On this episode of the podcast we have with us Prof. Margrit Pernau, who is the author of a newly published book, Jamia’s Aapa Jaan: The Many Lifeworlds of Gerda Philipsborn. And to discuss this book we have in conversation with her Dr. Saif Mahmood.
Prof. Margrit Pernau, is a Senior Researcher at the Centre for the History of emotions at the Max Planck Istitute for Human Development in Berlin. For the last two decades or so she has been working on the history of emotions, conceptual history and South Asian Islam, resulting in a prolific publishing record of several books, edited volumes and articles on educational institutions led by Muslims in colonial and modern India, such as the JMI and AMU.
Dr. Saif Mahmood is an Advocate of the Supreme Court of India and an International lawyer, strategy advisor and legal scholar with more than two decades of a rich and diverse experience. Saif is a leading South Asian name in the field of Urdu poetry, literature and its cultural heritage. His bestselling book on the Urdu poets of Mughal Delhi, ‘Beloved Delhi: A Mughal City and Her Greatest Poets’ was published in 2018.
Sughra Mehdi (Suġhrā Mahdī), the maternal niece of Abid Husain (Saiyid ‛Ābid Ḥusain, 1896-1978), belonged to the second generation of the Jamia family. She grew up to become a prolific writer, editor, professor of Urdu literature, and social worker. Throughout her life, she critically engaged with the position of women in Indian, and particularly middle-class Muslim, society. The present essay is not intended to cover all aspects of her activism and to analyze the voluminous body of her work. Her legacy that is preserved at the Jamia archive definitely deserves to be studied in detail as an important source for research on Jamia’s history and on the self-expression of middle-class Muslim women in independent India. Here my focus will be limited to aspects of feminism in selected works of her fiction. Following an outline of her biography, some of her non-fictional publications will also be discussed briefly to contextualize her novel writing.
Image Courtesy Raza Mehdi
Sughra Mehdi’s Early Life, Professional Career, and Social Work
This summary of Sughra Mehdi’s life is based to a great extent on her memoirs Ḥikāyat-e Hastī. Āp Bitī. (Life`s Story. My Experiences), published in 2006. Apart from the factual information reproduced in this brief outline, the text is particularly important as a source of her emotional and mental reactions to the circumstances of her life and offers an insight into the emergence of her feminist attitudes, an aspect we will return to later.
Sughra Mehdi, originally named Imāmat Fāt͍imah, was born on August 8, 1937 (or 1938; some sources give 1927) in Bhopal and spent her childhood in the qaṣbah Bari (Bāṛī) and the village Daipur (Dācīpūr), district Bhopal, MP. As was the custom, she received her first schooling at home and was later sent to the school in Bari. In 1950 she was brought to Delhi by her aunt Saliha Abid Husain (Ṣāliḥah ‛Ābid Ḥusain, 1913-1988) who prepared her for admission into Jamia’s secondary school which she joined in 1951. On this occasion she was also renamed Suġhrā by another aunt. The new name was immediately adopted by everyone in the family.1
After doing her Matric it was suggested that Sughra should train as a nurse since her elders regarded nursing or teaching at girls’ schools as the only respectable professions for girls. She volunteered for three months as a nurse aide in an hospital and then joined a nursing course but dropped out after an unhappy incident and joined Jamia’s newly founded Rural Institute.
She continued her education for FA and BA in Aligarh. While in Aligarh, she chaired the literary circle Bazm-e Adab and represented the Aligarh Women’s College in the editorial office of Aligarh Magazine.
Back in Delhi, she did a BEd with the intention to earn money and thereby to ease the financial burden on her uncle Abid Husain’s shoulders. In 1961 she started to teach at a primary school in Delhi and was later transferred to teach at the Girls’ Higher Secondary School in Old Delhi’s Balī Mārān. At the same time, she did her MA in Urdu as a private candidate and hoped for promotion and a permanent job at her school. When neither happened and she was treated with contempt by the new principal, she resigned. As she states in Ḥikāyat-e Hastī, at the root of this decision was her general discontent with the state of pedagogy in government schools for girls, a topic she later also dealt with in her novels.2 She then started to work as a freelance script writer for All India Radio under the guidance of Rifat Sarosh (Rif‛at Sarosh, 1926-2008), a renowned poet, radio producer and prose writer. After one year to her great disappointment again no permanent contract was offered because, as she describes it, her rival candidate had a sifārish (recommendation) from Indira Gandhi.3 Being out of work again, she now started to earn some money by doing translations for the National Book Trust of India. When in 1969 Abid Husain co-founded the society Islam in the Modern Age, Sughra Mehdi was appointed to translate articles from English into Urdu for the society’s journal by the same name. She also did all kinds of office work for the society, which she enjoyed immensely. She continued to work for the society for seven years, all the while also pursuing her education. In evening courses, she obtained an MPhil. from Delhi University and was accepted into its PhD program, but dissatisfied with DU’s Urdu Department continued her PhD at the Jamia Millia Islamia under the guidance of Professor Gopi Chand Narang (Gopī Chand Nārang, 1931-2022). Her PhD thesis Akbar kī Shā‛irī kā Tanqīdī Mut͍āli‛ah (A Critical Study of Akbar’s Poetry) was published in 1981.
In 1977 she started to teach in Jamia’s Urdu Department from where she retired in 1997.
Sughra Mehdi traveled widely, visiting family and friends in the UK, the USA, Japan, and Pakistan, and tourist attractions around the world. Her impressions are recorded in two collections of travelogues: Sair kar Dunyā kī Ġhāfil (Travel the World, You Ignoramus! 1994, 2012) and Maiķhānoñ kā Patah4(The Address of Taverns, 2005), the latter being her report of visits to Mekka and Medina and to the places of Shia devotion in Iraq, Iran and Syria.
After retirement, Sughra Mehdi became very active in social work for women, particularly Muslim women. Together with Sayyida Hameed she worked for the rights of Muslim women through the Muslim Women’s Forum, whose founder-member and vice-president she was, wrote pamphlets, appeared in court, and addressed rallies, always arguing for the rights of Muslim women in accordance with the Indian constitution and Muslim law. Her social work took her beyond the well-known middle-class Urdu circles and confronted her with different views on feminism. The Forum`s initiatives for the empowerment of women through education and the development of professional skills perfectly matched her conviction that girls and women should be economically independent and thus be able to stand on their own feet.
Sughra Mehdi died in Delhi on March 17, 2014.
Sughra Mehdi (Photo via Okhla Times, Accessed from Jamia Journal 18th March, 2015)
Sughra Mehdi’s Writing
Sughra Mehdi wrote her first story while in class 8. It was published in the children’s journal Khilaune (Toys). As the regular beginning of her literary career, she regards her short story Ātish-e Ķhāmosh (Silent Flames), a title inspired by Saliha Abid Husain’s novel of the same name. It received a first price in a meeting of the literary circle for girls which Saliha Abid Husain had founded in Delhi. She continued to write short stories, partly for the radio. Her stories were initially published in popular journals such as Bīsvīñ Ṣadī (Twentieth Century) and Ājkal (Nowadays) and in Jamia’s Urdu monthly Jāmi‛ah,providing her a wide readership, since the journals would be read by many or even all members of a household. The stories were later published in four collections.5
Her first longer fictional text, the novella Ko’ī Dard āshnā bhī Nahīñ (Nobody Knows the Pain), appeared in 1969. In the meantime, she had already been working on her first novel Pā bah Jolāñ (Feet in Fetters) that was published in 1972. The title is taken from the title of the poem “Āj Bāzār meñ Pā bah Jolāñ Chalo”(Roam the Market Place with Feet in Fetters Today) of Faiz Ahmad Faiz’s collection Dast-e tih-e Sang (With Bounded Hands) that had been published in 1965. It was followed by Dhund (Mist, 1974), Purvā’ī (The Easterly Wind, 1978), Rāg Bhūpālī (1984) and Jo Bace haiñ Sang Sameṭ Lo (Gather the Stones That Are Left, 1990).
Cover of Ko’ī Dard āshnā bhī Nahīñ 1(969), Accessed from Rekhta.org
Teaching at the Jamia, Sughra Mehdi had to deal in depth with the history of Urdu literature. While she regarded herself primarily as a fiction writer, her teaching experience and her participation in literary seminars resulted in a number of articles that were published in a collection titled Adabī Maẓāmīn (Literary Articles)in 2002. In the preface to the collection as in her memoirs she stressed that she was not in favour of seminar bāzī (seminarizing)6 and attended seminars only when really necessary. Nevertheless, her essays are important because the collection contains several articles on women in Urdu literature, as topics and as authors. The last article tellingly bears the title “Ķhavātīn kī Zabān-o-Adab kī Ḳhidmāt aur ‛Adm I‛trāf (Women’s Contributions to Language and Literature and Lack of Recognition).
In the same year, another publication with a focus on women appeared: Urdū Nāvaloñ meñ ‛Aurat kī Samājī Ḥaiṡiyat (The Social Status of Women in Urdu Novels). It is a survey of writers from the nineteenth century until 1947, including many male and female writers who are not mentioned in mainstream histories of Urdu literature, particularly in those published in English. Sughra Mehdi here stresses the tremendous role Urdu novels played in improving the situation of women.7[7] The subheadings of chapter 5 of this publication present a summary of the main topics of reformist discourse on women since the nineteenth century: “Ta‛līm” (Education), “Pardah” (Purdah), “Bevah ke Masā’il”(Problems of a Widow), “T̤avā’if kā Mas’ilah” (The Problem of Courtesans), “Ta‛dād-e Izdivāj” (Multiple Marriages), and “Baġhair Marẓī kī aurBe joṛ Shādī aur Ḳhula‛”(Forced and Mismatched Marriage and Divorce at the Instance of the Wife). In a brief outlook on the period since 1947, she mentions new topics: problems of working women, such as a lack of control over their earnings, and the mistrust of their husbands, psychological problems of men caused by their centuries-old predominance, the growing rate of assaults on women in public places, and the vast gap between laws on gender equality and social reality.
Cover of Baccoñ kī Āpā Jān(1995), Accessed from Rekhta.org
Sughra Mehdi wrote biographies of eminent writers, some of them for the popular series Hindūstānī Adab ke Micmār (Architects of Hindustani Literature), with abridged versions for children. Her last work is an important source for the history of the Jamia: Hamārī Jami‛ah. Ta‛līmī, Tahżībī aur Samājī Sāgā (Our Jamia. An Educational, Cultural and Social Saga), published in 2013. It presents a detailed description of the foundation and development of the Jamia, its founders, builders and teachers, with a special chapter on “Ķhavātīn-e Jāmi‛ah”(Jamia’s Women), namelyGerda Philipsborn, Shahjahan Begum, Begum Asifa Mujib, Begum Saliha Abid Husain, Nabila Begum, Mushir Fatima, Tahira Khatun and Jamal Fatima. Thus for the first time, attention was drawn comprehensively to the role of women in building and running the Jamia. Importantly, Sughra Mehdi takes Jamia’s history up to modern India, stressing the secular, modern character of the university, locating it in the mainstream of higher education in India. She was not, however, an uncritical member of Jamia’s teaching staff. In her memoirs she mentions that she was disappointed by the atmosphere prevailing in the Urdu department, particularly after Narang had left it.8
Cover of Hamārī Jami‛ah (2013), Accessed from Rekhta.org
In addition to her original work, Sughra Mehdi also compiled and edited collections of articles, short stories, and letters addressed to eminent personalities connected with the Jamia. For many years she edited Jamia’s Urdu monthly Jāmi‛ah and the Journal Islam and the Modern Age for the society of the same name and functioned as publisher of its Urdu edition Islām aur ‛Aṣr-e Jadīd. Sughra Mehdi thus not only was an integral part of the closely knit Jamia family, as she described it in biographies, in her memoirs, and in her book on the Jamia. Through her writings across different genres, she can be regarded as an important chronicler of Jamia’s history and the first writer drawing special attention to Jamia’s women.
Sughra Mehdi’s feminist education
Turning to Sughra Mehdi’s fiction, it is essential to briefly look at her biography again since it had a deep-reaching impact on her writing and informed many of the central conflicts structuring her novels. I took the title of this section from a statement in Ḥikāyat-e Hastī: Observing the friendly, sisterly relationship between Abid Husain’s first wife who lived apart from him in the village, and his second, much younger wife Saliha Abid Husain9 who treated the first wife respectfully and left all affairs of the property to her. “I so learned my first lesson in feminism”.10 Sughra Mehdi concludes: Women should always support each other and respect each other’s rights.11 Wherever that does not happen, injustice, resentment, and unhappiness result.
Her feminism no doubt was shaped by a number of factors, among them the reformist atmosphere prevailing within the Jamia family12 with its strong focus on education and the long tradition of Urdu writing on women’s issues she had become familiar with already in her youth. During her career as a professor of Urdu she returned to this corpus of texts in her insightful studies on important authors, female as well as male.13 But no less important for the formation of her feminist outlook was lived experience. Reading her memoirs, it becomes obvious that her strong commitment to women’s issues was grounded in her observation of women’s lives. The text also reveals how closely the characters and plots of her fiction are related to her personal experience. Particularly important are her memories of childhood and youth as recorded in Ḥikāyat-e Hastī. The text was first serialized in the popular journal Bisvīñ Ṣadī (Twentieth Century)under the title “Māẓī ke Jharoke se”(Through the Lens of the Past). In the preface “Bā‛iṡ-e Taḥrīr”(Cause for Writing) she remarks that her reminiscences are the result of the tendency towards the expected end of one’s life to look back and recollect life’s events, observations, associations, and relationships, but would never have seen the light of day without the insistence of Bisvīñ Ṣadī’s editor Shama‛Afroz Zaidī.14 Much to her surprise, Sughra Mehdi received positive responses from across India and beyond, demonstrating the wide distribution of Bisvīñ Ṣadī’s readers.15
When she revised the text for publication in book form, she realized that “despite not wanting it, the memoirs quite often dealt with myself” (nah chāhte hu’e bhī is yāddāsht meñ apnā żikr kāfī ā gayā hai).16 Do we here have the conventional approach in the Muslim tradition of autobiographical writing not to speak as much of oneself as of one’s family, friends and peers, or was this sincere surprise at the outcome of her retrospection? One would not really expect such reluctance or restraint in a person as articulate and outspoken as Sughra Mehdi. It is difficult to decide without a more intimate knowledge of the author, an access that only her immediate companions would have. One also has to take into account that autobiographical writing generally tends to be selective, even biased, aiming to present a specific persona of the author. Hence one may take this utterance in the preface as well as some of the events described in the text with a pinch of salt. It should be mentioned, however, that Sughra Mehdi did not refrain from talking about some of her own weaknesses and failures.
Sughra Mehdi grew up with three elder and one younger sister and two younger brothers. She spent her life in different environments: in the rural atmosphere of a village, in towns such as Bhopal and Kanpur, and in the metropolis of Delhi. She had a very intimate knowledge of the life of extended families in all their aspects: marital relationships, relations with in-laws, relations between siblings. She experienced the generation gap, and hierarchies of all kinds. From her descriptions of family life one can judge that right from her childhood she had been a very keen observer of everything going on around her. Thus, she very early witnessed the injustice done to women, the unhappiness caused by mismatched marriages, the discrimination of children not fulfilling the elders’ expectations, the loneliness of children deprived of a mother’s love and care, and many other big and small tragedies of everyday life. But while living in a community of women all around her, family as well as friends, she never expressed any general antagonism to men.
In her memories she is very outspoken and does not shrink back from open criticism of her own immediate family who slighted her because of her thin body and her “bad looks” – the dark color of her skin and a face marred by pockmarks.17 This maltreatment and the weakness caused by her illness resulted in a strong inferiority complex. Lack of maternal love thus becomes a recurrent theme in her novels. In Sughra’s case, it was partly caused by the bipolar disorder of her mother and further accentuated by the strained relationship of her mismatched parents, who often quarreled, and by the antagonism between mother and mother-ín-law, also a recurrent theme. Watching unhappy marriages, not only in the case of her parents, and observing how married life often stripped women of their personality, reducing them to obedient servants of their husbands, very early led to her resolve never to marry, another recurrent theme in her fiction. When her maternal uncle Abid Husain later mentions marriage to her she declares that she does not want to marry but to pursue her career and to continue to write – she was just writing her first novel. He did not pressure her to marry but told her that it would not be easy to lead a solitary life.18
During her life, Sughra Mehdi witnessed how many women of the family left the purdah and began to take an active part in cultural and literary activities, particularly for the betterment of Muslim women. In Jamia circles, women did have a voice, and they used all opportunities to make their voices heard. In this, as in many other regards, Saliha Abid Husain was a shining example for her. Sughra herself was not only the first girl of the family to go to school, she also became the most educated member of her family. The credit for these achievements she gave to her aunt who was instrumental in freeing her from her inferiority complex. Saliha Abid Husain, who had lost a daughter right after birth, gave her love and attention and came to adopt her as her daughter. She dedicated her autobiography Silsilah-e Roz-o-Shab (The Cycle of Day and Night)19 to Sughra Mehdi with the following words: “To Sughra who is the heir and custodian of all values that are the fruit of my life” (Ṣuġhrā ke nām jo un sab qadroñ kī vāriṡ aur amīn hai jo merī zindagī kā ḥāṣil rahi haiñ)20, underlining the very special relationship both shared, being mother and daughter as well as friends, counsellor as well as comforter (ġhamḳhvār) to each other.21 The attention and affection she received from her aunt for the first time gave Sughra a sense of her existence, one could also say of the self, and she regarded this day as her actual birth.22 While in her immediate family Sughra was largely neglected and was regarded as physically and mentally weak, Saliha Abid Husain recognised the intellectual potential of the girl and did everything to instill confidence in her and to get her educated.23 Living with Saliha Abid Husain Sughra Mehdi also observed how women and girls were allowed to make choices regarding their marriage partners and their careers, and in the relationship between Saliha and Abid Husain she got the opportunity to observe a partnership based on complete equality.24
In her memoirs, Sughra Mehdi also mentions other, smaller indications of changing attitudes towards women. She observes that slowly women begin to perform a custom that formerly had been restricted to the birth of boys for newborn girls also. She interprets this as a conscious or unconscious leveling of the different attitudes towards boys and girls.25 And she fondly remembers how shortly before her death her scarcely educated aunt Anīs Āpā, who had never heard the word feminism, told a young girl of the family that she was no burden to the family because she was standing on her own feet, and that she could see herself whether or not she would find a suitable marriage partner, and if not, it would also be no shame to live on one’s own.26
Sughra Mehdi freely admits to being short-tempered, stubborn, self-opinionated, and quarrelsome. She had no tolerance for hypocrisy and sycophancy and a strong sense of justice. Combined with her rebellious nature this seems often to have made life difficult in her professional career, and such problems resurface in some of her works. All central female protagonists clearly bear the stamp of her own character traits, but that does not mean that their stories are Sughra Mehdi’s own story. Rather they combine stories of women she had known in her life with her own vision of how women could and should live.
Sughra Mehdi (right) with Quratul Ain Haider (Accessed from Jamia Journal 18th March, 2015)
Aspects of feminism in Sughra Mehdi’s novels
The central topic of Sughra Mehdi’s writing is the life of women and, to a somewhat lesser degree, men in the family and beyond. In passing she refers to historical events such as the Partition of India, communal riots, the exodus of Muslims to Pakistan, the growing antagonism between Hindus and Muslims, the westernied ways of the upper class, etc., but these are dealt with only regarding the life of her characters.
Skipping her first, brief novella Ko’ī Dard āshnā Bhī Nahī͂ (Nobody Knows the Pain, 1969) that she claimed to have written to get over the death of her youngest brother Mukhtar, I will turn to her first novel Pā bah Jolāñ. As will be seen, the fetters of the title are not only social norms and customs but also fetters of love.
In the novel, we follow the main protagonist Ṣahbā from childhood to adolescence. Like Sughra Mehdi she has elder sisters but only one brother. Here we again encounter the motif of the lack of maternal love: The girl’s mother has been driven out of the house by her mother-in-law because of an alleged affair with a cousin. This act has devastated the whole family, including the children, husband and wife. Until the end, it does not become fully clear how far this alleged affair went, but all attempts of Ālā Bī, a female relative of the father, who comes to the rescue to raise the children, fail to heal the wounds and reconcile husband and wife.
Ṣahbā’s brother has been given away to be raised by a childless aunt who loved him dearly, but he was not treated well by her in-laws. He felt rejected and remains estranged from the family till the end. The dishonor allegedly brought over the family by the mother also impairs the chances of her daughters to ever get married.
One episode strongly reminds one of Ismat Chughtai’s famous story “Chauthī kā Joṛā” (The Wedding Shroud): A young man visits the family and is treated as a prospective groom for one of the elder sisters. The family, despite being in dire straights, spends lavishly on his food and has to subsist on dry crumbs after he has left, but a marriage offer never comes. The father has to incur debts to raise money for his son. The unfortunate sister would like to continue her studies, but there is no money. Ṣahbā swears never to marry. Her sister falls ill and dies soon after. Here Sughra Mehdi commemorates the pain at the death of one of her elder sisters, although the circumstances of her death have nothing in common with the events in the novel. The whole episode is also much less elaborate than Ismat’s short story, but it equally illustrates the hierarchy between parents of daughters and parents of sons and the disastrous effect of the attempt to marry girls off at all costs.
In Āla Bī Ṣahbā finds a loving mother, and she becomes Āla Bī’s favorite child. Āla Bī’s love gives her self-confidence and for the first time stimulates her interest in her studies at school. When she has passed her final exams at school with good results her brother persuades the father to allow her to continue her studies for BA in a town away from home. There she lives in a hostel together with her Hindu friend Mādhū, takes part in theatre productions, and meets several boys. Now we get the typical situation of a girl meets a boy: the Bengali Akhshay falls in love with Mādhū. Mādhū’s brother Mahendra finally gets their mother to approve of the marriage against her initial opposition because of the difference in ethnicity and caste.
Akshay’s friend Alt̤āf proposes to Ṣahbā, but she rejects him and declares that she will not marry at all. Āla Bī reminds her that as a girl she can only attain freedom by getting married and that given the bad repute of the family a boy like Altaf is a heaven-sent, but Ṣahbā does not relent. Meanwhile, Ṣahbā and Mahendra who since childhood had been best friends also fall in love with each other, and Mahendra intends to send a formal marriage proposal to Ṣahbā’s father, but she strongly objects and explains what an uproar this would cause in both families. Mahendra’s mother has all the time been urging her son to marry and has prepared long lists of suitable girls, but when he declares his intention to marry a Muslim girl she suffers a nervous breakdown. News of this also reaches Ṣahbā’s family, and everybody including her mother-like Āla Bī is horrified. Ṣahbā succeeds in preventing Mahendra from proposing, and she suggests that they should wait until objections to such an inter-religious marriage would calm down. In this, she is motivated by a sense of responsibility, affection, and respect for both their elders. With her brother gone away to Africa and her father growing very frail, she also feels responsible for supporting him and Āla Bī in their old age, a sense of responsibility that is not caused by convention but by her deep affection for them.
The novel thus remains open-ended. Interestingly Sughra Mehdi had stated in the final remarks of her study on the position of women that since 1947 considerations of religion and cast have become less important in marriage, but here she seems reluctant to portray such a union, and given the atmosphere prevailing in both households it was definitely more realistic to postpone such a possibility until an uncertain future.
As in Sughra Mehdi’s other works, here too marital relations are a core theme of the novel. Arranged marriages are shown to be successful when there is affection and understanding between the partners, as is the case with Madhu’s parents and Ṣahbā’s surviving elder sister. In both cases, however, the women are not highly educated and do not aspire to pursue their own careers. These couples are also only at the margins of the narrative. Much more attention is given to the disastrous effects of the mismatched marriage of Ṣahbā’s parents which was forced on her mother against her will and which was further aggravated by the mistrust and cruelty of the mother-in-law.
A recurrent theme here as in other works is the social custom to regard girls as a burden one has to get rid of as soon as possible by marrying them off. When Mādhū’s mother is bent on getting Mādhū married, Ṣahbā thinks: “I don’t understand why here girls are understood to be a burden.”27 A girl’s parental home is not her own, as Āla Bī explains to Ṣahbā: “I will be content when you will also be set up in your home.”, home here meaning the husband’s house. Ṣahbā replies softly: “I am in my own house.”28 Although for Ṣahbā it is unthinkable to alienate her family, she is convinced that to her parents and for Āla Bī their principles and the family’s respectability are more important than she is.29
This also hints at a generation gap: Ṣahbā wonders how long the elders will continue to force their will on the younger generation. The pressure to marry concerns boys as well, as Mahendra’s case shows. He feels that in questions of matchmaking the persons concerned are only of secondary importance.30 He also wonders how long family, name, honor, religion, and caste will continue to burden the younger generation.31
Ṣahbā instead of marrying wants to build a career and work for the country. In many ways she resembles the author: She is shown to be outspoken and headstrong, tends to be uncompromising, detests sycophancy and insincerity but has a very strong attachment to her family. She goes out into the world but always holds up the moral principles of her religion and class. Both love stories appear to proclaim the ideal of love marriage, but there is a strong stress on mutual understanding and shared ideals because, as Mahendra is convinced, romantic feelings are bound to subside soon enough, hence stronger bonds are needed for a successful marriage.32 Mahendra supports Akhshay’s proposal to Mādhū because he is sure that Akhshay would never suppress her personality, would allow her to continue her studies and realize her full potential, thus creating good conditions for a companionate partnership.33
The two central marriage plots of the novel, one successful and one open-ended, are the result of the new opportunities for the meeting of girls and boys, partly in educational institutions with co-education and at other occasions such as literary functions or other events. This mingling of unmarried girls with boys had been one of the concerns of Muslim reformers right into the twentieth century, as Faisal Devji sums up:
Given that educated women were better able to raise children, manage their homes, improve their language, morals and religion (and so perhaps their marital prospects as well), provide intelligent company for their husbands (keeping them away from courtesans), and advance their community in the world, would not too much learning, going to school, and perhaps associating with male teachers and students lead to disobedience, immorality and rejection of domesticity?34
In this, as in later stories, Sughra Mehdi takes great care to portray her central characters as respecting the values of morality prevailing in their social environment. They may question some of their elders’ norms of respectability, such as marrying only within one’s caste or religion, but there is no attempt to enter into pre-marital relationships. Even in the case of love marriage, the consent of one’s elders is sought, and where this seems unattainable, marriage is suspended. Throughout the novels the main protagonists respect and love their elders, and the educated girls are shown to be competent managers of family and households as well, mirroring in a way Sughra Mehdi’s capacities of combining a successful career with the responsibilities of an extended family and a big household.35
The story is told chronologically with a few minor flashbacks in memories of the characters. While Ṣahbā is the main protagonist, some space is also given to the perspectives of other characters thus adding different angles to the image created by the narrative. The characters thus gain depth and credibility, as their motivations get related to their experiences. This technique is far more developed in Sughra Mehdi’s later novel Rāg bhūpālī but here, too, it already works to allow for a negotiation of different positions and a multilayered image of the characters.
The author’s next novel Dhund, written after she had resigned from her job as a schoolteacher, very critically deals with her experiences while teaching at girls’ schools in Delhi. She describes the schools as hotbeds of political intrigues, mismanagement, embezzlement, slovenliness, injustice to pupils, and hate-mongering. The main plot, however, is a love story that after some complications (slightly resembling Pride and Prejudice) ends in a happy marriage. The subplots again contain stories of unhappy marriages and of a woman who has been thrown out by her husband who also took away their children.
The third novel Purvā’ī is partly set in London where the main protagonist Zuhrā has married a man chosen for her by her father. There are several subplots, almost always about unhappy love. One motif that had already appeared in Dhund is that of a single woman who in an attempt to overcome her loneliness decides to dedicate her life to work for the common good.
But now we turn to Sughra Mehdi’s fourth novel Rāg Bhūpālī/Bhopālī.The titlein her own words alludes to Rābi‛ah, the central character of the story: like the rāginī she is neither incomplete nor complete.36 The musical scale Rāg Bhūpālīhas only five notes, hence her statement that it is incomplete, but it is a very majestic Rag and very popular in folk as well as film songs. Rābi‛ah in her own way also is a very majestic, impressive person. It is striking that the author nevertheless regards her as incomplete because of her loneliness.
The narrative structure of Rāg Bhūpālī is more complex than that of the earlier novels. The story unfolds in many flashbacks giving more room to the perspectives of other characters, thus gradually changing the initial impression of Rābi‛ah and her failed marriage. Despite her misgivings about the institution of marriage and her resolve never to marry, Rābi‛ah had been overwhelmed by her fellow student ‛Ādil’s passionate romantic feelings and impulsively agreed to marry him. When they do marry the things that had previously attracted ‛Ādil to Rābi‛ah – her ready wit, playfulness, independence, stubbornness, and wilfulness now come to disturb and annoy him. She wonders whether he had expected to be able to domesticate her (“The Taming of the Shrew” or “King Thrushbeard”?). Their egos clash, and when a fight over his inner problems culminates in him slapping her, she leaves him right there and then. His repeated attempts for reconciliation fail.
In Rābi‛ah’s thoughts, we find a long list of women’s hardships and men’s highhandedness. Her aversion to marriage dates back to her early childhood when she witnessed the cruel treatment of wives by their husbands. Thus, the novel opens with a festive, joyful scene that ends with a shock for the little girl Rābi‛ah. She gets up around sunrise to join her family in an outing. The whole setting and her excitement are described very vividly. Bullock carts are upholstered with cushions and rugs. The little girls jump onto a cart without purdah arrangement, i.e. without curtains. When the bullocks start moving the bells around their necks ring, a sound that the girl enjoys very much.37 When they arrive at Uncle Shamshād’s house, the cart stops and the driver calls the uncle to come, but he does not appear. The girl is sent to fetch him from his house:
“Shamshād Chā!”, and then she froze on the spot. Uncle Shamshād’s wife was sitting on the threshold of the kitchen, and he was beating her with a heavy boot. Her wide-hemmed, plaited white kurtawas covered in blood. Both ends of her pink dupatta had fallen to the ground. Her eyebrow was split, and Shamshād uncle’s mother was standing in the courtyard saying: “Aye, you wretched woman, I had told you not to speak up to your man!”.
“Shamshād Chā!”, she cried out loud, and his hand stopped. “Bā’ī, you! Go, I am coming right now.” With these words, he began to swear at his wife.38
The girl leaves the house and sits in the cart. The day that had started so joyful is spoiled for her, and she cannot forget the sight of Shamshād uncle’s wife with her face covered in blood. For the rest of the day, she feels suffocating and struggles to stop the tears welling up in her eyes. The pain she feels as a little girl will later turn into anger when she witnesses many more instances of injustice and cruelty towards women. Another such example is that of Rābi‛ah’s beautiful, lively aunt Raqiyah who repeatedly flees the maltreatment by her husband, but is always sent back to him by the family. When Rābi‛ah sees her again after many years she is a broken woman, always fussing over her husband, the majāzī ḳhudā (this-worldly god), neglecting her own appearance, deprived of her individuality, and totally numbed.39 She also remembers how her father slapped her mother when she accused him of betraying her with another woman.
Over the years the reaction to such experiences builds up finally to result in an almost aggressive urge to maintain her independence and to preserve her personality. Rābi‛ah wants to stand on her own feet, to have her own house, and rejects the concept that girls have a home only in their husband’s house. When her father dies, he leaves the house not to her brother, but to her, and thus fulfills a dream she had nurtured since childhood: to have her own house, her sagā makān, not needing to be bele kī kalī, na pinjre kī ciṛiyā na āngan kī gayyā (a bud of Jasmin, a bird in a cage or the cow in the courtyard).40
Many small episodes illustrate how men belittle women, patronize them, and treat them as dependent and needing protection. Back in the present, it occurs to Rābi‛ah, who now is a mature woman, that her nephew, whom she had invited to visit Nainital with her, booked a cottage in his name, not in hers: “Even now my enlightened, widely traveled, educated nephew sees himself as the guardian of his 45 years old liberal and independent aunt.”41
Rābi‛ah also remembers how as newlyweds she and ‛Ādil spent their honeymoon in Nainital. When a thunderstorm sets in ‛Ādil, embracing her tightly, asks her “Are you not afraid of lightning?” She retorts: “No, not at all, I am afraid of neither lizards nor lightning, I am completely ignorant of such typical coquetries of the fair sex, Mister ‛Ādil Aḥmad Anṣārī!”, and struggles to get free.42 Only much later it dawns on her that she should better have humored him by responding to his romantic moments and his emotionality. She never realised how lonely he was, having no family of his own, and how much he needed her love. Too late she wonders whether their marriage could have worked had she been less brusque and aggressive. Only in retrospect she realizes that ‛Ādil failed to understand her because he only saw her surface, but was not aware of her experiences.43 Similarly, only after the death of her parents, it occurred to her that her father perhaps turned to another woman because her mother did not respond to his passionate feelings. When her mother out of hurt pride gave her husband and children the cold shoulder, she turned the whole household into a cold and unkind place, depriving the children of love. Here, too, perhaps the contrast in her parents’ temperaments was to be blamed, as was a complete lack of communication.
After her separation from ‛Ādil, Rābi‛ah turned into a successful museologist, wrote several books, and was about to become the director of the museum she works for. She assured herself that she could not have preserved her identity and personality and been so successful in her career had she stayed with ‛Ādil. Thinking about the reasons for the failure of her marriage, she tells herself: “How much she loved ‛Ādil, but she could not convince herself to live with ‛Ādil at the cost of completely crushing herself and becoming his shadow.”44 Her situation very much resembles that of Nayantara Sahgal described in a letter to E.N. Mangat Rai:
I always felt he gave me much more than I gave him. He surrounded me with a storm of feeling, a never-ending passion along with tenderness. He repeatedly told me, and made me feel, and I did feel, that I was his whole world. … He could not bear the thought that I did not belong wholly to him, and there was an integrity about our physical relationship, a wholeness and reality that I could not doubt …45
Ritu Menon adds: “Nayantara Sahgal’s married life began to fall apart when she tried to deviate from a male-designed social and gender script for women. And very specifically, from her husband’s script for her—and for them as a couple.”46 Rābi‛ah, too, clearly demonstrates that she is not willing to make ‛Ādil the sole focal point of her life, a reality he is not able to accept.
Rābi‛ah presents a happy and content face to the world, but the fact that she didn’t want a divorce and her emotional reaction when she meets ‛Ādil after ten years, a scene that is high drama, show her in a different light. It is a very touching scene: Rābi‛ah mistakingly understands that ‛Ādil is returning to her and throws herself into his arms, crying and telling him how much she missed him.47 Like in a flashlight her reaction reveals her repressed feelings of loneliness and longing for her lost love. ‛Ādil, however, is shocked by her reaction. He has only come to meet her because he needs her help in selecting saris as a present for his second wife. The imbalance in their feelings is striking. While for Rābi‛ah it was impossible to imagine another man in her life, an Indian rather than Islamic notion, ‛Ādil after waiting several years reconciled to the situation and married again, a solution impossible for a woman. He leads a contented life in a companionable marriage, a closure that was not possible for Rābi‛ah. While initially it was he who insisted on marrying Rābi‛ah and seemed to be more passionately in love than she was, the roles are reversed now because after once having been touched by this one man Rābi‛ah is bound to him forever. But after his revelation she immediately regains her posture and turns to everyday matters, concealing the turmoil going on inside her.48
The novel, however, ends on an optimistic note, somewhat similar to the end of Qurratulain Hyder’s novel Āḳhir-e shab ke hamsafar (Fireflies in the mist): the image of a sunrise, clearing of the morning mist, “life was going on in full speed.”49Here clearly the author didn’t want to present a too pessimistic, discouraging outcome of a career woman’s life, and actually the failure of her marriage was indeed in some way balanced by her professional success, but even more importantly, it allowed her to maintain her individuality, as she tells ‛Ādil:
Had I enjoyed the happiness of a life with you, I would have missed the other happiness I gained by living away from you. (…) Deep inside I would have regretted that I gained all this by losing myself. Now that I found myself, I have lost you. It was my illusion to wish that I could have both myself and you.50
There can be no doubt about the feminist undercurrent of the novel, but Rābi‛ah is a much too complex character simply to be seen as the author’s mouthpiece on feminism. Her story contains the pitfalls of married life, friendship between men and women, relations between siblings, and female emancipation. Rābi‛ah who had shown so much disgust for notions of satī sāvitrī nevertheless follows its rules. When she thinks of her wayward niece ‛Arshī who has an affair with an older man helping her in her career, she would like the girl to marry her cousin ‛Urfī. Rabi‛ah even hopes that ‛Urfī could ”correct” the girl and make her adjust – repeating exactly what her elders once told her.51
A different light on her personality is shed by her brother’s view of their relationship. Being the only son, he felt entitled to take responsibility for the family. Rābi‛ah’s insistence that she would support the parents in their old age, her constant interference in all affairs of the household, and her domineering attitude finally drove him out of the house and the country. He also felt left out when the father left much of the property and the ancestral house to Rābi‛ah, things he understood to be his birthright. At the same time, he loved his sister and was worried about her solitary existence. To make her feel less lonely he even sent his son ‛Urfī to be brought up by her. But despite this act of affection, his bitterness persisted. Rābi‛ah, however, did not understand his feelings, she felt deserted by him and resented his aloofness. Both failed to understand the other because they never opened up to each other. Here as in the case of Rābi‛ah and ‛Ādil, the lack of communication prevented a reconciliation, or perhaps the clash of his sense of entitlement as the male heir and her insistence on equal or even stronger rights would have made any adjustment impossible right from the start.
The author draws a nuanced picture of the novel’s main characters bringing out their development over time, their doubts, and the lessons they learn from often bitter experiences. Much space is given to the characters’ introspection, demonstrating how the new freedom to make choices also puts an additional burden on the individuals—questioning themselves whether they made the right decisions and pondering over alternatives they could have chosen.
Apart from the specific problems caused by the social norms and customs of their Indian environment, many of their conflicts and tribulations are part of the wider human experience. How to deal with conflicts, how and where to give in, and to agree to compromise without losing one’s identity and self-respect are questions arising in all human relationships. Many problems that could be solved or at least reduced by discussing them remain unresolved due to silence. Living far away and under completely different circumstances I could thus still relate to many aspects of the novel that deal with interpersonal conflicts.
Conclusion: Sughra Mehdi’s Feminism
Sughra Mehdi’s feminism was informed by all aspects of her personal identity – as a Muslim, an Indian believing in Gandhi’s ideals of communal harmony, and a staunch supporter of women’s rights. She grew up in an atmosphere that was imbued with Shia devotion, since childhood witnessing the family’s women arranging majlis (meeting in commemoration of the martyrdom of Imam Husain)in Muharram, listening to and memorizing Mīr Anīs’s52mars̤iyahs and nauḥahs (elegies and lamentations). How important being a devout Muslim was to her can be gauged from a passage in her memoirs: When in her youth she was working as a nurse aid in the Holy Family Hospital of Jamia Nagar/Okhla, she was surrounded by Christian nurses, by English and an overall Christian atmosphere. Fearing for her Muslim identity she began to keep away from the Christian nurses.53Here one is almost reminded of Nażir Aḥmad’s report of the crisis in his faith when he was a student at Delhi College.
Sughra Mehdi’s report of her visit to the religious sites of the Hijaz, Syria, Iraq, and Iran is ample proof of her deep devotion. She time and again describes how she was moved by the sight of the places connected with the Prophet of Islam, with Imam Husain and his family and other Shia imams. Offering prayers at the sacred places filled her with a deep sense of satisfaction and calm.54 During the journey she was, however, repeatedly reprimanded because the chadar used to slip from her head. Only in Syria, there was no problem when a hair was revealed.55 When boarding the Air India flight back to Delhi at the end of her spiritual journey, she experienced a sense of freedom: “Sitting down in my seat, I uncovered my head and felt free again.”56 The Islam that she lived and propagated did not prevent women from ascertaining their personality, attaining financial and intellectual independence, pursuing their careers, and interacting with men in a confident, relaxed manner. Her faith did not require ostentation.
Sughra Mehdi’s fiction is part of a long tradition of feminist writing in Urdu. We can relate her to the writings of Rashid Jahan and Ismat Chughtai, and the reformist writing of Saliha Abid Husain provided a strong inspiration for her. Moreover, within her own and the Jamia family she was surrounded by girls and women writing poetry and prose. Storytelling for her was not so much a means to propagate certain ideas as an inner calling, a passion. What I see as distinguishing her fiction from that of other writers is the emotional intensity and the very deep insight into all facets of familial relationships and their psychological effects. Bringing her stories into the present age of modern India and portraying modern professional Muslim women in a way is a continuation of Ismat Chughtai’s Ṭeṛhī lakīr (The crooked line). In contrast to Ismat Chughtai, Sughra Mehdi’s silence on sexuality is striking. In this regard, Asiya Alam’s utterance with regard to Nazr Sajjad Hyder, a writer of an older generation, still seems to be relevant:
It is significant to note here that we cannot simply know from her silence whether this shrouding of sexuality was coercive or her own chosen persona necessary for her public life as a female writer and a reformer. What it illustrates is that even women who defined their own position publicly against a patriarchal society did not completely disavow its customs and conventions but lived a life of negotiation between their individuality and their social heritage.57
Thus in the treatment of sex Sughra Mehdi as against Ismat Chughtai and Rashid Jahan “did not test the boundaries of what was acceptable.”58 Was having remained unmarried pertinent to this aspect of her writing? Probably not, since she lived close enough to the members of her extended family to get enough glimpses of sexual matters without experiencing them herself. It seems more likely that indeed it was her conscious choice to avoid topics appearing risqué to her, and it also corresponds with her sense of morality that did not approve of unrestrained sexual freedom and extra-marital affairs, as is apparent from several passages in her writing. After all, alongside her non-fictional writing we should regard her fiction, too, as what Siobhan Lambert-Hurley states for autobiography, “a vehicle for sharif redefinition.”59This concept of morality also serves as a factor of distinction from “Westernized”60modes of feminism and women’s freedom that she denounces in her fiction. The freedom of movement outside the house young Muslim girls and women gained since her youth thus bestowed a heightened responsibility on them, as she reports about Saliha Abid Husain’s admonition when she was about to enter school: “… that I was the first girl of the family to leave purdah, therefore I would have to take care not to do anything that would diminish the honor and standing of my family.”61
While Sughra Mehdi’s range of topics may appear limited, it is the depth and complexity of her narrative that engages the reader. As a born storyteller she was able to create interesting plots and lively characters who were close to the lives of her readers. She wrote and practiced a version of feminism that was acceptable in the social circles she moved in, and true to the motto that change begins at home, through her fiction as in her social work she strove to improve relationships within families and to achieve better chances for girls and women and to bring them into the mainstream of life in contemporary India.
Image Courtesy Raza Mehdi
Author Bio:
Christina Oesterheld studied Hindi, Urdu and Sanskrit in Berlin. Along with language courses in Hindi and Urdu at the Humboldt University Berlin and at the University of Heidelberg she taught courses in Urdu literature, South Asian Muslim cultures, Muslim reform movements and Muslim identities in North India and Women in Urdu culture. In 2018 she retired from the South Asia Institute at Heidelberg. Her translations of Urdu and Hindi short stories and Urdu poetry into German and English were published in anthologies and journals. She is co-author of a Hindi-German dictionary, a German reader of Urdu literature, a volume on humour in Indian literatures and an Urdu textbook for German -speaking students. Her latest translation, an Urdu novel by the eminent Pakistani author Mirza Athar Baig (born in 1950), was published by Draupadi Verlag Heidelberg in 2022.
Notes
Mahdī, Ḥikāyat-e Hastī,60. Saliha Abid Husain reports that it was she who gave the new name to the girl, see Ḥusain, Silsilah-e roz-o-shab,200. ↩︎
For her description of the closely-knit Jamia community, see ibid., 52. How the atmosphere at Jamia Nagar promoted the self-expression of women is described in Lambert-Hurley, Elusive Lives, 22, 100. ↩︎
See her Urdū Nāvaloñ meñ cAurat kī Samājī Ḥaiṡiyat. ↩︎
Saliha Abid Husain described their relationship as based on “barābarī aur mukammal musāvāt”, ibid., 202. On Saliha Abid’s marriage, also see Alam, “Polygyny, Family and Sharafat”, 667. ↩︎
Devji, “Gender and the Politics of Space”, 100. ↩︎
This is corroborated by Salhi Abid Husain who praises Sughra for her loving care and able running of the household, see Ḥusain, Silsilah-e Roz-o-Shab, 201-202. ↩︎
Sughra Mehdi’s statement is quoted in Darakhshān, Ṣughrā Mahdī: Ḥayāt-o-khidmāt,1 27.↩︎
Thus she also did not engage critically with the cliché of westernized women who neglect their household and children when mentioning such narratives in her monograph Urdū Nāvaloñ meñ ‛Aurat kī Samājī Ḥaiṡiyat, 70. ↩︎
—-. “Interrupted Stories. Self-Narratives of Nazr Sajjad Hyder.” In Speaking of the Self. Gender, Performance, and Autobiography in South Asia, edited by Anshu Malhotra and Siobhan Lambert-Hurley.Durham; London: Duke University Press, 2015, 72-94.
—-. Women, Islam and Familial Intimacy in Colonial South Asia. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2021.
Daraḳhshān, Ṣuġhrā Mahdī: Ḥayāt-o-Ḳhidmāt (Sughra Mehdi: Life and Works, PhD thesis), Jamia Milliah Islamiyah 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10603/363972
Devji, Faisal Fatehali. “Gender and the Politics of Space: The Movement for Women’s Reform.” In Women and Social Reform in Modern India, edited by Sumit Sarkar and Tanika Sarkar. Raniket: permanent black, 2007, 99-114.
Malhotra, Anshu, and Siobhan Lambert-Hurley, eds., Speaking of the Self. Gender, Performance, and Autobiography in South Asia.Durham; London: Duke University Press, 2015.
Menon, Ritu. “Pentimento. The Self beneath the Surface.” In Speaking of the Self. Gender, Performance, and Autobiography in South Asia, edited by Anshu Malhotra and Siobhan Lambert-Hurley.Durham; London: Duke University Press, 2015, 56-71.
Robinson, Francis. “Religious Change and the Self in Muslim South Asia Since 1800.” In Francis Robinson, Islam and Muslim History in South Asia. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000, 105-121.
Appendix: A list of Sughra Mehdi’s Works Available on Rekhta.org
Short Stories:
Patthar kā Shahzādah (The Stone Prince). New Delhi: Na’ī Āvāz, 1975, 2013.
Jo Mere Vah Rājā ke Nahīñ (What is Mine, Is Not the King’s). New Delhi: Suġhrā Mahdī, 1985.
Pahcān (Kahāniyāñ) (Recognition/Knowledge [Stories]). New Delhi: Adab Publications, 1995.
Pesh go’ī aur Dūsre Afsāne (Prediction/Foretelling and Other Stories). New Delhi: Modern Publishing House, 2005.
Ḥayāt-e Muḥsinī (The Life of Muḥsinī, with ‛Iffat Anṣārī, about Shamsurraḥmān Muḥsinī). New Delhi: Maktabah Jami‛ah, 2011
Gāndhī Jī aur Ḍākṭar Saiyid ‛Ābid Ḥusain (Gandhi Ji and Doctor Saiyid Abid Husain). Lucknow: Maktabah Jāmi‛ah, 2012.
Ṣāliḥah ‛Ābid Ḥusain (Hindūstānī Adab ke Mi‛mār). New Delhi: 2013
Historiography:
Hamārī Jāmi‛ah. Ta‛līmī, Tahżībī aur Samājī Sāgā (Our Jamia. An Educational, Cultural and Social Saga), 2013
Edited/compiled works:
Journal Islam and the Modern Age for the society of the same name, published by the Zakir Husain Institute of Islamic Studies, Delhi, and its Urdu edition Islām aur ‛Aṣr-e Jadīd.
Ḳhavātīn Afsāna nigāroñ ke Das Afsāne (Ten Stories by Women Writers). New Delhi: Na’ī Āvāz, 1976.
Suḳhan-e Dil navāz. Makātīb-e Ḳhvājah Ġhulāmussaiyidain (Words Touching the Heart. Ḳhvājah Ġhulāmussaiyidain’s Letters). New Delhi: Maktabah Jāmi‛ah, 1982.
Ḥayāt-e ‛Ābid (The Life of Abid). New Delhi: Maktabh Jāmi‛ah, 1984.
Ṣuḥbateñ Aglī. Mashāhīr ke Ḳhut̤ūt̤ Ḳhvājah Ġhulāmussaiyidain ke Nām (Companions of the Past. Letters of Eminent Personalities Addressed to Ḳhvāja Ġhulāmussaiyidain). New Delhi: Adab Publications, 1995.
Aḥbābnāme (Letters of Friends. [Letters to ‛Ābid Ḥusain, continued from Saliha Husain’s collection]). New Delhi: Sajjād Publishing House, 1997.
Urdū Zabān-o-Adab ke Faroģh meñ Jāmi‛ah Millliyah Islāmiyah kā Ḥiṣṣah (Jamia Millia Islamia’s Contribution to the Promotion of Urdu Language and Literature). New Delhi: Maktabah Jāmi‛ah, 1997.
Bazm-e Yārāñ. Mashāhīr ke Ḳhut̤ut̤ Ḳhvājah Ġhulāmussaiyidain ke Nām (A Gathering of Friends. Letters of Eminent Personalities Addressed to Ḳhvājah Ġhulāmussaiyidain). Delhi: Maktabah Jadīd, 1999.
Tasbīḥ-e Roz-o-Shab.Ṣāliḥah ‛Ābid Ḥusain kī Ḍā’irī (Praising Allah Day and Night. Saliha Abid Husain’s Diary). New Delhi: Maktabah Jāmi‛ah, 2013.
Agar Mujh se Milnā Hai.Ḳhvājah Aḥmad ‛Abbās ke Muntaḳhab Afsāne (If You Want to Meet Me. Selected Stories by Ḳhvāja Aḥmad cAbbās). New Delhi: Maktabah Jāmi‛ah, 2014.
Translations:
J.P. Nayak, Hindūstān meñ ‛Aurat kī Ḥaiṡiyat (Status of Women in India). New Delhi: Taraqqi Urdū Bureau, 1980, 1998.
Parwaaz. Urdu Short Stories by Women. Ed., tr. and with an introduction by Syeda Hameed and Sughra Mehdi. New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1996.
In this episode, Soheb Niazi interviews Laurence Gautier about the history of two Muslim educational institutions – Aligarh Muslim University and Jamia Millia Islamia – and what these reveal about the politics of Muslim identity and the position of Muslims in post-Partition India. That topic is the subject of Gautier’s new book, Between Nation and ‘Community’: Muslim Universities and Indian Politics after Partition, published earlier this year by Cambridge University Press.
This book explores the manifold debates on Muslims’ location in post-partition India through the lens of two prominent Muslim universities, Aligarh Muslim University and Jamia Millia Islamia. It shows that these educational institutions played a pivotal role in the wider discussions on national integration, secularism, minority rights and Muslim backwardness. After independence, these universities found themselves at a critical juncture between central state authorities and India’s Muslim population. As public and Muslim institutions, they were to participate in nation-building as much as in the development of the Muslim ‘community’. By closely looking at the relation between these institutions and state authorities, the book teases out the ambiguities of the Indian state’s policy vis-à-vis Muslim citizens. It also examines, in turn, how these universities became crucibles for competing conceptions of Muslim identity and citizenship, involving students, teachers, as well as religious organizations and political parties.
For longer than Muslim women in other contexts, Jamia’s women have remained invisible in public perception and in scholarship alike. While the knowledge about the founding fathers of Jamia has been handed down over the decades and has become the object of renewed academic interest since the early 2000s, we know very little about their wives, sisters, and daughters, and about the other women who had an influence on the foundation, the development and the everyday running of Jamia. It is not that these women were silent: even cursory investigations bring out a multitude of sources.
The conference focused on two of the paths that these women took to enter the Urdu public sphere. The first one is through literature and poetry – Saliha Abid Husain was the most famous one, but not the only one to write novels; others favored short stories, and many engaged with poetry. The second one is through social work – often leaving the public face to the men of the family, Jamia’s women were central to the establishment of institutions for the education of girls, for health care, and for the well-being of mothers and children. Jamia never stood in isolation from initiatives and movements elsewhere, in India and beyond. The last section of the conference followed a comparative gaze, focusing on Aligarh, Lucknow, and Hyderabad.
Conference Proceedings
Tuesday, October 10
Session 1
Chair: Zoya Hasan
Introduction, The foundation of the Jamia Millia Islamia
Speaker(s): Nishat Zaidi, Margrit Pernau
Khawateen e Awwal. Women in Forefront: Jamia and Beyond – An Overview
Speaker(s): Syeda Hameed, Raza Mehdi
Session 2
Chair: Soofia Siddique
Silsila e Roz o Shab (Flow of Days and Nights) Saliha Abid Husain
Speaker: Azra Naqvi
Modernity, Muslim Society and ‘the Muslim Woman’s Question’: The Literary World of Saliha Abid Husain
Speaker: Nishat Zaidi
Session 3
Chair: Ritu Menon
Begum Khursheed Khwaja (1894-1981): An Unsung Gandhian Freedom Fighter, educationist, and journalist and her role in early phase of Jamia
Speaker: Asad Faisal Farooqui
From Berlin to Delhi. Gerda Philipsborn, Jamia’s Apa Jan
Speaker: Margrit Pernau
Session 4
Chair: Francesca Orsini
Heart, Home and Beyond. Begum Asifa Mujeeb’s short fiction
Speaker: Anab Naiyer
Sughra Mehdi’s feminist fiction
Speaker: Christina Oesterheld
Session 5
Cultural performance: Khawateen ka Kirdaar: Poets and Poetry.
This was specially designed for the conference, presenting poetry of Maulana Hali, India’s first feminist poet along with kalaam of important contemporary poets. This was presented by Hamari Urdu Mohabbat which is a performance-based cultural movement started by Begum Zakia Zaheer in 2014. Sponsored by the Muslim Women’s Forum
Artist(s): Rene Singh and Lokesh Jain
Wednesday, 11th October
Session 6
Chair: Shohini Ghosh
Mushir Fatima. Jamia’s nursery and early Childhood Learning in Postcolonial India
Speaker: Asiya Alam
Qudsia Zaidi – a short dramatic life
Speaker: Anis Azmi
Siddiqa Kidwai. A woman of substance
Speaker: Jamal Kidwai
Session 7
Chair: Rakhshanda Jalil
Founding of Girls’ School in Aligarh and its Outcome: From Mother to Daughter
Speaker: Shadab Bano
Women at Aligarh and Jamia. Guardians of tradition or actors of change?
Speaker: Laurence Gautier
Session 8
Chair: Charu Gupta
Education, Literature, and Politics. Reflections on Women’s Interventions in Lucknow (1925-1965)
Speaker: Fatima Rizvi
Dream, Mirror, Trance: Reality and Reform in the Writings of Sughra Humayun Mirza (1884-1958)
2024. Hameed, Syeda S. A Drop in the Ocean: The Story of My Life. New Delhi: Speaking Tiger.
2024. Pernau, M, “Bodies, Emotions, Labor: The Jamia Millia Islamia and the New Education Movement.” in Unframing the Binary: Introducing Bodies Beyond Binaries. ed. Kate Imy, Teresa Segura-Garcia, Elena Valdameri and Erica Wald. Leiden: Leiden University Press, 105-126.
2024. Pernau, M. Jamia‘s Aapa Jaan: The Many Lifeworlds of Gerda Philipsborn. New Delhi: Speaking Tiger.
2024. Gautier, L. Between Nation and ‘Community’: Muslim Universities and and Indian Politics after Partition. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009358507
2023. Pernau, M. “Education among Indian Muslims. Jamia Millia Islamia’s Journal Payām-e Taʿlīm.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 33(4): 1127–43. doi: 10.1017/S1356186322000840.
2023. Ali, M. The university in modern South Asia: Historiographical framings between the local and the global. History Compass, 21(11), e12790. https://doi.org/10.1111/hic3.12790
2022. Khan, R., “Entanglements in the Colony: Jewish-Muslim connected histories in Colonial India.” Modern Asian Studies. 56(6):1845-71. doi: 10.1017/S0026749X21000536.
2021. Kidwai, J and Alam, M, ed. “The Idea of Jamia: A symposium on one hundred years of Jamia Millia Islamia.” Seminar, 739. https://www.india-seminar.com/2021/739.htm
2021. Kidwai, Siddiq Ur Rahman, ed. “Jamia Millia Islamia”(Special Issue) in Urdu Adab. 259-60 (65), July-December
2020. Gautier, L. “A Laboratory for a Composite India? Jamia Millia Islamia around the Time of Partition.” Modern Asian Studies 54(1): 199–249. doi: 10.1017/S0026749X18000161.
2020. Khan, R. ‘Introduction: Minor Cosmopolitanisms: Institutions, Intellectuals, and Ideas between India and Germany.’ Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 40, no.2,291-294.
2020. Khan, R. ‘Entanglements of Translation: Psychology, Pedagogy, and Youth Reform in German and Urdu.’ Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 40, no. 2,295-308.
Ali, S. B. Zakir Husain: Life and Times. New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1991.
Dr. Zakir Husain Presentation Volume, Presented on His Seventy-First Birthday. New Delhi: Maktaba Jamia, 1968.
Husain, A. The Way of Gandhi and Nehru. London: Asia Publishing House, 1959.
——— The Destiny of Indian Muslims. London: Asia Publishing House, 1965.
Husain, Z. Basic national education; report of the Zakir Husain Committee and the detailed syllabus. Wardha: Published by the secretary Hindustani Talimi Sangh, 1938.
———. Educational Reconstruction in India (S. V. Patel Lectures). New Delhi: Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India, 1959.
———. Education and National Development. Edited by B. S. Ali. New Delhi: Har-Anand Publications, 1993.
———. Zakir Husain: Teacher Who Became President (Centenary Volume). Edited by S. S. Hameed. New Delhi: Indian Council for Cultural Relations, 2000.Kidwai, A. In freedom’s shade (translated from Urdu by Ayesha Kidwai). New Delhi: Penguin, 2011.
Mujeeb, M. Education and Traditional Values. Meerut et al: Meenakshi Prakashan, 1965.
———. Dr. Zakir Husain: A Biography. New Delhi: National Book Trust, 1972.
———. The Indian Muslims. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s Press-MQUP, 1967
———. ‘The Partition of India in Retrospect’. In India’s Partition: Process, Strategy and Mobilization, edited by M. Hasan, 403–414. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1993.
Saiyidain, K.G. One Step Forward: The Report of the first Conference of Basic National Education. Wardha: Hindustani Talimi Sangh, 1940.
———. Introducing the Basic Curriculum. Edited by K. G. Saiyidain. Bombay, 1949.
———. The humanist tradition in Indian educational thought. Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1966.
Varkey, C. J. The Wardha Scheme of Education: Exposition and Examination. London: Oxford University Press, 1939.
9. Secondary Sources
Akhtar, Javed. 2018. ‘Jamia Millia Islamia: confluence of Islam, Indian nationalism and modernity.’ Islam and the Modern Age 45:49-59.
———. Jamia Millia Islamia and Its Contribution to Islamic Studies: A Chronological Study from 1920 to 2011. New Delhi: Writers Choice, 2020.
Faruqi, D.H. and Z.H. Faruqi. Dr. Zakir Hussain, quest for truth. New Delhi: A.P.H. Pub. Corp, 1999.
Gautier, L. ‘A Laboratory for a Composite India? Jamia Millia Islamia around the time of partition.’ Modern Asian Studies 54, no. 1(2020):199-249.
Hasan, M. A Nationalist Conscience: M. A. Ansari, the Congress and the Raj. Delhi: Manohar, 1987.
———. Legacy of a Divided Nation: Indian Muslims since Independence. London: Hurst, 1997.
———. (ed.). Knowledge, Power and Politics: Educational Institutions in India. New Delhi: Lotus Collection, 1998. (Especially Talib, M. ‘Jamia Millia Islamia: Career of Azad Talim’, 156–183).
———. (ed.). Living with Secularism: The Destiny of India’s Muslims. New Delhi: Manohar, 2007.
———. ‘Muslim Intellectuals, Institutions and the Post-Colonial Predicament’. Economic and Political Weekly 30, no. 47 (1995): 2995–3000.
Hasan, M., and R. Jalil. Partners in Freedom: Jamia Millia Islamia. New Delhi: Niyogi Books, 2006.
Hashmi, M. A. A. Muslim Response to Western Education: A Study of Four Pioneer Institutions. New Delhi: Commonwealth Publishers, 1989.
Hussain, M. F. Mohammad Mujeeb. Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 2016.
Jalil, R. (ed.). The Idea of a University: Jamia Millia Islamia. New Delhi: Aakar Books, 2009.
Jonker, Gerdien. On the Margins. Jews and Muslims in Interwar Berlin. Leiden: Brill, 2020.
Khan, A. W, and F. Khan, eds. Islam and the Modern Age. Special Issue on Muhammad Mujeeb. Delhi: Jamia Millia Islamia, 2003.
Khan, R. ‘Introduction: Minor Cosmopolitanisms: Institutions, Intellectuals, and Ideas between India and Germany.’ Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 40, no.2 (2020):291-294.
Khan, R. ‘Entanglements of Translation: Psychology, Pedagogy, and Youth Reform in German and Urdu.’ Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 40, no. 2 (2020):295-308.
Khan, R., “Entanglements in the Colony: Jewish-Muslim connected histories in Colonial India.” Modern Asian Studies. (March 2022)
Lelyveld, D., and G. Minault. ‘The Campaign for a Muslim University, 1898–1920’. Modern Asian Studies 8, no. 2 (1974): 145–189.
McDonough, S. ‘The Spirit of Jamia Millia Islamia as Exemplified in the Writings of S. Abid Husain’. In Religion in Modern India, edited by R. D. Baird. New Delhi: Manohar, 1991.
Mehdi, B., and Louis Vernal. Teacher education in Jamia Millia Islamia. New Delhi: Maktaba Jamia, 1982.
Metcalf, B. ‘Nationalist Muslims in British India: The Case of Hakim Ajmal Khan’. Modern Asian Studies 19, no. 1 (February 1985): 1–28.
Oesterheld, J. ‘Zakir Husain: Begegnungen und Erfahrungen bei der Suche nach moderner Bildung für ein freies Indien’. In Akteure des Wandels: Lebensläufe und Gruppenbilder an Schnittstellen von Kulturen, edited by P. Heidrich and H. Liebau, 105–130. Berlin: Das Arabische Buch, 2001.
———. ‘National Education as a Community Issue: The Muslim Response to the Wardha Scheme.’ In Education and Social Change in South Asia, edited by Krishna Kumar and Joachim Oesterheld, 156-197. Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2007.
Pernau, M. ‘Vernacularizing Emotions. Mohammed Ali’s Comrade and Hamdard.’ In Language Ideologies and the Vernacular in Colonial and Postcolonial South Asia, edited by Nishat Zaidi and Hans Harder, 237-254. London: Routledge, 2024.
Qaiser, R. Resisting Colonialism and Communal Politics: Maulana Azad and the Making of the Indian Nation. New Delhi: Manohar, 2011.
Tonki, S. M. Aligarh and Jamia: Fight for National Education System. New Delhi: People’s Publishing House, 1983.
This is a collection of videos on the founding fathers of Jamia Millia Islamia. It includes videos available on YouTube that feature films, interviews, narrations as well as podcasts featuring the founding fathers of Jamia. The videos are presented here in the form of links that are organized under the names of various individuals (with a miscellaneous section at the end); a short summary of the main content of each video is provided.
Dr. Zakir Hussain (1897-1969)
The YouTube video hosted by the channel contains two films on Dr. Zakir Hussain
1. A Film in Hindi on Dr. Zakir Hussain by Films Division titled, “ A Rose Called Zakir Hussain – A Life of Dedication” (1969). Script and Direction Samiran Dutta. Duration 19mins.
The film features interviews (mostly in English followed by Hindi voice over) of –
Prof Rasheed Ahmad Siddiqui, Dr. KA Hamied, Mir Akbar Ali Khan, Muhammad Mujeeb, Khwaja Ghulam Saiyidain, Col. Zaidi, Begum Sayeda Khan, Begum Safia Rahman, Khursheed, Alam Khan, A.V. Sohoni, I.K. Gujral, Tarakeshwari Sinha, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, M.F. Hussain, Dr. Nagendra Singh, J. Sahai and Mohammad Ishaq.
2. A Film in Hindi on Dr. Zakir Hussain by Films Division titled, “A Life of Dedication” (1969). Duration 8mins.
A short video on Dr. Zakir Hussain and his role in the foundation of Jamia Millia Islamia. The video contains visuals from the early days of Jamia. It is hosted on YouTube by the channel Heritage Times.
Voice of Dr. Zakir Hussain. The clip contains excerpts of an address by Dr. Zakir Hussain which he delivered while releasing a book by M.M Chitra Shashtri. Here, Dr. Zakir Hussain emphasizes on the need that Indian intellectuals should write in Indian languages. It is provided by the Ministry of Information of Broadcasting.
An Episode of the “Siyāsat Podcast” (Hindi) by Upendra Kumar on the political life of Dr. Zakir Hussain. Hosted by The Quint.
Dr. Abid Hussain (1896-1978)
Interview in Urdu with renowned scholar Prof.Sadiq-ur-Rahman Kidwai. Hosted by Youtube channel ANJUMAN TARAQQI URDU (HIND)
Early Life and Education
Relationship with Urdu Adab
Translation of Works (Immanuel Kant)
Works on Tārīkh
Muhammad Mujeeb (1902-1985)
Interview in Urdu with renowned scholar Prof. Sadiq-ur-Rahman Kidwai. Hosted by YouTube channel ANJUMAN TARAQQI URDU (HIND)
Family Background and Early Education
Return to Delhi, founding of Jamia Millia Islamia
Teaching History in Jamia; Historical Works
Personal Recollections and anecdotes
Interest in Arts –woodwork, painting, poetry
A narration of the Urdu article by Muhmmad Mujeeb on the short story/fiction writing of Anton Chekhov. This article is taken from his book “Rūsī Adab” (Russian Literature) Part 2 published by Anjuman Taraqqi Urdu in 1940.
The video is hosted by the YouTube channel Adbi Duniya
The article can be read on the following link of the complete text under the chapter titled, “Chekhov”, pp. 303-343.
A biography of Dr. Mukhtar Ahmad Ansari narrated in Urdu by S.K. Jawaid, script by Jawaid Iqbal Ansari. The text of the script is also provided in English. The life history of Dr. Ansari is narrated using some sources which are highlighted in the video, along with listing his various educational qualifications and writings. His contributions on the founding of Jamia Millia Islamia are discussed along with some visuals from the early days of Jamia (12:39-15:25). Part of a series of such videos on several prominent historical personalities.
A biography of Hakim Ajmal Khan narrated and scripted in Urdu by Anis Sheikh. The video lists various associations and institutions in which Hakim Ajmal Khan played a vital role including Jamia Millia Islamia. (3:25-3:45).
Interview (in Urdu) with Ghulam Haider Sahab by Prof. Ghazanfar Zaidi. Hosted on the YouTube Channel Shehr-e-Aarzoo. Ghulam Haider is a veteran of Jamia Millia Islamia where he arrived from Amroha in 1944 and has been associated with the Jamia ever since. He is also the author of the acclaimed book Nuqūsh-e-Jamia in which he interviewed a large number of people to document the origins of the Jamia movement. In this interview Haider reflects on his early days in Jamia, the vision and message and the memories of the founding fathers of Jamia.
A video on the role of Jamia Millia Islamia in the Freedom Movement as part of the non-Cooperation Movement led by Gandhi. Contains old historical visuals. The Video is hosted by the YouTube channel ETV Bharat.
1:30 – 5:14 Sohail Hashmi on the role of Mukhtar Ahmad Ansari
5:15- 6:15; 7:24-9:15 Sohail Hashmi on Hakim Ajmal Khan
For a long time, the history of Jamia has been written as a history of men. The emphasis was exclusively on the founding fathers. The credit for emphasizing that Jamia’s women were by no means silent, goes to Sughra Mehdi, and taking up her endeavor, Dr. Syeda Hameed. Over and again they have directed our attention to the lives not only of the founding mothers but also the many others, who actively contributed to shaping the institution.
YouTube hosts a number of videos on Jamia’s women, which provide a quick introduction into the topic.
17th Dr. Asghar Ali Engineer Memorial Lecture, Dr. Syeda Hameed: Contribution of Muslim women to educational institutions. The case of Jamia’s Khawatin-e awwal (2021)
13:50 Introduction of Dr. Syeda Hameed (Speaker)
24:20 Introduction of Prof. Zoya Hasan (Chair)
28.41 Talk Dr. Syeda Hameed
Early protagonists of education for Muslim women
Gerda Philipsborn and Saliha Abid Husain
Shahjahan Begum, wife of Zakir Husain
Asifa Mujeeb, wife of Muhammad Mujeeb
Sughra Mehdi
Sadiqa Kidwai, wife of Shafiq ur Rahman Kidwai
Saida Khurshid, daughter of Abdul Majid Khwaja
1:05:57 Comments by Prof. Zoya Hasan
1:18:23 Q & A
Tracing the History of Jamia Millia Islamia through Bi Amma (2022)
Script and Research Zeenia Parveen; includes presentations by Dr. Sabiha Anjum Zaidi
Family background and biography of Bi Amma
Education of her sons, biography of Muhammad Ali
Bi Amma’s role after her sons had been arrested in the 1. World War
Non-Cooperation and Khilafat movement, the foundation of Jamia
Activities of Bi Amma during the Khilafat movement
History of Jamia after the Khilafat movement and the passing of Bi Amma
Videos on Gerda Philipsborn
Jamia’s Aapa Jaan: Gerda Philipsborn (2023)
Written and directed by Khansa Juned
Biography of Gerda Philipsborn; includes presentations by Dr. Syeda Hameed
Gerda Philipsborn’s Song. What we carry with us (2021)
Director: Sam Bell; Executive Producer Tom Philipsborn
Recording of songs that Gerda might have sung: opera, German children’s songs, Jewish songs; includes presentations by Judith Berlowitz
Jamia ke Aapa kaun hai? Jamia Millia Islamia University Big Sister (Hindi, 2021)
Footage of the present-day Jamia Campus against a voice-over recounting the biography of Gerda Philipsborn.
The two sisters, Gerda and Claire, looked very similar. Going by the genre of photography, the image used in the thumbnail might well thought to be the official portrait that Gerda had taken as a rising opera star, to hand out to her fans with her autograph. However, this ambivalence has been solved, as their family has sent me a picture of the backside of the photo, where it is written clearly: “Claire Philipsborn, Berlin-Wilmersdorf” in a handwriting that is similar to Gerda’s but probably her sister’s. Thank you to Ruth Brent, the grand-niece of Gerda and Claire for this clarification!
Cite this article as: Margrit Pernau, “Videos on Jamia’s Women,” in {tazkirajamia.hypotheses.org}, {05.11.23}, {permalink}.
Courtesy owners of Muhammad Mujeeb’s private papers
Gerda Philipsborn (1895-1943) was a German Jewish woman from a well-off family of traders and bankers, settled in Berlin. In the mid-twenties, she met Zakir Husain, Muhammad Mujeeb and Abid Husain, while they were pursuing their studies at the university. The four became close friends, bound together by a common interest in education, but also in the reconstruction of society aiming at a more just and equitable world. All of them took their studies and their task in life serious, but they also enjoyed the cultural life of Berlin. Gerda, trained as an opera singer, knew everyone in the art scene and took great pleasure of introducing her friends. When the Indians returned to Delhi to take a lead in building up the Jamia Millia, they stayed in contact.
The suitcase
Gerda left Berlin in late summer 1932, first to visit her friend Dr. Siegfried Lehmann at the children’s village Ben Shemen that he had founded in Palestine, then traveling on to Delhi, to join Zakir Husain
and his companions at the Jamia Millia Islamia, where she spent the rest of her short life. Under these circumstances, there was not much she could bring with her. This suitcase contains her selection of books – books that were important for a variety of reasons, because they had been gifted to her by people close to her heart, because they reminded her of aspects of her life that she was leaving behind, but also because she hoped that she would be able to draw on them for her new work.
After her death, her belongings were scattered among her circle. Some of the German books remained in the custody of Professor Muhammad Mujeeb. His family gave the books as permanent loan to the Max Weber Forum for South Asian Studies, Delhi.
Books on music
Max Chop, Erläuterungen zu Ludwig van Beethovens Symphonien [Explanations on the symphonies of Ludwig van Beethoven], Philip Reclam, Leipzig
Alfred Dörffel, Rob. Schumanns sämtliche Werke. Lieder für eine Singstimme mit Pianoforte Begleitung, Ausgabe für tiefe Stimme [Collected Works of Robert Schumann. Songs for one singing voice, edition for deep voice], C.F. Peters, Leipzig
Robert Schumann, Gesammelte Schriften über Musik und Musiker [Collected Works on music and musicians], ed. Heinrich Simon, Philip Reclam, Leizpzig
Richard Wagner, Rienzi. Der letzte der Tribunen, Operntextbuch Nr. 44 [Rienzi. The last of the tribunes, libretto], Tageblatt Bibliothek, Steyermühl Verlag, Wien.
Richard Wagner, Siegfried. Zweiter Teil des Bühnenfestspiels Der Ring der Nibelungen [Siegfried. Second part of the Ring of the Nibelungs], Tageblatt Bibliothek, Steyermühl Verlag, Wien.
Wolfgang Golther, Parsival und der Gral in deutscher Sage des Mittelalters und der Neuzeit [Parseval and the Grail in German legends of the medieval and modern age], Xenien Verlag, Leipzig
Dedication: In herzlicher Freundschaft, Ihre Else Golther, Rostock April 1919 [In heartfelt friendship, yours Else Golther]. Walther Golther (1863-1945), Else’s father or husband, was professor for German literature at the University of Rostock and closely connected to the theater/opera house where Gerda performed in 1919.
Literature
Ossip Dymov, Der Knabe Wlass, [The boy Wlass] (Kurt Wolff, Leipzig, no year); Dedication: Gerda Ph im Gedenken an gemeinsam verbrachte schöne Zeiten, in aufrichtiger Freundschaft von Marion u. Fred Husler, 24. XII. 24 [To Gerda Philipsborn, in memory of wonderful times, spent together, in sincere friendship, Marion and Fred Husler] Professor Frederik Husler (1889-1969) had trained as a singer under Bruno Walter. He was head of the Stern’sche Conservatory in Berlin since 1922. Marion was his wife.
Maria Kuhn (Hg.) Maurice Maeterlinck. In der inneren Schönheit. Auszüge und Essays [On inner beauty. Extracts and essays], Karl Robert Langewiesche Verlag, Düsseldorf, Leipzig. Signature: G. Ph., Weihnachten 20, München [Gerda Philipsborn, Christmas 1920, Munich]
H.G. Wells, Die Geschichte unserer Welt. [German translation of A Short History of the World, 1922], (Paul Zsolnays Bibliothek, Bern, 1926), Signature: Gerda Philipsborn.
Klabund, Li Tai Pe (Nachdichtungen) [Free translation], (Inselverlag, Leipzig), Widmung: Gerda zum Geburtstag, Mai 1934, Fritz Pelzer (Decidation, For Gerda on her birthday, May 1934, Fritz Pelzer).
Leo N. Tolstoj, Auferstehung [Resurrection], vol. 1 and 2, Eugen Diederich, Jena, 1911
William Shakespeare, Das Wintermärchen [Winter’s Tale], (Hermann Seemann, Leipzig), Signatur, Gerda Philipsborn
Ludwig Uhland, Gedichte [Poems], (Hermann Seemann, Leipzig), Signatur: Gerda Philipsborn. Widmung: Meiner lieben Gerda als Erinnerung an den silbernen Hochzeitstag ihrer Eltern, Fritz (?) Alfred (Nachname nicht lesbar)[Dedication: For my dear Gerda, in remembrance of the silver wedding of her parents, Fritz (?) Alfred (last name not decipherable)]
Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Gedichte [Poems], (Hermann Seemann, Leipzig), Signatur: Gerda Philipsborn. Widmung: Zur freundlichen Erinnerung an Deine Kusine Ida Schlesinger [Dedication, In fond remembrance of your cousin, Ida Schlesinger]
Education and psychology
Elke Fromm, Bewegungsspiel, Kinderlied und Kinderreim. [Motion games, children’s song, children’s rhymes] Deutsche Elternbücherei, Hrsg. Dr. Johannes Prüser. Heft 32, (B.G. Teubner, Berlin)
Karl Bühler, Die geistige Entwicklung des Kindes [The mental development of the child], Gustav Fischer Verlag, Jena
Sigmund Freud, Vorlesungen zur Einführung in die Psychoanalyse (Fehlleistungen; Traum; Allgemeine Neurosenlehre), [Introductory lectures on psychoanalysis (Slips of the Tongue; Dreams; General Theory of Neuroses)], Hugo Heller & Cie, Leipzig, Wien 1918. Signature: Gerda Born.
Richard Müller-Freienfels, Philosophie der Individualität [Philosophy of individuality], Felix Meiner Verlag, Leipzig, 1923. Widmung: A une communiste imaginaire un individualiste malgré lui [Dedication : To an imaginary communiste, an individualist in spite of himself]
Richard Müller Freienfels, Die Seele des Alltags. Eine Psychologie für Jedermann [The soul of the quotidian. A psychology for everybody], Volk, Berlins Verband der Bücherfreunde, Wegweiser-Verlag, 1925. Widmung (Noten) Zur freundlichen Erinnerung an den Verfasser, 8/III/27 [Dedication (musical notes) In kind remembrance of the author]
Picture books, Insel Verlag
Jakob Hübner, Friedrich Schnack, Das kleine Buch der Nachtfalter [The little book of moths], Signature: Gerda Philipsborn
Franz-Michael Regenfuß, Friedrich Schnack, Das kleine Buch der Meereswunder [The little book of sea wonders], Signature: Gerda Philipsborn
Hans Lang, Das kleine Buch der Edelsteine [The little book of precious stones], Signature: Gerda Philipsborn
Rudolf Koch, Fritz Kredel, Das kleine Blumenbuch [The little book of flowers]
Others
Bruno Grimschitz, Die Schöne Wienerin in Bildnissen von 1800 bis 1850. Ausstellungskatalog Galerie Neumann & Salzer [The beautiful Viennese in paintings, 1800-1850. Exhibition catalogue of the galerie Neumann & Salzer], (Galerie Neumann & Salzer, 1930)
Edgar Weyrich, Wien geschildert von Künstlern der Feder und des Stiftes. Erster Teil: Wiener Schicksale [Vienna, depicted by artists of the quill and the pen. First part: Viennese destinies], (Deutscher Verlag für Jugend und Volk, Wien, 1922)
Ignatius von Loyola, Geistliche Übungen [Spiritual exercises], hrsg. Alfred Feder S.J., (Verlagsanstalt G.J. Manz, München.
For citation:
Cite this article as: Margrit Pernau, “Apa Jan’s suitcase,” in {tazkirajamia.hypotheses.org}, {26.10.23}, {permalink}.