100 साल पुराने उर्दू रिसालों से (Resurrecting Century-Old Muslim Women's Voices From Urdu Magazines by Ghazala Jamil)

On watching the performance of Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues, Gloria Steinem’s initial reaction was, “I already know this: it’s the journey of truth-telling we’ve been on for the past three decades”. My initial reaction on seeing the performative reading Hum Khawateen (We, Women) by a theatre group called Raschakra was in total contrast to Steinem’s response. I asked myself, “Why did I not know about this? How could such silence shroud the existence of these writings for over a century?”

Hum Khawateen is a reading of a selection of articles from Urdu women’s magazines published in India about a century ago. These magazines were serendipitously discovered by a team of researchers from the feminist group Nirantar who were working on issues related to Muslim women’s education. Nirantar also published a compilation of Devnagri transliterations of these writings called Kalaam-e-Niswan (Women’s Words). Its editor Purwa Bharadwaj says, “Although it was published in 2013, despite the team’s efforts the collection could not make a mark outside the NGO community”.  

 https://thewire.in/books/resurrecting-century-old-muslim-womens-voices-from-urdu-magazines