The Life and Times of Begum Qudsia Aizaz Rasul: An Exploration of Muslim Women’s Self-Fashioning in Post-Colonial India

Abstract

This paper examines the life and times of a remarkable twentieth-century figure, Begum Qudsia Aizaz Rasul (1908–2001), the first and only Muslim woman in independent India’s Constituent Assembly which drafted the country’s Constitution. In doing so, it critically engages with the genre of autobiographical writing—the limits it imposed and the particular vantage points it offered. By drawing upon Begum Rasul’s private papers, her autobiography and her speeches in the Constituent Assembly debates from 1946 to 1950, this paper unpacks the ways in which she sought to negotiate her multiple and intersecting identities of class, gender and religious background. Her acts of self-fashioning provide critical insights into how Muslim women negotiated their identities in post-colonial India often in resistance to, and conformity with, the national status quo.