Lower caste men don’t admire the body of a Princess!

25 Wednesday Jun 2014

Posted by opus125 in Caste & Social position, Indian Clothing, Indian History

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In the past. heavily curtained palkis were a status symbol of Afghans, Persians, Turkey and Moghals. To spare them from walking, Hindu ladies of noble birth only ever ventured outside of the home carried on a palanquin.

In the hot climate it was considered perfectly proper for woman to dress scantily in the presence of family.

However it was improper for lower caste men admire a princess body. In the hot climate it was common for the ladies to be near nude behind the heavy curtain of the palkis. Why wear heavy public clothing behind a curtain?

Purdah means curtain, a word that in modern media is associated mainly with Islam. It refers to public behaviour. Muslim women are enjoined to draw the “curtain of modesty.”

Historian Samina Quraeshi (Legacy of the Indus – A Discovery of Pakistan: 113) quotes an aging lady to her grandniece “Guard your eyes. When visitors come, smile your eyes of welcome to them; but drop your eyes immediately afterward, so that your smile may not be construed as an unchaste invitations.”

While the Burqa has made news in recent decades – I suggest elsewhere because of the rise of Nationalism expressed in some lands through woman’s dress – it is not the dress of the majority of Muslim women, where “figure-molding looseness” is not unflattering . Quraeshi describes the burqa as a device of anonymity and not modesty.

The burqa “is not the ‘purda’ of modesty enjoined on women.”

So where did the burqa come from? Not from the African yashmaq but rather from princess in palkis. To remain in a palkis could be awkward so women carried their own head to ankle palanquin. The design soon spread to courtiers and scribes.

Now modern wealth mostly discard it, the burqa continues with some in the middle class.

Western critics of the Burqa often fail to realize that todaythe burqa is a political act against perceived political discrimination from the West. In both East and West, women’s bodies have been dressed (or undressed) by the politics of men.

Between a burqa and a hard place

03 Thursday Apr 2014

Posted by opus125 in India

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burqa, Burqa Fashion, India, Safinaz Kazem

Burqa Fashion, Old City Bhopal

I remember when I first saw a woman motor cyclist eye slits protecting her face from Pune’s street grime and dust. I immediately thought of Western images of terrorists, even though I knew the cover was simply practical and used by both men and woman.

I think the real fear of the Burqa in some Western lands is not of dress, it is not even the pseudo argument a man could rob a bank dressed up.

I think it is an unconscious primal, or atleast historical, fear exploited by “Civilized Governments” fear of anarchy and piracy since the Middle Ages Roman/Byzantium versus Persia/Islam. Each ‘side’ has misrepresented the other. Arguably you could take his back to conflicts hat predate Islam, such as Persia versus Greece.

Unfortunately the Burqua is now a political symbol. In the West it is misused to justify arguments of oppression against women. Whereas, in the East dress has turned into a political statement of peoples sick of being ignored by the West.

When leading Egyptian journalist Amina al-Sa’id, interviewed Indira Gandhi in 1955, she was wearing a sleeveless, almost off-the-shoulder flowered dress and no one cared.

This changed. For example, in the 1960s and 1970s Safinaz Kazem, a well-known Egyptian columnist, wore “svelte and alluring in an assortment of slinky suits and Audrey Hepburn-type shift dresses. Then Kazem, in 1998, in loose clothing and a scarf covering her hair, says, “For years, we ran around in short skirts and bare arms saying to them, ‘Look, see, we’re just like you.’ Enough. It got us nowhere. We’re not like them, and they shouldn’t matter. We have to find a way to be ourselves.”” (Adhaf Souief, The language of the veil, The Guardian Dec 8, 2001.)

However, Western Stereotypes ignore that a women in a burqa can walk side by side a woman in blue jeans and lipstick.

Once a status symbol of the wealthy, now the covered face has morphed into a symbol of fear and terrorism. Another attempt to link ‘the other’ to fear and derision.
As it is. what most Westerners call a burqa is a niqab or perhaps a chador…..