Orientalist Approach in Questioning Muslim Women’s Identity in Pre-Partition India: Case of Seclusion

Abstract

This article critically investigates how colonial India's orientalist interpretation of Muslim identity was shaped by western ideological notions. It entails an inquiry as if this this strategy was only an intellectual attempt to establish colonists as superiors or if there was a power struggle at play. Although the east is seen as having absurd religions, sufi mysteries, and a static past that is slowly evolving in religion rather than science, it also inspires the west with its charismatic architecture, ancient wisdom, rich society and culture, and superior civilization. Islam views religion as a social issue, whereas the west has separated it from official policy and declared it to be an individual's concern since the renaissance. Orientalists claim that this notion of communal sensitivity tends to make them a closed, traditional culture. The west believed it was their sacred duty to spread civilization to the east because they were more advanced in civilization than the east. This was true, just as it was in India, where British colonists sought to bring about a civilising revolution. This article focuses on Muslim women's seclusion (the Purdah system) in colonial India and orientalists’ efforts to subvert Muslim identity through it.