¹ Raheja, Gloria Goodwin and Gold, Ann Grodzins, Listen to the Heron's Words: Reimagining Gender and Kinship in North India (London: University of California Press, 1994)Google Scholar; Minault, Gail, Secluded Scholars: Women's Education and Social Reform in Colonial India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998)Google Scholar; Orsini, Francesca, The Hindi Public Sphere, 1920–1940: Language and Literature in the Age of Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lambert-Hurley, Siobhan, Muslim Women: Reform and Princely Patronage: Nawab Sultan Jahan Begam of Bhopal (London: Routledge, 2007), pp. 1–20 Google Scholar; Nijhawan, Shobna, Women and Girls in the Hindi Public Sphere: Periodical Literature in Colonial North India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sarkar, Tanika and Sarkar, Sumit (eds), Women and Social Reform in Modern India: A Reader (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008)Google Scholar; Naim, C. M., ‘How Bibi Ashraf Learned to Read and Write’, Annual of Urdu Studies 6 (1987), pp. 99, 106Google Scholar; O’Hanlon, Rosalind, ‘Manliness and Imperial Service in Mughal North India’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 42, 1 (1999), pp. 47–48 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

² Ikeya, Chie, ‘Masculinities in Asia: A Review Essay’, Asian Studies Review 38, 2 (2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Joseph Alter and Douglas Haynes have explored the confluence between texts and gender identity. See Alter, Joseph, Moral Materialism: Sex and Masculinity in Modern India (New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2011)Google Scholar; Haynes, Douglas, ‘Selling Masculinity: Advertisements for Sex Tonics and the Making of Modern Conjugality in Western India, 1900–1945’, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 35, 4 (2012)Google Scholar. Building on the work of John Tosh in the early 1990s, which called historians to apply emerging gender theories of masculinity to their craft, O’Hanlon initiated a shift in South Asian studies to ‘look at men as gendered beings and gendered bodies’; O’Hanlon, ‘Manliness and Imperial Service in Mughal North India’, pp. 47–93. Scholars Chandrima Chakrabarty and John Powers have written on masculinity in Hindu and Buddhist contexts. Chakrabarty, Chandrima, Masculinity, Asceticism, Hinduism: Past and Present Imaginings of India (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2011)Google Scholar; Powers, John, A Bull of a Man: Images of Masculinity, Sex and the Body in Indian Buddhism (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Mrinalini Sinha has looked at the non-binary intersection of themes relating to power, sexuality, and nationalism in her study of Bengal. See Sinha, Mrinalini, Colonial Masculinity: The ‘Manly Englishman’ and the ‘Effeminate Bengali’ in the Late Nineteenth Century (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), pp. 1–10 Google Scholar.

³ See Tosh, John, ‘What Should Historians Do with Masculinity? Reflections on Nineteenth-Century Britain’, History Workshop 38 (1994), pp. 179–202 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; also work by Connell on masculinity, and other more recent general works.

⁴ Vanita, Ruth, Gender, Sex and the City (New York: Palgrove Macmillian, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵ Minault, Gail, Secluded Scholars: Women's Education and Muslim Social Reform in Colonial India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998)Google Scholar; Minault, Gail, ‘Begumati Zaban: Women's Language and Culture in Nineteenth-Century Delhi’ in her Gender, Language, and Learning: Essays in Indo-Muslim Cultural History (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2009)Google Scholar.

⁶ Ashraf is a title roughly translated as ‘noble’, indicating an elite level of society dating from the advent of the Mughal empire.

⁷ In the context of work by Benedict Anderson, which affirmed the role of print capitalism in the emergence of the public sphere, and that of Jürgen Habermas, which linked class and literary publics in the European context, Urdu newspapers offer commentary on masculine experience in the public sphere. See Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism, revised edition (London: Verso, 1991)Google Scholar; Habermas, Jürgen, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (Cambridge: Polity, 1989)Google Scholar.

⁸ Francis Robinson has also spoken about this trend as a shift of Islam from the public to the private sphere in South Asia. See Robinson, Francis, ‘Religious Change and the Self in Muslim South Asia since 1800’ in Robinson, Francis, Islam and Muslim History in South Asia (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000)Google Scholar.

⁹ ‘Ali Thanawi, Ashraf, Perfecting Women: Maulana Ashraf ‘Ali Thanawi's Bihishti Zewar: A Partial Translation with Commentary, edited by Metcalf, Barbara Daly (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002)Google Scholar; Ahmed, Nazir, Mir’at al-‘urus (Lucknow: Nawal Kishore Press, 1881)Google Scholar; See also Pernau, Margrit, Ashraf into Middle Classes: Muslims in Nineteenth-Century Delhi (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 144–147 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁰ Minault, Secluded Scholars, p. 107; Nandy, Ashis, The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self under Colonialism (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989)Google Scholar. Minault has discussed this shift as a move for Islam from the public to the private space. This is not to say that Islam was no longer relevant to public identity, however. Controversies in the 1910s surrounding Kanpur mosque as well as the emergence of self-consciously Muslim newspapers like Madinah were public manifestations of Muslim identity. These public expressions of Islam, however, assumed a separation between Islam and state power; authority and moral legitimacy were concepts internal to Islam, and institutionally treated as a private element of identity not only by colonial legal structures but also by reformist Muslims.

¹¹ Margrit Pernau's recent work demonstrates the applicability of the history of emotions to understandings of how cultural norms cultivate emotional responses. Margrit Pernau, Ashraf into Middle Classes.

¹² Parvez Adil, ‘Madinah Akhbar, Thesis Manuscript’ [in Urdu], PhD thesis, University of Najibabad, 2014.

¹³ Pandey, Gyananendra, The Ascendancy of the Congress in Uttar Pradesh 1926–1934: A Study in Imperfect Mobilization (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1978), p. 64 Google Scholar.

¹⁴ See, for example, ‘al-nisvan madinah: y‘ani mulki t‘alimyaftah khavatin ke liye akhbar madinah ka makhsus safha [For the women of Madinah: meaning the newspaper Madinah's special page for the educated women of the country]’, Madinah, 8 February 1913.

¹⁵ Parvez Adil and Munir Hasan, interview, Bijnor, Uttar Pradesh, 14–16 April 2013.

¹⁶ ‘mu‘azaz hindustani t‘alimyaftah khavatin ke liye akhbar Madinah ka eik makhsus safhah [For honourable, educated Indian women, a special page]’, Madinah, 1 March 1913.

¹⁷ ‘[We have now become men]’, Madinah, 1 September 1917; ‘[Men's Adab]’, Madinah, 21 May 1917; ‘[Men's Akhlaq]’, Madinah, 17 May 1917.

¹⁸ Rashidul Khairi attempted to start a journal specifically for the reform of male behaviour, which petered out after only a few issues for lack of interest. See Minault, Secluded Scholars, pp. 136–139.

¹⁹ Minault, Secluded Scholars, pp. 105–145; Talwar, Vir Bharat, ‘Feminist Consciousness in Women's Journals in Hindi, 1910–1920’ in Sangari, Kumkum and Vaid, Sudesh (eds), Recasting Women: Essays in Indian Colonial History (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1990)Google Scholar.

²⁰ Shobna Nijhawan has shown how Hindi periodicals for women like Stri Darpam and Arya Mahila encouraged a male readership. See Nijhawan, Women and Girls in the Hindi Public Sphere, pp. 46, 68. In the habits of newspaper readers of that period, men sitting together at tea houses (chai-khanas) or in living rooms would have passed around pages of the paper to each other as they discussed the weekly news. In that case, Madinah's section on women would have been included in another section targeted toward a general readership. In any case, prevalent reading practices of the period combined with low female literacy meant that male household members would have read women's items aloud to female members of the household.

²¹ Khairi, Raziqul, ‘Ismat ki kahani (Delhi: ‘Ismat Book Depot, 1936)Google Scholar; Minault, Secluded Scholars, p. 136.

²² I am invoking Minault's characterization of women's periodicals as a ‘masala’ here. Minault, Secluded Scholars, p. 106.

²³ Other women's periodicals in Urdu include: Pardah Nashin (founded in Agra, 1906); Sharif Bibi (Lahore, 1910); Al-Hijab (Bhopal, 1910); Zillush-Sultan (Bhopal, 1913); An-Nisa (Hyderabad, 1919); Zebunisa (Lahore, 1934); the first two Urdu periodicals for women were Akhbar un-Nisa (founded in Delhi, 1887) and Mu‘allim-i Nisvan (Hyderabad, late 1880s). Minault, Secluded Scholars, pp. 105–150.

²⁴ Pardah, also the word for ‘curtain’ in Urdu, indicates the practice of screening women from strangers or men who are not close relatives.

²⁵ Suhrawardy, Shaista Akhtar Banu, A Critical Survey of the Development of the Urdu Novel and Short Story (London: Longmans, Greens and Co., 1945), pp. 114–117 Google Scholar.

²⁶ Hali, Khwajah Altaf Hussain, Voices of Silence, translated by Minault, Gail (Delhi: Chanakaya Publications, 1986)Google Scholar.

²⁷ ‘bahishti zeivar aur darbar-i palanpur’, Madīnah, 15 October 1916; ‘bahishti zeivar ki mumani‘at [The censorship of Bahishti Zeivar]’, Madinah, 1 September 1916; ‘bahishti zeivar aur riyasat palanpur’, Madinah, 1 September 1916; ‘bahishti zeivar aur farangi mahal ki sukhan parvi [Bahishti Zeivar and Farangi Mahal's Staying True to their Word]’, Madinah, 22 October 1916.

²⁸ Talwar, ‘Feminist Consciousness’, p. 2; Minault, Gail, ‘Begumati Zaban’, India International Center Quarterly 11, 2 (June 1984), pp. 155–170 Google Scholar.

²⁹ Articles on historical figures such as Raziya (as opposed to companions or holy women) may have marked the author as being oriented toward the Aligarh school; this is remarkable since the newspaper had strong ties toward Deoband. This further demonstrates Madinah's ability to transcend ideological divides in service of the goal to provide a public forum for all Muslims.

³⁰ Minault, Secluded Scholars, pp. 136–137.

³¹ ‘Do you firmly believe that the letters were really written by a woman? If you do not believe so, then is it not against your conscience to publish as true what you do not think to be true? My advice is that you should consult your heart before saying or doing anything, and should ask it about the truth of the matter. If the heart declares it to be false and you publish it a truth, then you have gone against your conscience—even against honesty.’ Hali, Altaf Hussain, Hayat-e Javed, translated by Alvi, R. A. (Aligarh: Sir Syed Academy, 2008), pp. 488–489 Google Scholar.

³² Parvez Adil, personal correspondence with the author, April 2013.

³³ Minault, Secluded Scholars, pp. 136–137.

³⁴ Small towns distinguished by the presence of elite Muslim families.

³⁵ ‘eik ‘khatun’ ki khayalat [The perspective of a “lady”]’, Madinah, 22 January 1913. In the crescent shape a modified version of the women's newspaper title appeared: ‘al-Nisvan Madinah’ or ‘for the women of Madinah’.

³⁶ According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a ghazal is ‘a lyric poem with a fixed number of verses and a repeated rhyme, typically on the theme of love, and normally set to music’. The couplets are autonomous from each other in meaning, and all verses are the same length.

³⁷ Rekhta was characterized by the Khari Boli dialect of Hindustani, demonstrating influence of Persian, Urdu, and Hindi. The word's literal meaning, ‘scattered’, indicates that its Persian flavour was initially muted, although Vanita has indicated that Persian featured often in both rekhta and rekhti.

³⁸ Vanita, Gender, Sex and the City, pp. 21–24.

³⁹ Ibid., p. 214.

⁴⁰ Women's language as preserved in rekhti was centred on what Vanita calls a ‘non-Persian matrix’. Rekhti did include Persian vocabulary which had come into common parlance; this was in contrast with rekhta and other mainstream poetic forms, which intentionally used elevated Persian vocabulary to mark the erudition of the author. See Vanita, Gender, Sex and the City, pp. 80–81, 225.

⁴¹ Ruth Vanita has translated the verse included below, by the male poet Jur‘at in the rekhti genre, depicting a woman's preference for female sex in a female voice. For numerous additional examples of rekhti and its emphasis on female–female erotic verse, see Vanita, Ruth, ‘“Married Among Their Companions”: Female Homoerotic Relations in Nineteenth-Century Urdu Rekhti Poetry in India’, Journal of Women's History 16, 1 (2004), pp. 12–53 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴² Vanita, Gender, Sex and the City, pp. 213–214.

⁴³ Ibid., p. 213.

⁴⁴ In a similar way, Sumanta Banerjee has pointed out how traditional speaking and singing traditions in Bengal became metonymic with lack of self-control and ignorance. Sumanta Banerjee, ‘Marginalization of Women's Popular Culture in Nineteenth Century Bengal’ in Sangari and Vaid (eds), Recasting Women, pp. 127–179.

⁴⁵ C. M. Naim, ‘Transvestic Words: The Rekhti in Urdu’, Annual of Urdu Studies (2001), p. 19.

⁴⁶ Waheed, Sarah, ‘Women of “Ill Repute”: Ethics and Urdu Literature in Colonial India’, Modern Asian Studies 48, 4 (2014), p. 1023 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴⁷ Naim, ‘Transvestic Words’, p. 19.

⁴⁸ Raqmah, ‘ahkam al-hakimein kya faryad mazluman mein kuch asar nahin? [Oh, the most just of authorities! Does the force of your commandments have no effect on the condition of the oppressed?]’, Madinah 8, 15 June 1912. See also Appendix I.

⁴⁹ Raqmah, ‘ahkam al-hakimein kya faryad mazluman mein kuch asar nahin? [Oh, the most just of authorities! Does the force of your commandments have no effect on the condition of the oppressed?],’ Madinah, 15 June 1912; According to Naim, only much later in the twentieth century in the works of ‘Ismat Chugtai (1915–1991) and Shaukat Thanawi (1904–1963) do we see the ‘shrew’ muster up the audacity to engage with her husband in an aggressive, pugnacious manner. On the contrary, this story shows that the shrew had already begun to raise her shrill voice against her henpecked husband in early twentieth-century Urdu literature. See Naim, ‘Transvestic Words’, pp. 3–26.

⁵⁰ This is a reference to the Qur’anic origin story of Eve, when she was composed from a rib taken from Adam's left side.

⁵¹ 1 ‘‘aurat se [To Woman]’, Madinah, 22 October 1915.

⁵² According to this article Zulaikha, the wife of the pharoah of Egypt, had ‘violated the chastity [ismat laut liya] of a prophet and the honour of God’ when she seduced Joseph. Zafr Ahsan Sahib ‘Alavi, ‘‘aurat se [To Woman]’, Madinah, 22 October 1915.

⁵³ ‘mard se [To Man]’, Madinah, 1 November 1915. The name of the woman who wrote the article ‘To Man’ was not published. Instead, she was only referred to as ‘khatun’ or ‘woman’. In order to demonstrate that the woman was in fact real, the name of the man who she used as a ‘khatib’, or transcriber, for her article, Hazrat Nayaz Fatehpuri, was published instead.

⁵⁴ ‘mard se [To Man]’, Madinah, 1 November 1915.

⁵⁵ Stories like Mirza Farhatullah Beg's ‘The Clever Wife’, which appeared in the journal Hamjoli, used colloquial women's language to offer entertainment in a reformist context. Minault, Secluded Scholars, p. 153.

⁵⁶ ‘maon ki vastey sonhari asul [Golden principles from mothers]’, Madinah, 22 March 1913.

⁵⁷ B. L. Hijab, ‘eik ‘khatun’ ki khayalat joshaili nazm ke libas mein [The perspective of a ‘woman’ in the garb of a fiery poem]’, Madinah, 22 January 1913.

⁵⁸ Meaning ‘clothing’.

⁵⁹

⁶⁰

⁶¹ I have added punctuation for ease of understanding.

⁶² ‘t‘alim-i nisvan [Women's Education]’, Madinah, 15 August 1912.

⁶³ The story, signed with the takhallus Raqmah, indicated male authorship through its use of begumati zaban.

⁶⁴ Raqmah, ‘ahkam al-hakimein kya faryad mazluman mein kuch asar nahin? [Oh, the most just of authorities! Does the force of your commandments have no effect on the condition of the oppressed?]’, Madinah 8, 15 June 1912.

⁶⁵ The story also demonstrated the influence of Mughal cautionary tales, which described courtesans’ manipulative, evil behaviour, and presented the downfall of the courtier as an inevitable result. Schofield, Katherine Butler, ‘The Courtesan Tale: Female Musicians and Dancers in Mughal Historical Chronicles, c. 1556–1748’, Gender & History 24, 1 (2012), p. 152 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶⁶ Raqmah, ‘ahkam al-hakimein kya faryad mazluman mein kuch asar nahin?’, Madinah 5, 12 June 1912.

⁶⁷ ‘If not an angel, at least it should be an angelic person . . . lest this article become like the other two, which were made with an iron pen, bone, veins, muscles, and flesh.’ ‘donon se [To both]’, Madinah, 15 November 1915.

⁶⁸ Chapter of the Qur’an.

⁶⁹ ‘bivi ke inkar par khavand ko ghash a gaya [Husband faints at his wife's refusal]’, Madinah, 22 April 1916.

⁷⁰ Anonymous entries indicated male authorship.

⁷¹ ‘man [Mother]’, Madinah, 15 June 1914; ‘bachchi [Little girl]’, Madinah, 15 June 1914.

⁷² Sharma, Karuna, ‘A Visit to the Mughal Harem: Lives of Royal Women’, Journal of South Asian Studies XXXII, 2 (August 2009), p. 168 Google Scholar; Mukherjee, Soma, Royal Mughal Ladies and their Contributions (Delhi: Gyan Books, 2001), pp. 39–40 Google Scholar.

⁷³ ‘maidan-i jang mein do ‘arabiya ‘auratein man beti [On the field of war, two Arab women, mother and daughter]’, Madinah, 22 August 1912.

⁷⁴ A word here referring to the Muslim community, understood as transcending national divisions.

⁷⁵ ‘eik mujahid-i tarablis ki bivi ka hilal-i ‘id, [The Eid moon of a warrior's wife in the Balkans]’, Madinah, 15 September 1912.

⁷⁶ A lament, often employed to mourn the death of the prophet's grandson and family.

⁷⁷ ‘eik sharif ‘aurat maidan-i jang mein [A noble woman on the field of war]’, Madinah, 22 September 1912.

⁷⁸ ‘jang-i itali turki ki baqiya khaberein [Remaining news from the war between Italy and Turkey]’, Madinah, 22 September 1912.

⁷⁹ A mandatory payment made by the groom or groom's family at the time of marriage to the wife.

⁸⁰ ‘maidan-i jang mein do ‘arabiya ‘auratein man beti [On the field of war, two Arab women, mother and daughter]’, Madinah, 22 August 1912.

⁸¹ ‘pardah-i nisvan [Women's Pardah]’, Madinah, 15 February 1913.

⁸² Not all of Madinah's readers were in favour of strict observance of pardah. There were a variety of nuanced views for and against pardah expressed in the newspaper. For examples, see ‘pardah’, Madinah, 18 January 1918; ‘pardah mein hai [She is in pardah]’, Madinah, 1 January 1917; ‘mas’lah asbat pardah muravajah shurafa’i hind az kitab vah sunnat [The rationale for the application of pardah in India in texts and custom]’, Madinah, 1 January 1917.

⁸³ An Urdu expression roughly translating as ‘home woman’.

⁸⁴ Urdu for ‘outside woman’ or sometimes ‘foreign woman’.

⁸⁵ ‘inglistan ki zenana polis [The female police of England]’, Madinah, 15 October 1915.

⁸⁶ ‘eik afsosnak haqiqat ka inkishaf [Report of a regretful reality]’, Madinah, 1 August 1917.

⁸⁷ ‘eik lard ki beti ke aiktar ke sath nikal gayi [A lord's daughter ran away with an actor]’, Madinah, 1 November 1917.

⁸⁸ ‘‘am khaberein [Regular news]’, Madinah, 1 May 1912.

⁸⁹ ‘farangan bivi aur hindustani shauhar [A foreign wife and an Indian husband]’, Madinah, 17 July 1917.

⁹⁰ ‘inglistan mein mardon aur auraton ka farq [The difference between men and women in England]’, Madinah, 8 December 1916. Other articles that relate to the differences between attitudes toward gender in England and India, as well as the potential dangers of Western influence on women include: ‘[Mrs Bennet's trial in London]’, Madinah, 20 May 1918; ‘[Suicide of Girl]’, Madinah, 21 April 1918; ‘[Characteristics of English Women]’, Madinah, 5 April 1917; ‘do angreiz auratein ka qabul islam [Two English women's conversion to Islam]’, Madinah, 8 October 1915; ‘musalman larkiyan aur angreizi t‘alim [Muslim girls and English education]’, Madinah, 22 July 1913.

⁹¹ An edible treat made with betel nut and often tobacco, used as a stimulant and digestive after meals.

⁹² ‘makhion se khatra [Risks from Flies]’, Madinah, 15 March 1913; ‘Pan’, Madinah, 1 March 1913.

⁹³ ‘khana [Food]’, 15 March 1913, Madinah.

⁹⁴ All these articles mentioned above were authored anonymously, most likely by one of the editorial team including the proprietor, the editor, and sub-editors.

⁹⁵ One article refuted the claim that Bahishti Zeivar included obscene sections. If Palanpur excluded Bahishti Zeivar for obscenity, the author argued, it must also apply the same standard of judgement to both the Qur’an and Hadith, which include sections on equally ‘obscene’ topics. Another article attempted to end the controversy by reporting Farengi Mahal's announcement that not only Bahishti Zeivar but every work of Ashraf ‘Ali Thanawi was a prime example of the principles of Islam.

⁹⁶ ‘‘aurat kya keheti hai? [What do women say?]’, Madinah, 13 November 1919.

⁹⁷ ‘mardon ki zindagi [Lives of Men]’, Madinah, 15 September 1913.

⁹⁸ Madinah, 5 December 1920.

⁹⁹ ‘tala [aphrodisiac]’, Madinah, 1 January 1919; ‘tala [aphrodisiac]’, Madinah, 13 January 1919; ‘tala [aphrodisiac]’, Madinah, 17 January 1919.

¹⁰⁰ ‘targhib-i nikah-i sani [Incitement to re-marry]’, Madinah, 8 January 1916.

¹⁰¹

¹⁰² For more on reformist approaches constructed against the threat of Hindu influence, see Ismaʻil, Muhammad, Taqwiyat-ul-Iman (Houston: Dar-us-Salam Publications, 1995)Google Scholar.

¹⁰³ ‘makkah mo‘azmah ki ‘auratein [The women of exalted Mecca]’, Madinah, 22 February 1914.

¹⁰⁴ ‘Fatawah’, Madinah, 22 August 1916.

¹⁰⁵ ‘Fatawah’, Madinah, 15 October 1916.

¹⁰⁶ See Mirza Farhatullah Beg's story ‘Samajhdar Bivi [The Clever Wife]’. Salim Sark of Egypt also invented a woman editor, Maryam Mazhar, for his newspaper Al-Mirat al-Hasna’. See Minault, Secluded Scholars, pp. 136–140.

¹⁰⁷ Quoted in Naim, ‘How Bibi Ashraf Learned to Read and Write’, p. 106.

¹⁰⁸ Naim, ‘How Bibi Ashraf Learned to Read and Write’, p. 106.