Purdah or pardeh (from Persian: پرده, meaning "curtain") is the practice of concealing women from men. According to one definition:
This takes two forms: physical segregation of the sexes, and the requirement for women to cover their bodies and conceal their form.
Purdah exists in various forms in the Muslim world,[2] India, and other cultures.
In the Muslim world, preventing women from being seen by men is closely linked to the concept of namus.[3][4] In Middle Eastern, patriarchal societies, namus is a strongly gender-specific category of relationships within a family, described in terms of honour, attention, respectability and modesty. The term is often translated as "honour".[3][4]
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A woman's withdrawal into purdah restricts her personal, social and economic activities outside her home. In other words, a woman in purdah should always remain at home. It is permissible, however, for a woman in purdah to come out of her house in extreme necessity, subject to certain conditions, as follows:
Physical segregation within a house can be achieved with walls, curtains, and screens which separate the Zenana (women's chamber) from the Mardana (men's chamber).
Muslim scholar Fadwa El Guindi observes that the Achaemenid rulers of Persia were reported by the Greco-Roman historian Plutarch to have hidden their wives and concubines from public gaze.
The barbarous nations, and amongst them the Persians especially, are extremely jealous, severe, and suspicious about their women, not only their wives (hai gamētai), but also their bought slaves and concubines (pallakai), whom they keep so strictly that no one sees them abroad; they spend their lives shut up within doors (oikoi) and when they take a journey, are carried in closed tents, curtained on all sides, and set upon a wagon (harmamaxai).[5]
The wives were hidden in wagons and litters. It is likely that the custom of veiling continued through the Seleucid, Parthian, and Sassanid periods. This tradition of Purdah is reflected in the Shahnameh, the Persian chronicle in which women are generally referred to as pushide-ruyan (پوشيده رویان) "those whose faces are covered" or pardegian (پردگيان) "those behind the curtains".
Purdah was rigorously observed in Iran before it was banned under Rezā Shāh. The practice was also observed under the Taliban in Afghanistan, where women had to observe complete purdah at all times when they were in public. Only close male family members and other women were allowed to see them out of purdah. In other societies, purdah is often only practised during certain times of religious significance.
Upper-class Greek and Byzantine women were also secluded from the public gaze.
In much of northern and central India, particularly in rural areas, Hindu and Muslim women follow complex rules of veiling the body and avoidance of public appearance, especially in the presence of relatives linked by marriage and before strange men. Purdah practices are inextricably linked to patterns of authority and harmony within the family. Such rules of feminine modesty are not considered purdah but merely proper female behavior.[6]
For almost all women, modest dress and behavior are important. Clothing covering most of the body is common; only in tribal groups and among a few castes do women publicly bare their legs or upper bodies. In most of the northern half of India, traditionally dressed women cover the tops of their heads with Ghoonghat or the end of the sari or dupatta (Scarf).[6]
For traditional Hindus of northern and central India, purdah observances begin at marriage, when a woman acquires a husband and in-laws. Although she almost never observes purdah in her natal home or before her natal relatives, a woman does observe purdah in her husband's home and before his relatives. Through use of the end of the sari as a face veil and deference of manner, a married woman shows respect to her affinal kin who are older than or equal to her husband in age, as well as certain other relatives. She may speak to the women before whom she veils, but she usually does not converse with the men. Exceptions to this are her husband's younger brothers, before whom she may veil her face, but with whom she has a warm joking relationship involving verbal banter.[6]
For Muslim women, purdah practices involve less emphasis on veiling from in-laws and more emphasis on protecting women from contact with strangers outside the sphere of kinship. Because Muslims often marry cousins, a woman's in-laws may also be her natal relatives, so veiling her face within the marital home is often inappropriate. Unlike Hindus, Muslim women do not veil from other women. Traditional Muslim women and even unmarried girls, however, often refrain from appearing in public, or if they do go out, they wear an all-covering garment known as a Burqa, with a full face covering.[6]
In rural communities and in older sections of cities, purdah observances remain vital, although they are gradually diminishing in intensity. Among the educated urban and rural elite, purdah practices are rapidly vanishing and for many have all but disappeared. Chastity and female modesty are still highly valued, but, for the elite, face-veiling and the burka are considered unsophisticated. As girls and women become more widely and more highly educated, female employment outside the home is commonplace, even for women of elite families.[6]
Some Muslims believe women should be veiled (hijab) or secluded because it marks them as respectable (see gender segregation and Islam).
In some Islamic countries, the practice of veiling is very common and is seen as a fundamental part of Islam. Some people believe this practice has cultural roots rather than religious roots, while some Islamic scholars insist that the veil is compulsory for Muslim women, based on their interpretations of the Quran and hadith. However, this is an ongoing debate. In some countries, purdah is required by law, while in other countries, the decision whether and to what degree women should be veiled is a matter for families or the women themselves to decide.
Criticism of purdah has occurred at various times. The custom was criticised from within its community, for example in the 1905 story entitled The Sultana's Dream, by Bengali feminist Roquia Sakhawat Hussain. In 1925 Marmaduke Pickthall, a British convert to Islam and translator of the Koran, gave a lecture in Madras entitled "The Relation of the Sexes"[7] which condemned purdah in the Indian subcontinent, and also criticized the practice of face veiling among Muslim women.
In his 1946 book Pakistan, or The Partition of India, B. R. Ambedkar, a social reformer and the chief architect of India's constitution, attributed many of colonial-era India's evils on the system of purdah, saying that women lack "mental nourishment" by being isolated and that purdah harms the sexual morals of society as a whole.[8]
Pratibha Patil, who later became President of India, once claimed that the purdah system was introduced among Hindu women to protect them from the Muslim invaders.[9]
Unveiling India by Anees Jung, Penguin Books, New Delhi, India, 1987.
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