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Updated: June 28, 2025
Small wonder that seclusion became the order of the day a woman would better spend her life behind the purdah of her own home than be added to the zenana of her conqueror.
Though the purdah system still prevails, it is no longer that severe, stringent, and unreasonable seclusion of women which existed fifty years ago. It is gradually relaxing, and women are getting, step by step, rights and liberties which must in course of time end in the complete emancipation of Eastern womanhood.
In that city of purdah women, she moves about with the freedom and dignity of a European and is received with respect and affection. The second characteristic which strikes one is the fact that Miss Maya Das has remained Indian.
In joint families of rank, though the widows remain entitled only to a life-interest in their husbands' share, their rank remains to them according to seniority, and the titles "Senior" and "Junior" continue to distinguish the elder and younger branches, even though the junior branch be the one in power. My husband was very eager to take me out of purdah.
Once as he read the heavy silk purdah of the door swayed a little at one side as if a draught of wind had shifted it and an evil face appeared in the opening. Presently he rose from his chair, took the lamp in one hand and the paper in the other, and crossed to the iron box in a far corner of the room.
Intercourse between Indian and English ladies is in the same way almost entirely confined to formal visits paid by the latter to the zenana and the harem, and to so-called Purdah parties, given in English houses, in which Indian ladies are entertained as far as possible under the same conditions that prevail in their own homes i.e., to the total exclusion of all males.
But he would not, and the woman slipped like a shadow behind the purdah and no word said. Then was heard the tinkling of chooris, and the little noise fell upon the silence like a fear, and, parting the curtains, came a woman veiled like the other. She did not kneel, but took the mirror in her hand, and Allah-u-Din drew up behind her back.
He had not been backward, however, in awakening his grandfather to purdah manoeuvres. Strictly in private he told his cousin there had been ungoverned storms of temper, ungoverned abuse of Roy, who was suspected by 'the Inside' of knowing too much and having undue influence with the old man.
Boulte put on a big terai hat, and walked across to the Vansuythens' house to borrow last week's Queen. The two compounds touched, and instead of going up the drive, she crossed through the gap in the cactus-hedge, entering the house from the back. As she passed through the dining-room, she heard, behind the purdah that cloaked the drawing-room door, her husband's voice, saying,
A Hindu student writes: "I maintain that the purdah system should not be done away with altogether, for it will upset the whole foundation of the Hindu principle of 'dharm' or how a woman should act and behave before she is called a good and honorable woman.
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