More than three decades back feminist historio- graphy had suggested that the devaluation of women in mainstream writings was connected to their exclusion from the public sphere and their identification with the domestic. Since then this in- sight has generated a prolife- ration of studies investigating regions and societies across the globe, studies which have engaged with the powerful ideological concept of separate spheres, explored its underpinnings, questioned its universal validity and sought new frameworks within which the study of women and the domestic domain could be meaningfully located. Yet the expanding field of writings on medieval and early modern South Asia has proved to be frustratingly unresponsive to the challenges and impulses stimulated by research on gender. Ruby Lal’s investigation of the domestic world of the early Mughal empire opens up this unexplored terrain to many pertinent questions.
October 2007, volume 31, No 10