Putting women back in history

Donna Juliana was an unsual woman about whom little is said or known in standard histories. And yet, she played an important role in the history of the Mughals and their interaction with the Dutch, the French, the British. Brought up in Cochin, Donna Juliana, then merely a girl, and her family had to leave the town when it came under attack from the Dutch in January of 1663. Much later, Juliana Diaz da Costa, as she was known, a grown woman and a devout Catholic, found herself working in the court of emperor Aurangzeb and, after his death, for his son Bahadur Shah, whose trusted adviser she soon became, helping him deal with foreign powers, riding with him into battle, saving him from death, going with him into exile. Mahlaqa was possibly the first major woman poet in Urdu, who was in her prime when Ghalib was only a year old. With the Mughal empire at the peak of its literary and cultural phase, Mahalaqa Chanda became well known for being the first woman to bring out a book of her poems, for building mosques and commissioning kitabat copies of many books for her famous library and for the cultural training centre she established for over 300 girls. Chand Bibi or Chand Sultana was an Ismaili warrior princess, the daughter of Sultan Hussain Nizam Shah 1, the ruler of Ahmadnagar who had broken away from the Bahmani kingdom in 1489. His death when Chand Bibi was only 15 left considerable responsibility on her shoulders and later she proved herself an able administrator and warrior, confronting and tackling the armies of the Mughal emperor Akbar. Rudramma Devi and Hayat Bakshi Begum were queens of the Deccan, both known for the fairness and competence of their rule. These are the women the reader meets in Bilkees Latif’s book Forgotten, which carries stories, as the title indicates, of women forgotten by history. The fact that history is by and large about kings and princes, or politicians and rulers, and that most of the time it leaves women out, is no surprise. Latif attempts to set the balance a little straight by putting together these stories. Nor surprisingly, there isn’t a lot of material on any of these lives — Dona Juliana and Mahlaqa Chanda come off better because their histories are better documented and people wrote about them. As for the others, their stories are a bit thin even though their names — as, for example, those of Rudramahadevi and Chand Bibi — may be better known (perhaps because they were rulers). Although it isn’t entirely clear whether the material used to put together the stories is fully fact, or whether some of it is fiction, Latif tells a story well, and the material is unusual enough to hold the reader’s attention throughout. As well, the exercise of returning women to history is one whose importance cannot be overemphasised, and in searching out these histories, Bilkees Latif has taken the important step of making their stories available to a wider readership. Still, some problems remain. The book could have done with a good — even a brief — introduction, explaining both the selection and the how and why of putting such stories together. The absence of this is a lack, for the reader is somewhat mystified about whether she is reading fact or fiction, and these women deserve more. The last story in the book is the story of Raheem Bi, an ayah who tells her story to the author, and again it is a bit mystifying to find her included in a list of women pulled out from the pages of history. The problem isn’t major, and I would have thought someone like Raheem Bi could have appeared as a postscript, rather than as part of the main book, and her story could have been preceded by a note that explained her presence. Also, even though this is not a book of history in the traditional sense, sources remain a problem, and it isn’t always clear to the reader where a particular incident or episode comes from. When a reference is given, for some reason it is included fully in the text in brackets, which is somewhat intrusive in the reading. This is not a major problem, but it is something that makes the reader wonder: Was the intention to have a book free of footnotes because this is not an academic book If yes, that’s perfectly acceptable, except that a better way could have been found to present the few notes there are. But then, perhaps, this is something that needed the editor’s attention rather than the author’s. In Forgotten, Bilkees Latif has put together stories about the lives of six women forgotten by history. All too often women, and particularly those who work behind the scenes, are ignored by historians — both male and female — who turn their attention by and large to the exploits of men.

Urvashi Butalia is a writer, publisher and co-founder of India’s first feminist publishing house, Kali for Women. She is now director of Zubaan, an imprint of Kali.