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Cosmopolitan, transnational identities of courtly Indian women in the late imperialzenana

Bibliographic Data

ID3611487
AuthorsAngma Dey Jhala (0000-0002-1662-1691, Bentley University, corresponding author)
Year2015
Volume49
Issue6
Pages1704-1731
Publication date2015-11-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueModern Asian Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0026-749X • E-ISSN: 1469-8099
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0026749x13000619
OpenAlexW2320524887
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited18

This article examines the cosmopolitan world of the colonialzenanathrough the marriages of two mid-twentieth-century royal Indian women, Maharani Brijraj Kumari of Dhrangadhra and Maharani Krishna Kumari of Jodhpur. In particular, it analyses the close connection betweenzenanawomen's education and emergent adolescent sexuality. These women ordinarily began their studies in mixed-gender classrooms with their brothers and male cousins as children. As they neared the age of menarche, girls were extracted from the formal schoolroom and undertook instruction in household management and childcare in preparation for their expected roles as wives and mothers. Despite being prematurely cut off from the childhood classroom, women's educational backgrounds (in both Western and Indic forms of knowledge) and future learning potential remained an important part of their postmarital identity. Young, anglicized Indian men increasingly desired wives who reflected the modernity that they hoped to represent as imperial subjects and were encouraged to adopt by British advisors and tutors. They required wives who would not wearpardahand thus reflect more Western ideals of companionate marriages of friendship, yet simultaneously live in gender-segregated palace quarters, uphold traditional kinship networks, perform religious duties, and engage in the maintenance of a large polygamous household. Definitions of sex, marriage, and domesticity were increasingly cross-cultural and pan-historical in nature, incorporating aspects both of the 'modern' and the 'traditional', the Indic and the European, the regional and the transnational

Aesthetics · Art · Colonialism · Friendship · Human sexuality · Identity (music · Kinship · Modernity · Political science · Social science · Sociology · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · Gender Studies · History · Law

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