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Updated: June 28, 2025
From the ghats, or long flights of steps, that descend to the muddy waters of a narrow creek which claims a more or less remote connection with the sacred Ganges, crowds of pious Hindus go through their ablutions in accordance with a long and complicated ritual, whilst high-caste ladies perform them in mid-stream out of covered boats and behind curtains deftly drawn to protect their purdah.
An interesting practical suggestion is the following: "In our Social Service class, which is held every Thursday, there has come up a suggestion about opening up a few Purdah Parks for Indian ladies.
Tess, hardly understanding a word of what was said to her, was never made so much of in her life, sharing honors with Yasmini, almost as much a novelty as she a Western woman, spirited behind the purdah by the same new alchemy that made a girl of partly foreign birth, and so without caste in the Hindu sense of it, revive a royal custom with its antecedents rooted in the very rocks of time.
I" her voice shook and sank almost to a whisper "I am glad that you care for me." At this moment a curtain was hastily swung aside and Lily appeared. "Missy, the mem-sahib asking for you now; please to come quickly," and with a swift glance at her "missy" obeyed; the purdah fell heavily behind her slim, white figure and Shafto was alone.
Yet it was a transfigured Arúna who approached the verandah, where Thea stood awaiting them; having come out to look for Roy and found the clue to his prolonged meditations. "What have you been plotting, you two?" she asked lightly when they reached her. To Roy her eyes said: "D'you call this being discreet?" To Arúna her lips said: "Graceless one! I thought you were purdah nashin this evening!"
It was only when the agitation of the Pankhurst family, aided by Miss Robins' remarkable book "Where are you going to ...?" took a form that threatened to impose the most extraordinary restrictions on the free movements of women, and to establish a sort of universal purdah of hostility and suspicion against those degraded creatures, those stealers and destroyers of women, "the men," that the British feminist movement displayed any tendency to dissociate into its opposed and divergent strands.
Probably the first F.A. student to take her examination in purdah. The first woman's college to offer the F.Sc. course. The first college to have on its staff an Indian lady. The first woman dentist. The first woman agriculturist. The first woman in India to be in charge of a Boys' High School.
Nothing loth, they swim to shore in our wake, rolling over in the sand to dry themselves like Newfoundland dogs, and with less embarrassment on the score of clothing. A native Queen or Maharanee rules Parigi from her bamboo palace in the deepest recesses of the adjacent palm-forest, but she is invisible to her subjects, and dwells in the seclusion of purdah, possibly a relic of Indian origin.
One of these ladies asked me whether the Inamdar would be displeased if she suggested a visit to his wife, because she had once met her at one of those parties which some kindly English people have tried to organise for the benefit of the more exclusive women who live behind the purdah, or curtain. So I told the Inamdar that the Madam Sahib would be pleased to visit his Madam Sahib.
Moreover, Hindus charge the Mohammedan faith with being the cause of the zenana system of this land. The seclusion of women began, they say, on account of the licentiousness of the Arabs. However this may be, it is true that the Mohammedan Purdah system, which separates so thoroughly women from the other sex, found adoption, or at least emphasis, among the Hindus.
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