(Published in Mint Lounge, January 10 2026)

In April 1937, the junior maharani of Alwar decided to “go joy riding in an aeroplane.” It was not an easy proposition. As Rajput royalty, she could not be exposed to anyone outside a small family circle, necessitating special arrangements. A senior state official inspected the six-seater plane to be “perfectly certain” it was purdah-compliant, later deputing his wife to reconfirm. A barrier was raised to ensure the pilot was “completely cut off from the rest of the cabin”, and “curtains of the plane’s windows were drawn until they reached a safe altitude”. In any case, to be extra sure, the only spectators allowed near the airstrip were the maharani’s retainers. It was all for naught, though, for the event triggered adverse comment regardless. British officials were aghast that the maharani had violated longstanding rules of ladylike decorum. The precautions did not matter—airborne purdah fit the letter of the rule but eviscerated its spirit.

The institution of purdah in India has an interesting history. For one, its origins are a topic of controversy. While the general policing of women’s bodies goes back many ages, permanent, everyday seclusion is believed to largely be a development under Islamic rule. Muslim elites in West Asia and Persia adopted purdah, and when Islamic power arrived in India, it would make the custom fashionable here too. Some argue that Hindus took up purdah to protect women from Muslim invaders. But the more persuasive view is different. Essentially, as groups like the Rajputs were incorporated into the new imperial system, Muslim courtly practices began to be mimicked. One innovation, for example, was men starting to wear the flowing jama (somewhat like we took to shirts under the Raj). Purdah is held to be another such borrowed practice, slowly trickling down to a wider stratum.

This is not to say that forms of seclusion were unheard of in India prior to Islamic rule. Kerala’s Namboodiri Brahmins, for instance, kept their women sequestered; when these ladies went out to temples, they held large parasols shielding them from the public gaze. Here unwanted eyes belonged not to Muslim invaders, but Hindus of other caste groups. Ideas around modesty also do not fully explain purdah, because the concept varied in India. If in the north it was proper for women to cover their heads before elders and in temples, in Kerala this would have been bad form. Here the protocol in sacred spaces and around seniors was to go comprehensively topless. Those Namboodiri ladies who walked with parasols, that is, wore as their routine attire just a waistcloth. Purdah, then, was often about status and distinction, which also explains why it has historically found ready purchase with upwardly mobile groups.

The Marathas are a case in point. Traditionally, Maratha women did not live behind veils, but some elites did embrace purdah over the centuries. There was, however, no consistency to this. So, in the early 19th century, if a British official noticed “a degree of purdah” at the Scindia durbar, ladies at the court of the Bhosales of Nagpur appeared “unveiled in public”. In 1809, another observer saw Maratha women on horseback “without taking any pains to conceal their faces”. Indeed, there were cases where a woman might be “astraddle, behind her husband” on the same animal. In Baroda, while the Maratha queens did not show themselves to the ordinary masses, purdah was easily waived in certain settings. Thus, in the mid-1870s Jamnabai, a widow of barely 30, received Queen Victoria’s son—his entourage noted not only her “pleasant face, bright eyes, and agreeable smile” but also her “small and well-shaped” feet.

Muslim grandees observed purdah far more strictly, though here again there were exceptions, including of an entertaining variety. When the Frenchman Louis Rousselet visited Bhopal in the 1860s, not only was its ruler, Sikander Begum, out of purdah, she also dressed like a man. Moving about on horseback, she worked 12-hour days, shared a hookah with her guest—an episode that “made no small noise”—and had male dancers perform the nautch. When her daughter, after marriage, took to purdah, the begum was thoroughly displeased. But while this might be too unusual a case, strategies existed for less adventurous queens also to bypass the veil when practicalities necessitated it. In the 15th century Bahmani Sultanate, the regent queen Nargis declared her minister an honorary “brother” and got rid of an intervening curtain. Ease of doing business prevailed over courtly norms in this instance.

In the north, though, the purdah’s association with women’s—and by patriarchal extension, their families’—honour remained strong. One 17th century tale, in fact, shows a Rajput king, Dalpat Rao of Datiya (Datia?), prepare to kill his wife (who was in an awkward situation on her elephant during a river crossing) rather than let her get to safety unveiled. In the 1840s, British officials in Patna recorded rumours among local Muslims that the government was about to ban purdah and force “Mahomedan females…go about unveiled”—an “alarming” bit of news they feared could spark a law-and-order problem. As late as 1871, Raja Shiva Prasad, the Hindi writer and intellectual, attempted to get the British to design railway carriages in a way that allowed women to keep purdah even in third class. The authorities refused—ladies of rank who required seclusion could surely afford second and above.

Ironically, the colonial state had a love-hate relationship with purdah. As much as its agents urged strict conformity on the Alwar maharani, the curtain also often posed political problems. After all, white men could penetrate the durbar hall and keep an eye on the throne. But if the throne’s occupant were acquiring inputs from screened-off women, it was tougher for colonial “advice” to prevail. It was for this reason that an influential wife of Akbar Shah II in 19th century Delhi was described as “A nasty Dame & Bitch”; the emperor spoke but seemed to transmit her ideas. Indeed, women in purdah turned seclusion to their advantage. In the 1830s, a regent queen of Jaipur took the reins of state, strategically deploying the screen to evade British interference. A century later, in Gwalior colonial officials found themselves once again “arguing with a bamboo curtain”, behind which operated a wily queen mother.

By the end of the 19th century and into the 20th, however, purdah came to be seen as a social evil; its time had passed. While traditional elites clung to the custom, segments of Indian society that were exposed to modern education decried it as backward. Mythology and history were summoned to the cause of reform. As Mahatma Gandhi argued, for instance, “In the age when proud Draupadi and spotless Sita lived there could be no purdah. Gargi could not have held her discourses from behind the purdah.” And yet objections were strong—plague epidemics often saw men fixate over whether purdah would be breached, as Sir Saiyyad Ahmad Khan warned a British official in 1897. In the 1920s, a Rajput asked another civil servant: “What would remain of the Rajputs if they gave up pardah?” For ultimately, at its core, the tradition was what it had always been: as much about men as women.