This article is a considerable revision of a paper presented at the 33rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies in 1981 at Toronto. I appreciate the comments and suggestions of Gail Minault, Barbara Metcalf, the members of the MSU Women Writers' Union, Robert W. Rydell, Billy G. Smith, and, above all, Adrienne Mayor. A Fulbright-Hays Predoctoral Fellowship in 1975–76 enabled me to carry out the research on which this article is based. I am especially grateful for the help given me by so many Kinnaird College alumnae and staff members, past and present.

¹ South Asia, for the purposes of this discussion, includes the modern states of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. The Punjab is a northwestern province that was divided between India and Pakistan in 1947.

² For general works on Indian social reform, see Natarajan, S., A Century of Social Reform in India (Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1962)Google Scholar and Heimsath, Charles, Indian Nationalism and Hindu Social Reform (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1964CrossRefGoogle Scholar). For an excellent regional study that explains the popularity of girls' education through its promise to create better wives and mothers, see Leonard, Karen I. and Leonard, John G., ‘Social Reforms and Women's Participation in Political Culture: Andhra and Madras,’ in Minault, Gail (ed.), Women and Political Participation in South Asia (Columbia, MO: South Asia Books, 1981Google Scholar). For a general background on women's education, see Mathur, Y. B., Women's Education in India, 1813–1966 (Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1973).Google Scholar

³ Towards Equality: Report of the Committee on the Status of Women in India (New Delhi: Government of India, 1974), 282.Google Scholar

⁴ Maskiell, Michelle Gibson, ‘Women's Higher Education and Family Networks in South Asia: Kinnaird College, Lahore, 1913–60’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1979).Google Scholar

⁵ Indian Education Policy, being a resolution issued by the Governor General in Council, 21 February, 1913, 16. Also, Maskiell, , ‘Women's Higher Education,’ 11–17, 33–36.Google Scholar

⁶ Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims and some Christians practiced arranged marriages. I have used the term ‘sub-castes’ to refer to those social divisions within which Hindu marriages were arranged. Sub-castes are the Punjabi got of a particular family. Caste groups, such as Khatri or Kashmiri Brahmin are named specifically whenever appropriate. Muslim informants suggested that Sayyid lineages among them insisted on endogamous matches, especially for daughters, more often than other lineages. For Hindu and Sikh marriage sub-castes, see Rose, H. A., A Glossary of the Tribes and Castes of the Punjab and North-West Frontier Province (Patiala: Language Department, Punjab, 1970, reprint of 1911–1919 edn).Google Scholar For Muslim family patterns among the ashraf, see Lelyveld, David, Aligarh's First Generation: Muslim Solidarity in British India (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978)Google Scholar, ch. II. For Christian social divisions, see Maskiell, ‘Women's Higher Education,’ 64.

⁷ Papanek, Hanna, ‘Purdah: Separate Worlds and Symbolic Shelter,’ Comparative Studies in Society and Culture, XV, 3 (06 1973), 290Google Scholar. For contemporary Hindu women's observations of pardah, see Jacobson, Doranne, ‘The Women of North and Central India: Goddesses and Wives,’ in Jacobson, Doranne and Wadley, Susan (eds), Women in India: Two Perspectives (Columbia, MO: South Asia Books, 1977), 19, 37–9, 63–4, 70, 73, 90.Google Scholar

⁸ Bengali Women (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972), 2Google Scholar; Kessinger, Tom G., Vilyatpur, 1848–1968; Social and Economic Change in a North Indian Village (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), 177–84.Google Scholar

⁹ The 15th Annual Report of the Indian Female Normal School and Instruction Society, 1867 (London: Suter and Alexander, n.d.), 22Google Scholar. Also, Webster, John C. B., The Christian Community and Change in Nineteenth Century North India (Delhi: The Macmillan Company of India, Limited, 1976), 135.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Tandon, Prakash, Punjabi Century, 1858–1947 (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1968), 192.Google Scholar

¹¹ Geertz, Clifford, Islam Observed: Religious Development in Morocco and Indonesia (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1968), 97.Google Scholar For the definition of ethos, see below, p. 70.

¹² McLachlan, James, American Boarding Schools: A Historical Study (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1970), 14, 256–8.Google Scholar Alumnae interviewed and all former staff members commented on the family feeling in the early years. Even in the 1930s and '40s, some alumnae spoke of McNair as a ‘mother to all.’ It seems that this familial solidarity was severely shaken at Partition in 1947.

¹³ Staff, Kinnaird College for Women, Lahore (n.p., 1923), 11–12; M. Anderson-Scott to unknown addressee, 11, 1927, copy in Kinnaird College files.

¹⁴ Staff, Kinnaird College for Women, Lahore (n.p., 1923), 11–12.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Kinnaird College, Lahore. College Handbook (Lahore: The Punjab Religious Book Society Press, c. 1950), 2Google Scholar. See also Kinnaird College for Women, Lahore…[sic] N. India (n.p., c. 1925), 5.

¹⁶ I. T. McNair, KCR, 1938–39, 13; Interview with P. Mangat Rai. Also, see KCR, 1921–22, 8 on ‘public spirit.’

¹⁷ The phrase ‘separate worlds’ is from Papanek. For family objections, see Edwards, E. M., KCR, 1922–1923, 9.Google Scholar Of course, many of the students who distinguished themselves in these debates were Christians who had been raised with fewer social restrictions to begin with. Yet there were a number of non-Christians who won debating and declamation prizes, a radical departure from prescribed role behavior for any non-Christian women in Lahore in the 1920s and '30s. Many Hindu, Sikh and especially Muslim families were still not prepared to allow such behavior in the 1940s.

¹⁸ Barrier, Norman Gerald, ‘Punjab Politics and the Disturbances of 1907’ (Ph.D. dissertation, Duke University, 1966), 11–12Google Scholar; Towards Equality: Report of the Committee on the Status of Women in India, 236; Report on the Progress of Education for the year ending 31st March, 1924 (Lahore: Superintendent of Government Printing, Punjab, 1924), 1Google Scholar, for government anxiety over large numbers of students congregated in Lahore pursuing a liberal arts education with no vocational focus.

¹⁹ The quote is from a communication between Ishwar Das, Registrar, University of the Punjab, and the Vice Chancellor, 11 June, 1936, attached to letter no. 10865–74, Ishwar Das, Registrar, to members of the Committee, ‘in continuation of this office endorsement No. 10560–69,’ 12 November 1936. This was a committee to consider adding domestic science to the curriculum.

²⁰ D.O letter no. 372–9, F. L. Brayne, Vice Chancellor, Punjab University, to Bishop…, Commissioner of Rural Reconstruction. Simla, 10 June, 1936, 1. Copy in Kinnaird College files.

²¹ Ishwar Das to the Vice Chancellor, 11 June, 1936. Copy in Kinnaird College files.

²² McNair, I. T., KCR, 1935–1936, 6.Google Scholar

²³ McNair, I. T., KCR, 1936–1937, 12–13.Google Scholar

²⁴ In 1956, the University Report records the affiliation of the provincial government's College of Home and Social Sciences in Lahore, which offers an ‘integrated course of four years leading to the B.Sc. in Home Economics.’ Panjab University Report, 1957, 11; The Punjab. A Review of the First Six years (August 1947-August 1953) (Lahore?: The Director, Public Relations, Punjab, 1954?), 64.Google Scholar

²⁵ Phailbus, Mira, Kinnaird College for Women, Lahore, Report 1971–74 (Lahore: 1974), 14.Google Scholar

²⁶ Rai, P. Mangat, Kinnaird College, Lahore, Pakistan (Lahore: Northern Pakistan Printing and Publishing Company, c. 1959), 3.Google Scholar

²⁷ Lelyveld, , Aligarh's First Generation, 37.Google Scholar

²⁸ For Muslim gender-role ideals in Pakistan, see Ali, Parveen Shaukat, Status of Women in the Muslim World (Lahore: Aziz Publishers, 1975), 59–73Google Scholar. Shaukat Ali is an alumna of Kinnaird College. For Hindu gender-role ideals, see Cormack, Margaret, The Hindu Woman (New York: Bureau of Publications, Teachers College, Columbia University, 1953Google Scholar); and Jacobson, 1977 (see note 7). For Christian gender-role ideals in South Asia, see King, Ursula, ‘Women and Religion: The Status and Image of Women in Major Religious Traditions,’ in de Souza, Alfred (ed.), Women in Contemporary India (Delhi: Manohar Book Service, 1975), 110–28.Google Scholar

²⁹ Geertz, , Islam Observed, 97.Google Scholar

³⁰ Several informants voiced the opinion that teaching was more respectable than medicine, perhaps because the latter exposed women to the physical side of life. Although pardah restricted women, it also provided a clientele for female professionals in education and medicine. Schools and hospitals reserved for females made teaching and doctoring respectable, for women could work within a female network. In any case, students could not take a pre-medical course at Kinnaird College until the 1950s, so Kinnaird College students had to change institutions to study science before that date.

³¹ Anglo-Indians, in this context, were the children of European fathers and Indian mothers. They were not easily assimilated into either European or Punjabi society, and bore the usual hardships of half-castes.

³² In addition to examples from Kinnaird families, there are several biographical examples of this in Sen, N. B., Punjab's Eminent Hindus (Lahore: New Book Society, 1944Google Scholar). See also, Van den Dungen, P. H. M., ‘Status and Occupation in Nineteenth Century Punjab,’ in Low, D. A. (ed.), Soundings in Modern South Asian History (Berkeley: University of California, Press, 1966), 59–94.Google Scholar

³³ Tandon, Punjabi Century, 28. Also, Barrier, ‘Punjab Politics,’ 15–17. These families identified themselves as ‘families that had taken to professions’ or as ‘service people.’

³⁴ Pope, Barbara Corrado, ‘Angels in the Devil's Workshop: Leisured Charitable Women in Nineteenth Century England and France,’ in Bridenthal, Renate and Koonz, Claudia (eds), Becoming Visible: Women in European History (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1977), 296–324.Google Scholar

³⁵ The Arya Samaj had two factions, one supporting Western-style education in English (mostly for males) and one supporting Sanskrit and Hindi-medium education. See, Jones, Kenneth W., Arya-Dharm: Hindu Consciousness in Nineteenth Century Punjab (Berkeley: University of California Press, c. 1976).Google Scholar Many alumnae were the daughters and nieces of Arya Samaj members.

³⁶ McNair, I. T., ‘In Answer to the Questionnaire,’ Section A, Part 1, 3. Manuscript dated September 1936, in Kinnaird College files.Google Scholar

³⁷ McNair, I. T., KCR, 1938–1939, 10–11.Google Scholar

³⁸ Maskiell, , ‘Women's Higher Education,’ Table 7, 119.Google Scholar Lahore College attracted more Muslim students than Kinnaird until 1947. For example, in 1931, when the proportion of women English literates among Muslims had increased, the enrollment at Lahore College was 30 percent Muslim. Report on the Progress of Education in the Panjab, 1930–31 (Lahore: Superintendent of Government Printing, Panjab, 1932), 71Google Scholar. At Kinnaird in the same year, the enrollment was about 15 percent Muslim. KCR 1931–32, 5. Almost 30 percent of the adult female English literates in Lahore were Muslim in 1931. See, Maskiell, , ‘Women's Higher Education,’ Table 8, 123.Google ScholarCensus information is from Census of India, 1931, Vol. XVII, Punjab, Part II, Tables, 259.Google Scholar

³⁹ The first Muslim student was Khadijah Begum Ferozuddin, daughter of Mohammad Ferozuddin Khan, Nizam's State. She enrolled in 1916, took several higher degrees after her B. A., and was the first Indian woman to pass the M.A. examination of the Panjab University. See Report of the University of the Punjab, 1922, 3. She gave university extension lectures for pardah audiences and joined the Punjab Education Department. She never married.

⁴⁰ This Christian alumna remained Principal until 1948, when she was offered the position of Principal at a new women's college (Miranda House) in India. She continued as Principal there until her retirement in 1968.

⁴¹ Chipp, Sylvia A., ‘Tradition vs. Change: The All Pakistan Women's Association,’ Islam and the Modern Age, I, 3 (11 1970), 69–90.Google Scholar

⁴² Papanek, ‘Purdah’ (see note 7), 301.