The Veiled Woman

This study draws on a large range of popular sources such as folk songs, oral traditions and interviews as well as statistical data and archival material to explore certain major issues regarding the position of women in rural Haryana and in north India. Covering a century, the author explores women's participation in the process of production and reproduction, especially among the landholding classes; the exclusion of women from the control of resources; the consequences of the new agricultural technologies on women and their work; the resistance of patriarchal society to a change in the legal position of women; the upholding of the customary practices relating to marriage and property by a self-advancing colonial state; and lastly the complicity of women themselves in the reconstruction of patriarchy.