labor, and gender in South Asia. It shifts our focus away from Awadh\u2019s royal women (begums<\/em>) and courtesans (taw\u0101\u2019if<\/em>) and brings into light the history of women servants who worked in domestic and non-domestic spaces but remained on the margins of scholarship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Melina Gravier<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Challenging Authority: Islamic Law and the Court in Women\u2019s Periodicals<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This paper examines how Urdu women\u2019s periodicals might be interpreted as an archive for accessing ordinary women\u2019s engagement with Islamic law. With the expansion of the modern state, print technologies participated in rising an Islamic legal consciousness in people\u2019s daily lives (Lhost 2022).  In the context of colonial legal pluralism, discussions over the practice of khul\u2019 <\/em>led to the enactment of the Dissolution of Muslim Marriages Act in 1939, thus placing the Islamic Law as the safeguard of Muslim women\u2019s rights (De 2009). Alongside histories of Personal Laws legislation, recent scholarship has shown how legal discourses and imaginaries were constantly produced in everyday encounters (De 2018). How did Muslim women make sense of Islamic law in their daily experiences? It is in this context that contemporary women\u2019s periodicals came to reflect and shape women\u2019s legal consciousness. Women\u2019s magazines such as \u0100w\u0101z-e-Nisw\u0101n, Sahel\u012b <\/em>and Tahz\u012bb-e-Nisw\u0101n<\/em> created spaces for Muslim women to engage in legal discussions about their rights in family laws. This contributed to forging their own understanding of \u201cjustice\u201d (ins\u0101f<\/em>) and \u201crights\u201d (huq\u016bq<\/em>) in Islamic law, but also to question the role of the court (\u2018ad\u0101lat)<\/em>. This paper asks how such magazines challenged religious and legal authorities by defending women\u2019s right to khul\u2019<\/em>. The legitimacy of court decisions in relation to Islamic law \u2013 particularly in the case of khul\u2019 \u2013 <\/em>was fiercely disputed. Women\u2019s periodicals helped undermine the court\u2019s authority. This paper studies how they provided a space for women to reimagine the court and negotiate its infringement of family intimacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Elizabeth Lhost<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Getting Stuck and Making Do: Women\u2019s Appeals to Justice across Venues in Colonial South Asia<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Appealing to justice is hard work. For women, who in many cases are disenfranchised by the institutions from which they seek redress, the process of making principled claims can be even more arduous. Yet, it\u2019s no secret that women were (and are) frequent and vociferous advocates across legal fora. Surveying examples from multiple legal sites, this paper explores the language women use in their appeals to justice, the frustrations they express, the limitations they encounter, and the solutions they attempted to secure as they navigated and negotiated legal obstacles. Rather than presenting women as hapless victims of an unfair system, however, this paper suggests that women were skilled and clever complainants, who used their knowledge of legal rights to nudge the courts in their favor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The paper begins by introducing several venues where women brought their complaints and presented their cases. Drawing from published and unpublished records spanning several legal venues in the twentieth-century Indian princely states of Hyderabad and Tonk, the paper outlines why women brought their claims to these seemingly informal and unofficial venues and how these venues could address their concerns. It then analyzes the narratives women presented, focusing on how they framed their complaints, presented their evidence, and made their appeals for intercession and support. Taking a pragmatic and practical approach to the language women employed and the requests they made, I argue that women carefully and critically employed specific phrases to support their cases and persuade the courts. Finally, the paper concludes by critically assessing the role of gender in approaches to legal history and histories of the courts. By framing venues frequented by women as informal, unofficial, or quasi-legal, historians belittle and diminish their legal (and historical) value. Recovering and preserving archives and records from these seemingly insignificant institutions therefore provides an opportunity to rethink and reframe the historical narrative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sumaira Nawaz<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Respectable Ladies\u2019 Quest for Justice: Narrating Sexual Transgressions in Abl\u0101o\u00f1 ka Ins\u0101f<\/em> <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This presentation examines the struggle between respectability and sexual agency in Sphurna Devi\u2019s account Abl\u0101o\u00f1 ka Ins\u0101f<\/em> (Justice for Helpless Women, 1927). Originally serialised in the Hindi women\u2019s journal Ch\u0101nd<\/em>, the text offers crucial insight into social history of change beyond the purview of the colonial state and enlightened elite. Abl\u0101o\u00f1 ka Ins\u0101f<\/em> was part of a wider range of popular fiction comprising scandalous-yet-reformist \u2018confessional narratives\u2019 that favoured societal reform while justifying the domain of \u2018dangerous\u2019 female desire (Orsini 1998). AI <\/em>recalled life-stories of eight savarna<\/em> Hindu widows who had gathered at the court of Bhagwan Dharmraj to seek compassion and mercy after breaching norms of sexual propriety. The widows were not \u2018ideal victims\u2019 (Mont et al 2003), they had wilfully pursued illicit relations outside of wedlock and, by doing so, defied str\u012b-dharma <\/em>(women\u2019s moral-religious code). But their testimonies effectively mounted attacks against Hindu society at large that simultaneously hyper-sexualised them at a young age only to later deny them a fulfilling erotic life after early widowhood. Published at a time when Hindi literati was anxiously attempting to discipline the arena of print, AI <\/em>comprised \u2018titillating\u2019 romances that entertained readers while simultaneously re-affirming morally accepted and settled boundaries of Hindu nationalism and masculinity (Orsini 1998; Gupta 2001). To this end, I will focus on savarna <\/em>widows\u2019 defence of their \u2018right to feel\u2019 as a way of re-defining dharma<\/em> (Orsini 2002). In what ways did the text respond to or differ from Hindu nationalist discourse premised on protecting Hindu women from the \u2018lusty\u2019 Muslim (Gupta 2009)? And finally, how do we see these attempts of re-orienting sexual desire at the centre of widow remarriage in the context of nationalist legislative discourse? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Francesca Orsini<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Seeking Dramatic Justice: Women in Courtroom Dramas <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scenes in which women seek justice from a ruler or a judge nicely bring together the two meanings of darb<\/em>\u0101<\/em>r<\/em> and \u2018ad\u0101lat<\/em>, a ruler\u2019s court and a court of law, and interrogate gendered notions of law and justice, q\u0101n\u016bn<\/em> and in\u1e63\u0101f<\/em>. In such scenes, women go beyond their immediate complaint to question fundamental rules governing the political, social, and religious status quo <\/em>and posit alternative values\u2014<\/em>from the wronged Jewish girl Rahel appealing directly to the Roman emperor against his own son in Agha Hashr Kashmiri’s Urdu play Yah\u016bd\u012b k\u012b la\u1e5bk\u012b<\/em> (1913, a remake of Eugene Scribe\u2019s 1835 French libretto La Ju\u00efve<\/em>, rewritten in English by Stuart Moncrieff as The Jewess<\/em> and very popular throughout the nineteenth century) to Anarkali challenging Emperor Akbar in Mughal-e Azam. <\/em>Such scenes may also make visible the whole apparatus of social control that bears down upon women, as in the mock trial in Shantata! Court Ch\u0101l\u016b \u0100he!<\/em>(1967), Vijay Tendulkar\u2019s play inspired by Friedrich D\u00fcrrenmatt\u2019s story \u201cDie Panne\u201d (1956). Nor are women solely positioned as bold and outspoken claimants or crushed victims: in courtroom scenes in Hindi films, women play quite different roles and occupying quite different positions.  This presentation will explore the dynamics, rhetorical strategies, and real and alternative imaginaries that such courtroom scenes featuring women afford. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Heidi Pauwels<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Role of Women, Real and Imagined, in Performativity of Kingship: Challenges and Assertions at Kishangarh Court During the First Half of the Eighteenth Century.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This paper focuses on the performativity of kingship, foregrounding the role paintings and poetry play in challenges and assertions at Rajasthani courts, particularly the portrayal and agency of women, both imagined and real. This case study follows the evolving role of R\u0101dh\u0101-Krishna worship in musical concerts of poetry and paintings during the reign of R\u0101j Singh (r. 1706\u20131748).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Kishangarh house is well-known for its elegant school of Rajput painting that was expressive  of R\u0101dh\u0101-Krishna devotion, but also of kingship style under R\u0101j Singh. Within the same visual frame as the other, better-researched Rajasthani principalities, Kishangarh yet differs markedly in outlook, not at least in the symbiosis with poetry authored by both royalty and courtiers, both men and women. The ups and downs of Kishangarh\u2019s politics are related to the way both divine women and real palace ladies figured in the new equations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Internally to the kingdom too, imagery played a role in challenging and asserting new styles of kingship. Two of R\u0101j Singh\u2019s sons were successively put forward to be his successors, and in both cases, paintings depicting the candidates as worshipers of Krishna and his ladies featured prominently in staking their claims. There are indications that the second candidate, S\u0101vant Singh, as he became secure in his position as crown prince, mounted a challenge to his father\u2019s style of kingship, yet after his father\u2019s death he was in turned challenged and eventually superseded by a third brother. The paper unravels the evidence of how a woman-performer, known as Ban\u012b-\u1e6dhan\u012b played an important role, based on both the visual record, as well as poetry as it has emerged through manuscript research, including a newly discovered document of her performance diary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sophie Schrago<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reclaiming the Adjudication of Religious Family Law: An Ethnography of the Women\u2019s Shari\u2019a Courts in India<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The phenomenon of \u2018women\u2019s courts\u2019 in India goes back to the development of alternative dispute-resolution forums (ADR) by the Indian state, which shortly after Independence in 1947, had to address problems of inefficiency, slowness, and corruption along the many other shortcomings of India\u2019s courts that left people sceptical and mistrusting of the judicial system. In order to reach out to these marginalised citizens and offer them greater access to justice, the state set up new types of dispute resolution bodies as alternatives to the state-sponsored judiciary, modelled upon original rural community or caste panchayats<\/em>. It soon became a system of \u2018people\u2019s court\u2019 (lok adalat<\/em>), envisaged as venues that would be more accessible and less intimidating to the poor and uneducated, as well as more effective than the official overburdened courts. A few decades later, \u2018women\u2019s courts\u2019 were created in a similar vein as women from the lower strata had trouble accessing civil courts, for reasons of financial and mobility constraints.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Feminist movements throughout the 1970s and 1980s pushed for a model of family court that would deal with divorce, alimony, adoption, and custody cases and where women could voice their complaints and have more empowered access.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is within the framework of the ADR system that the Indian Muslim Women\u2019s Movement (BMMA) launched its women\u2019s Shari\u2019a courts (\u02bfad\u0101lat<\/em>) in 2013 with the objective of improving Muslim women\u2019s lives by reclaiming Islamic tradition for the purpose of emancipation. In an attempt to reform the Muslim Personal Law, which has remained uncodified since colonial times, BMMA has trained women to become Shari\u2019a law judges (or Qazi<\/em>) and to work toward reshaping legal and cultural norms within the community. Through an ethnography of BMMA women\u2019s Shari\u02bfa courts and their everyday experiences, this presentation will examine the ways Indian Muslim women activists have challenged the clergy on their own turf by reclaiming the adjudication of religious family law, and how they have carved out space for the creation of gender-just laws within the Islamic framework. It will further discuss the way these women\u2019s Shari\u02bfa courts create new modes of governmentality beyond the fracture between the religious and the secular, thus offering insights into the interplay of secular ideals of gender justice and Islam.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sarah Waheed<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Warrior Queen between Court and Battlefield: Islam, Gender, and Sovereign Space in Early Modern India<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This paper examines space and sovereignty in relation to the sixteenth century Queen Regent of Ahmadnagar and Bijapur, Chand Bibi (1550-1600), widely regarded as \u201cQueen of the Deccan.\u201d This paper is from a chapter of my book in progress, In Search of Chand Bibi: Gender, Sovereignty, and Islam in Premodern India<\/em>, a feminist revisionist history. It is the first book about not only Chand Bibi, but about women of the Deccan\u2014 a vast south-central region covering a quarter of India\u2019s landmass. In the sixteenth century, the Muslim ruled dynasties\u2014the Deccan Sultanates\u2014commanded territories that extended from the eastern and western coastlines of India, and deep into the southern peninsula. In 1595, Chand Bibi united these sultanates and defeated the great Mughal, Akbar, the most powerful emperor of India. She regularly gave audiences in open durbar<\/em>, commissioned large-scale public works projects, while skilled in organizing armed resistance, and navigating court intrigues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I argue that Chand Bibi was an exemplary, rather than anomalous, figure. The Deccan produced more female sovereigns than any other region of India. Elite Muslim women exerted tremendous political power, belying myths about women in the zenana<\/em> as passive and immobile. The book also challenges the north-centric perspective of Mughal imperial development that have long dominated histories of Islam in India. Moreover, it delves into Chand Bibi\u2019s afterlives, grappling with the multiple accounts of Chand Bibi\u2019s demise: by murder, suicide, and escape respectively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this paper, I examine the motif of the falcon in relation to Chand Bibi. In paintings from the 18th century onwards, Chand Bibi is almost always depicted outside, hunting with a falcon. Why has flight been so closely associated with Chand Bibi?<\/em> Drawing on sources in Persian, Urdu, and Marathi, I turn to 1) how the mythology of an immobile harem or zenana<\/em> is belied by the context of mobility within sixteenth century Deccan whose sultanates were characterized by a much more peripatetic zenana<\/em> than in the Mughal north as well as political transitions in the eighteenth century that intensified mobile networks between courts; 2) a long history of \u201cspiritual ornithology\u201d within the Sufi Islamic tradition; and finally 3) how the narrative of Chand Bibi\u2019s legendary escape and flight through secret tunnels along with her female companions, which first occurred in 1620, persisted for centuries in Ahmadnagar, promising Chand Bibi\u2019s miraculous return.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Richard Williams<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Music and the Maharani in Mehrangarh: Female Composers in Nineteenth-Century Rajput Courts<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The nineteenth century was a significant period for Indian debates around women\u2019s involvement in music. Older notions of prestige and propriety became entangled with new concerns about the sexual connotations of the performing arts, propelled by morality campaigns targeting courtesans. While we have a growing sense of how these conversations and contentions gained traction in emergent public spheres, and impacted the involvement of middle class women in music, less is known about how these debates informed the life of music in the prestigious yet enclosed settings of Rajput courts. How were royal women who intimately engaged with music understood by their peers and audiences? Who, in fact, were their audiences? How was musical labour divided between elite queens and their lower status, yet highly trained attendants? How far did the musical contributions of women in pardah influence larger social movements oriented towards the public life of music?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this paper, I will explore these questions by examining the lyrics of Jarechi Maharani Pratap Kumvari (1834-1917?), who composed under the penname \u201cDaughter of the Jam\u201d (J\u0101\u1e41ma Sut\u0101<\/em>, referring to her father, the Jam Sahib of Nawanagar). As the ninth wife of Takht Singh (r. 1843-73), the Maharaja of Marwar, she had access to the resources of a vastly musical royal court. Examining her lyrical poetry, which ranges from bhajan <\/em>to b\u0101rahm\u0101s\u0101<\/em>, offers clues to how the women\u2019s sphere of music making intersected with religious communities, art music, and literary culture.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nicholas Abbott Making and Negotiating an Inter-Polity Legal Forum in Early Colonial India: Female Was\u0324\u012bqad\u0101rs in the Court of the Awadh Residency, c. 1840\u201350 One of the most distinctive facets … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1002703,"featured_media":0,"parent":167,"menu_order":2,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-174","page","type-page","status-publish"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/womenandthecourt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/womenandthecourt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/womenandthecourt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/womenandthecourt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1002703"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/womenandthecourt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=174"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/womenandthecourt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/174\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1126,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/womenandthecourt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/174\/revisions\/1126"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/womenandthecourt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/womenandthecourt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}