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Sayyid Mumtaz Ali and ‘Huquq un-Niswan’: An Advocate of Women's Rights in Islam in the Late Nineteenth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Gail Minault
Gail Minault
Affiliation:
University of Texas at Austin
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Sometime in the late 1890s, Sayyid Mumtaz Ali visited Aligarh and happened to show Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan the manuscript of his treatise in defense of women's rights in Islamic law, Huquq un-Niswan. As he began to read it, Sir Sayyid looked shocked. He then opened it to a second place and his face turned red. As he read it at a third place, his hands started to tremble. Finally, he tore up the manuscript and threw it into the wastepaper basket. Fortunately, at that moment a servant arrived to announce lunch, and as Sir Sayyid left his office, Mumtaz Ali snatched his mutilated manuscript from the trash. He waited until after Sir Sayyid's death in 1898, however, to publish Huquq un-Niswan.

Type
Articles
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 24 , Issue 1 , February 1990 , pp. 147 - 172
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

References

1 Jalandhari, Abu Athar Hafiz, ‘Maulvi Sayyid Mumtaz Ali,’ Tahzib un-Niswan 38 (6 07 1935): 615–16;Google ScholarAli, Sayyid Mumtaz, Huquq un-Niswan (Lahore: Dar ul-Isha'iat-e-Punjab, 1898), hereafter cited as HN.Google Scholar

2 There is no biography of Mumtaz Ali. The following account is based upon: Mumtaz, Sayyid Ali, ‘Tahzib un-Niswan,’ in Tahzib un-Niswan (hereafter cited as TN) 21, Jubilee Number (6 07 1918): 424–33;Google ScholarJalandhari, Hafiz, ‘Maulvi Sayyid Mumtaz Ali,’ TN (6 07 1935)Google Scholar: 607–17 (originally published in 1927 in Makhzan, this article was reprinted in TN as an obituary); and interviews with the descendants of Mumtaz Ali in Lahore in 1977.

3 Rahmatullah Kairanwi was the chief adversary in debate of the missionary, Pfander, in Agra in the 1850s. Sayyid Abul Mansur Dehlawi was the leading Muslim spokesman in the Shahjahanpur debates among Christians, Muslims, and Arya Samajis in 1875–76. For further details on the religious debates in North India in the mid-nineteenth century, see Powell, A. A., ‘Maulana Rahmat Allah Kairanwi and Muslim–Christian Controversy in the mid-19th Century,’ JRAS (1976): 42–63;Google Scholar and Metcalf, Barbara, Islamic Revival in British India: Deoband, 1860–1900 (Princeton, 1982), pp. 198–234.Google Scholar

4 Metcalf, , Islamic Revival, p. 146.Google Scholar

5 Metcalf, Barbara, ‘Islam and Custom in Nineteenth-Century India: The Reformist Standard of Maulana Thanawi's Bihishti Zewar,’ Contributions to Asian Studies, XVII, pp. 62–78.Google Scholar

6 Sir Sayyid felt that a rudimentary education was quite enough for women, see below, note 15.

7 Jalandhari, Hafiz, ‘Maulvi Sayyid Mumtaz Ali,’ TN (6 July 1935): 614–15.Google Scholar

8 His phrase is Angrezon ki taqlid.

9 Metcalf, , Islamic Revival, pp. 11–12.Google Scholar

10 HN, pp. 3–4.

11 The Urdu word used to describe his style is salis: easy, simple, clear, not abstruse. At one point, Mumtaz Ali uses the term maulviana to describe difficult Urdu style, as contrasted with the style he wished to achieve. Ali, Mumtaz, ‘Tahzib un-Niswan,’ TN (6 July 1918): 430.Google Scholar

12 This section summarizes HN, pp. 3–42.

13 This translation is by Arberry, A. J., The Koran Interpreted, I (New York: Macmillan, 1955), p. 105.Google Scholar

14 This section summarizes HN, pp. 42–60.

15 In his arguments in favor of women's education, Mumtaz Ali responds directly to a number of arguments against it, but he is also responding indirectly to the position of Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan, which was that women's education was premature, given the then current backward state of men's education among Muslims. Mumtaz Ali did not agree, but doubtless out of respect for Sir Sayyid, he does not mention that view here. Later on, however, after he establishes his case in favor of an equal education for boys and girls, he quotes a letter from Sir Sayyid giving the elder man's position. HN, pp. 57–9.

16 Two of Nazir Ahmad's novels have been translated into English, Mirat ul-Arus as The Bride's Mirror, tr. by Ward, G. E. (London, 1903),Google Scholar and Taubat un-Nasuh as The Repentance of Nusooh, tr. by Kempson, M. (London, 1884)Google Scholar. I have translated Hali's Majalis un-Nissa and his poem, Chup ki Dad, into English, published as Voices of Silence (Delhi: Chanakya Publications, 1986).Google Scholar

17 ‘Every girl should desire her home to be like Asghari's (the heroine of Nazir Ahmad's Mirat ul-Arus); every girl should want her husband to be a tahsildar or a deputy collector.’ HN, p. 55.

18 ‘Our friend [Abdul Halim] Sharar uses every word he knows to describe his sorrowing hero. His heart's blood is squeezed out drop by drop; tears flow incessantly from his eyes.’ Ibid.

19 Tolstoy's essay, ‘What is Art?’ comes to mind as an example of this school of thought, but such views were a common theme in much Victorian writing.

20 This refers, of course, to Tahzib un-Niswan, which began publication in July 1898, shortly after the publication of HN.

21 Mumtaz Ali does not mention it here, but his own publishing firm, the Dar ulIsha'iat-e-Punjab, became the publisher of didactic social novels, including works by Muhammadi Begam, Rashid ul-Khairi, Nazar Sajjad Haidar and others. For a good summary of this school of literature, see Shiasta Akhtar Banu Suhrawardy (Begam Ikramullah), A Critical Survey of the Development of the Urdu Novel and Short Story (London: Longmans, 1945), pp. 105–65.Google Scholar

22 For one such example, see Minault, Gail, ‘Shaikh Abdullah, Begam Abdullah, and Sharif Education for Girls at Aligarh,’ in Ahmad, Imtiaz (ed.), Modernization and Social Change among Muslims in India (Delhi: Manohar, 1983), pp. 207–36.Google Scholar

23 This section summarizes HN, pp. 60–102.

24 The styles he objected to included short kurtis which left the midriff bare above the pajamas, very short sleeves, and diaphanous muslins which left very little of the female form to the imagination. He also took exception to the very long, very full pajamas which were immobilizing to women. HN, pp. 77–8.

25 The burqa with a raisable face veil was a modern innovation, and by no means common when HN was published. Women's publications such as TN helped popularize it.

26 This section summarizes HN, pp. 102–42.

27 majlis-e-maulud or milad: The commemoration of the Prophet's birth and a retelling, in song, of the major events of his life. This is a popular domestic ritual, especially among women, performed on the annual anniversary of the Prophet's birthday, but also on other happy occasions: an engagement, a birth, etc.

28 The Hanafi school of law divides the mahr into prompt and deferred payments, the latter due upon termination of the marriage. Mumtaz Ali's recommendation differs only slightly from standard Hanafi prescription. Cf. Esposito, John L., Women in Muslim Family Law (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1982), pp. 24–6.Google Scholar

29 This section summarizes HN, pp. 142–88.

30 This act, among other things, was intended to ‘consolidate and clarify the provisions of Muslim law relating to suits for dissolution of marriage by women,’ and established additional grounds for divorce which were not recognized in the Hanafi school. Esposito, Women in Muslim Family Law, p. 78.

31 The Deobandis and Ahl-e-Hadith carried out a pamphlet war at that time, and works of religious advice were frequent phenomena all over India after the advent of the printing press. See Metcalf, , Islamic Revival, pp. 199–215;Google Scholar and Ahmed, Rafiuddin, The Bengal Muslims, 1871–1906 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1981), pp. 84–106.Google Scholar