Kafir-Hate Roots Of Purdah (Hijab) In India

The word that has been historically used for veiling of women in India is not 'hijab' but 'purdah'.

The term purdah is derived from Persian word ‘pardeh’ which means ‘curtain’. The use of hijab to describe any kind of Islamic veil is a recent trend in India. 

Not much literature is available to determine when purdah originated in India, but is it largely believed that purdah was enforced on women through a series of Islamic invasions.

Anthropologist Patricia Jeffery, in her book Frogs In A Well: Indian Women In Purdah, wrote that seclusion of women in India was not unknown before the Muslim invasions, but “most writers consider that the Muslim invasions were a watershed and that purdah became more widespread during and after that period”.

Historians believe that Arabs and Turks brought the custom of purdah to India and it became widespread during the Delhi Sultanate when Hindu women were routinely abducted by invaders. By 15th century, purdah had become an important feature of the Rajput community in Rajasthan.

In her celebrated writings on the Muslim society of India, 19th century British author Meer Hassan Ali says that Turco-Mongol conqueror Timur (or Timerlane) introduced palanquins in India to completely hide Muslim women from the eyes of “idolaters”. 

Idol-worshippers or idolators are called “kafir” (infidels) and considered the worst sinners in Islam. 

She wrote (Observations on the Mussummauns of India, 1832):

“In Arabia and Persia the females are allowed to walk or ride out with a sort of hooded cloak, which falls over the face, and has two eye-holes for the purpose of seeing their way. They are to be met with in the streets of those countries without a suspicion of impropriety when thus habited.

The habit of strict seclusion, however, originated in Hindoostaun with Tamerlane, the conqueror of India.

When Tamerlane with his powerful army entered India, he issued a proclamation to all his followers to the following purport, 'As they were now in the land of idolatry and amongst a strange people, the females of their families should be strictly concealed from the view of strangers’; and Tamerlane himself invented the several covered conveyances which are to the present period of the Mussulmaun history in use, suited to each grade of female rank in society. 

And the better to secure them from all possibility of contamination by their new neighbours, he commanded that they should be confined to their own apartments and behind the purdah…”

Readers may find it interesting what Hassan Ali wrote in the text that followed. 

She said that it was not a practice among Hindus to prey on stranger women and thus Timur’s concerns were misplaced.

She wrote:

“Tamerlane, it may be presumed, was then ignorant of the religious principles of the Hindoos. They are strictly forbidden to have intercourse or intermarry with females who are not strictly of their own caste or tribe, under the severe penalty of losing that caste which they value as their life. To this may be attributed, in a great degree, the safety with which female foreigners travel daak in their palankeens, from one point of the Indian continent to another, without the knowledge of five words of the Hindoostaunie tongue, and with no other servant or guardian but the daak-bearers, who carry them at the rate of four miles an hour, travelling day and night successively.”

Hassan Ali, who mingled with the Muslim elite women, gave details about who among the Muslim community observed the purdah in her time. “Those females who ran above peasants or inferior servants are disposed from principle to keep themselves strictly from observation,” she wrote.

Literature from 16th and 17th century India show that Muslims militantly enforced the purdah.

“Among the Mahomedans it is a great dishonour for a family when a wife is compelled to uncover herself,” wrote European traveller Niccolao Manucci (1653-1708), who served the Mughals and stayed for 70 years in India, and wrote an extensive account of his experiences.

He narrated an incident (Storia De Mogor, translated by William Irvine, Volume 2): A Muslim soldier from the Mughal armies was travelling with a convoy. His wife was seated in a covered vehicle as was the norm “usual among Mohamedans”.

A tax-collector accosted him and asked if he was carrying tobacco. “The Mahomedans consume a great deal of this article in smoking,” wrote Manucci. 

The soldier replied that he was a man of strict habits, and neither he nor his wife smoked tobacco. The tax-collector demanded he wanted to search the vehicle as he did not trust him. 

The soldier declined the demand, saying his wife must not be seen in public. He warned the tax-collector that he if indeed uncovered the vehicle, he would kill him. The tax-collector did not heed the warning and went on to uncover the vehicle.

The soldier drew out his sword and beheaded the tax-collector. He also wounded several of his attendants. However, he did not stop at that. The soldier killed his wife and daughter as well, for they had been seen in the public.

A similar incident, though it did not involve killing of the woman, is narrated from the time of Shah Jahan.

Persian historians Samsam Ud Daula Shah Nawaz and his son Abdul Hai Khan, who wrote accounts of Muslim and Hindu officers of Timurid sovereigns of India between 1500 and 1780 AD, narrated the incident in their work Ma’asir Al-Umara.

The incident goes like this: A Muslim woman - wife of a noble - was passing through the street in the customary cart. An elephant leading the convoy appeared before the cart. It put its trunk on the vehicle, as if it wanted to twist and trample it. The bearers threw the cart and ran away.

The woman jumped out of the cart, rushed inside a nearby shop and shut the door. She thus saved her life. However, her husband Amir was displeased with her action and even tried to separate from her.

Royal Muslim women observed purdah by staying in their harems, which were lavish, or travelling in palanquins. Given how zealously Muslim men secluded their women from the public gaze, all Muslim women except those belonging to peasant or servants followed purdah strictly, writes Sudha Sharma in her 2016 book (The Status of Muslim Women in Medieval India, Sage Publications).

Purdah percolated down to Hindus and Hindu converts to Islam. 

Sharma writes,

“…the threat of invaders and also the sensual laxity and outrages perpetrated by the Muslim royalty and nobility of the sultanate and the Mughal periods had instilled a sense of insecurity among the Muslim subjects and also among the Hindus. Consequently, they relegated their women meekly behind the purdah so as to save them from the lustful eyes of these masters. The more was the slackening of the morals, the stricter became the rules of women seclusion. A majority of the Muslim population of India were Hindu converts. These neo-Muslims were more zealous in following the tenets of the ‘Faith’ embraced than those to whom it came as a matter of course. Such persons enforced the purdah norms most assiduously upon their womenfolk.”

In another piece that is related to this theme, this author wrote about fatwas on Islamic clothing by prominent Islamic schools and clerics, that direct ‘believers‘ to dress differently than kafirs and thus advocate hijab for women.