Thanks due to a grant from the Aga Khan Islamic Humanities program at Brown University, the electronic version of Shenila Khoja-Moolji’s book is now available for download for free! Among other things, the book discusses Imam Sultan Mahomed Shah’s advances for girls’ education in colonial India and includes a chapter on fieldwork with Ismaili girls in Pakistan.
Available here: https://www.luminosoa.org/site/books/10.1525/luminos.52/
In Forging the Ideal Educated Girl, Shenila Khoja-Moolji traces the figure of the ‘educated girl’ to examine the evolving politics of educational reform and development campaigns in colonial India and Pakistan. She challenges the prevailing common sense associated with calls for women’s and girls’ education and argues that such advocacy is not simply about access to education but, more crucially, concerned with producing ideal Muslim woman-/girl-subjects with specific relationships to the patriarchal family, paid work, Islam, and the nation-state. Thus, discourses on girls’/women’s education are sites for the construction of not only gender but also class relations, religion, and the nation.
Source: Luminos
Ismailimail 