Author:

Samim Haidar
Assistant Professor
Department of English
Krishnath College
Berhampore, West Bengal,India

Email: sheng@msduniv.ac.in

Abstract::This article argues that though much scholarly attention has been paid to the 1947
Partition of Bengal in postcolonial India, the vivisection of the region in 1905 has been relegated to
relative obscurity. In this obscurity have been lost the writings of Muslim women in colonial Bengal
whose literary productions were silenced due to the lack of exposure to the wider ‘public sphere.’
Bringing together some fictional and non-fictional works, it attempts to retrieve those long-forgotten
voices who left behind remarkable trails in their writings for posterity to notice. This paper argues
that Muslim women’s understanding of the 1905 Partition was complex, and they responded to and
negotiated the epoch-changing event in a complex manner. However, since their writings were
marginalized from mainstream nationalist historiography, their responses have remained relatively
unfamiliar to the public gaze.
Keywords:

Key Words:: Divide and Rule ,Historiography, Muslim Women, Marginalization, Swadeshi etc.