From Purdah to Parliament
by Ikramullah, Shaista Suhrawardy, Begum
Published by : Cresset Press (London) Physical details: xi,168 Pages 14x22 cm | HB| Item type | Current location | Collection | Call number | Status | Date due | Barcode |
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Books
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General Stacks | Non-fiction | 915.4 I269F 1963 (Browse shelf) | Available | 927 |
Life of a traditionally reared Muslim woman who became a political hostess and then MP in the First Constituent Assembly of Pakistan.
Begum Shaista Suhrawardy Ikramullah was a Pakistani author, politician, diplomat and social-activist whose life bridges the late colonial and post-colonial phases of South Asian history. Her biography illustrates the discursive pressures shaping the lives of upper and intermediate class men and women of her generation, particularly as manifested in the unquestioned tropes of modernization theory. However, the same life reveals that her notion of the tradition-modernity dichotomy does not extend to the equation of Islam with tradition. The secular-religious divide, in fact, does not feature in her thought or activism at all. The latter activism also problematizes the assumption that Muslim women, any more of less than non-Muslims, are marginal or peripheral players in the history of the twentieth century.
Born before the last vestige of Mughal civilization had quite disappeared from the subcontinent, Shaista Suhrawardy Ikramullah spent her childhood in the heyday of British Imperialism and the early years of her youth coincided with the period when the struggle for Independence was gathering momentum. She was one of the few Muslim women to take part in the Pakistan Movement and witness the liquidation of an Empire and the heralding of a new state--Pakistan. The book takes up from where the 1963 edition ended. This new edition covers her life as an Assembly member, UN delegate (1948 and 1956), and Ambassador to Morocco (1964--67).
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