In her own right : sovereignty and gender in princely bhopal
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- This dissertation argues that sovereignty was mutually constituted through relations between British imperialists and princely rulers in India in the twentieth century. Despite the fact that approximately two-fifths of Indian territory and one-fourth of India's population remained in the power of the indigenous sovereigns who comprised princely India, we know surprisingly little about these rulers and their states. At the heart of the project lies Sultan Jahan Begum, the only Muslim queen to rule in her own right in India, the British empire, and the world between 1901 and 1926. I examine critical topics in governance and gender, including public health, travel and pilgrimage, the practice of purdah, Muslim anticolonial nationalism during and after World War I, veiled women in photography, princely succession, and Sultan Jahan Begum's vernacular manuscripts, within which she argued for measured emancipation for Indian women. In my study, "in her own right" refers to the discursive and performative means Sultan Jahan Begum used for exploiting grey areas in imperial policy while creating roles for both princely rulers and women in anticolonial imaginations of a decolonized India. My analysis of Sultan Jahan Begum adds to existing scholarship on how the "Muslim woman" was (and is) a collective subject for contesting authorities who were negotiating and claiming sovereignty and nation. By attending to the relationship between British and Indian actors who co-constituted sovereignty, my project also provides new ways to understand emerging fields of scholarship on sovereignty in colonial contexts, Muslim feminism, and female leadership in contemporary perspective.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2020; ©2020 |
| Publication date | 2020; 2020 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Akhter, Madihah Falak |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Satia, Priya |
| Thesis advisor | Satia, Priya |
| Thesis advisor | Metcalf, Barbara, 1941- |
| Thesis advisor | Sommer, Matthew Harvey, 1961- |
| Degree committee member | Metcalf, Barbara, 1941- |
| Degree committee member | Sommer, Matthew Harvey, 1961- |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of History. |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Madihah F. Akhter. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of History. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2020. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2020 by Madihah Falak Akhter
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