Conspiracy of Silence against Women: A Study of Behind the Veil

Abstract

This paper seeks to examine how bodies of women have been colonized with reference to Rasheed Jahan’s play Behind the Veil (Parde ke Peeche). Jahan is concerned with the ‘conspiracy of silence’ against women and her writings on issues of female sexuality, abortion, women’s health and diseases etc. made her an iconic figure. The emergence of women writers like Rasheed Jahan and others on the Indo-Anglian literary horizon is of tremendous significance since she highlights the unexplored sexuality in Angare which was earlier a taboo & explores the case of marginalization and exclusion due to which she was labeled ‘angareywali’. She raises a voice against sexism to express victim-victimizer clash since the documentation of creative capacities of women can free them from the status of the victim. The predicament of Muhammadi Begum is depicted in her one act play wherein she uses pen as the palisade to subvert the all-pervasive patriarchy.