Herstory Revisited

Muthulakshmi Reddy (1886 – 1968) was an Indian medical practitioner and social reformer. [A large part of her achievements related to her work with a community known as Devadasis, young girls who were dedicated to a temple and groomed into prostitution Muthulakshmi was born to S. Narayanaswami Iyer, the Principal of Maharaja's College, and Chandrammal, a Devadasi. Her father’s ostracism for marrying a devadasi made her acutely aware of the plight of devadasis and inspired much of her future work with the community. However, I want to do a separate post about devadasis soon, so I’m going to exclude much of that aspect of her work from this post, but I’ll link to the devadasi post once I’ve written it.] Narayanaswami Iyer broke the tradition and sent Muthulakshmi to school, and her teachers were so impressed by her intelligence and passion that they taught her subjects beyond her father-approved curriculum. When she hit puberty, she was expected to leave school, but she continued...

  #OTD 1838, Shahjahan Begum was born!   Shahjahan Begum GCSI CI (1838 –  1901) was the Begum of Bhopal (the ruler of the Islamic principality of Bhopal in central India) for two periods: 1844–60 (her mother acting as regent), and secondly during 1868–1901. She was a popular ruler, and is today remembered as an effective leader, stateswoman, architect and writer.    Born in Islamnagar, near Bhopal, Shahjahan was the only surviving child of Sikandar Begum of Bhopal, and her husband Jahangir Mohammed Khan. She was recognised as ruler of Bhopal in 1844 at the age of six; her mother wielded power as regent during her minority. However, in 1860, her mother Sikandar Begum was recognised by the British as ruler of Bhopal in her own right, and Shahjahan was set aside. Shahjahan succeeded her mother as Begum of Bhopal upon the death of the latter in 1868. Thus, she already had a powerful queen to look up to and emulate as she assumed control of her kingdom for real....

Finished this in less than 24 hours.  I knew of Trishna as she’s done a lot of work at my former workplace, the Palace of Holyroodhouse, including meeting Prince William and Kate on the same day that I saw them for the first time! Thus, I have long admired her work and when I saw on insta that she had written a book I thought I’d buy it to support the cause, not expecting it to be one of the favourite books I’ve read this year, if not ever! I’ve long been on a campaign for more education about Sikhism – including at my own uni where we have never been taught about it my three Religious Studies degrees, despite the fact that we’ve learnt about other new age religions with only a couple of hundred followers. The little I knew about Sikhism comes from my experiences with Sikh friends, and from my own research in my spare time.  Trishna included a chapter on Sikhism, and in particular women in Sikhism, from which I learnt more than I have in 7 years at the school of divinity. It o...