OSMANIA HELD CLASSES 'BEHIND VEIL' IN FIRST FEW DECADES OF ITS LAUNCH.

Hyderabadis are aware of the 'Purdah Gate' of King Kothi Palace, the official residence of Nizam VII, Mir Osman Ali Khan. But, not many know that Osmania University, which he founded, had conducted classes in the first few deacdes of its launch, literally behind the veil. Classes were held separately for boys and girls. In case a class had to be held in a common hall during the guest lectures of eminent personalities or visiting faculty, a 'purdah' or curtain was hung between boys and girls in OU.
Like many educational institutions in Hyderabad of those days, Osmania University too had observed a 'purdah' system. This continued for a few decades. Classes for girl students were held separately by women faculty. If a qualified woman teacher was not available for a particular subject, classes were conducted by male lecturers but under strict 'vigilance' of 'Ayahs' (female attendants) accompanying the girl students. A study of news archives containing memories recollected by Osmania University alumni reveals that there was a strong segregation of boys and girls in educational institutions in the city and elsewhere in the princely state of Hyderabad.
Even the educational institutions affiliated to the university had all-women teaching and non-teaching staff. Cars, horse-drawn buggies and cycle rickshaws carrying girl students had a curtain hung to them. There were also reports of windowless buses to hide girl students and women. City historian Dr. Mohammad Safiullah, whose grandmother graduated from OU in 1923, while sharing her campus memories said that there were separate entrance and exit for boys and girls.
"There were only a few girls students in educational institutions. It was a Herculean task for girls to convince their parents and grandparents to send them to college. Most of the girls were accompanied by domestic helps and their duty was to keep a close watch on the male faculty and boys to ensure that nothing goes wrong on the non-academic front", he said. 
Long before the birth of OU, exclusive 'Purdah schools' were set up in the form of Nampally Girls' School in 1890 and Mahbubia Girls' School in 1907 (earlier New Zenana School). Interestingly, the medium of instruction was English and not Urdu. The Purdah restriction notwithstanding, many women made a mark on the educational front of Hyderabad even before OU came into being. In fact, many do not know that Lady Amina Hydari played as key a role as her husband Sir Akbar Hydari in the birth of OU, a trendsetter in the academic history of the Indian sub-continent.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

VIEWS OF MANU AND KAUTILYA ON THE ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE.

The state performed its duty of protection of society and the individual through coercive enforcement of the standards of justice based on the concept of ' Dharma '. From the Vedic period onward, the perennial attitude of Indian culture had been justice and righteousness. Justice, in the Indian context, was a human expression of a wider universal principle of nature and if men were entirely true to nature, their actions would be spontaneously just. Men experienced Justice, in the sense of a distributive equity, as moral justice, social justice, and legal justice. Each of these forms of justice was viewed as a particularisation of the general principle of the universe seen as a total organism. Impartial administration of justice was always regarded as one of the main duties of the King and he was considered to be the fountain of justice. The ethical code of society and its cultural standards were inter-related. The cultural maturity and social amicability and even their det...
Read more

ARCHAEOLOGISTS DISCOVER TOMBS IN EGYPT DATING BACK 2,000 YEARS.

Egypt's antiquities ministry said on 14th August, 2017 (Tuesday) that archaeologists have discovered three tombs dating more than 2,000 years, from the Ptolemaic Period. The discovery was made in the Nile valley province of Minya south of Cairo, in an area known as al-kamin al-Sahrawi. The unearthed sarcophagi and clay fragments suggest that the area was a large necropolis from sometime between the 27th Dynasty and the Greco-Roman period. ---------------------------------------------------------------- 
Read more

ANCIENT INDIA'S LINKS TO TODAY.

You may not have heard of Shu-ilishu but he is a man of great significance. He reaches out to us from almost 4,300 years ago, through a small Akkadian cylinder seal now housed at the Louvre Museum in Paris. On the seal, you will find an image of him talking to two men. The inscription describes Shu-ilishu as the interpreter of the Meluhhan language. 'Meluha' was, in all probability, the term used by ancient Mesopotamians for the Indus Valley region, and the presence of an oficial 'interpreter' there indicates just how important the steady flow of good from the Indian sub-continent was.  Precious and vibrant lapis lazuli stones, carnelian beads, wood and even dogs would go across via old trade routes and ports like Lothal (in modern-day Gujarat) to Akkad, capital of the Akkadian Empire (03rd millennium BCE) and now in modern-day Iraq. There are also references to a settlement of Meluhhans in the city of Guabba in Sumer, in Mesopotamia.  The story of Shi-ilishu and ...
Read more