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This thesis considers the potential of using women's traditional folk songs as a primary resource in the context of women's educational programs in India. Listening to the voices of protest in women's ancient songs will not only keep women in touch with the long history of their struggle, but will also return worth and importance to the devalued oral narratives that have been the repositories of women's knowledge and experience for centuries. Education programs that grow out of the rich and varied material of folk songs will, by definition, deal with the issues that are repeatedly raised, like embroidered patterns, in the songs themselves. Family, love, child-rearing and the myriad problems of fulfilling personal desire within the confinements of patriarchy will all, under scrutiny, yield crucial subject matter for education programs. At the same time, spinning new folksongs out of old ones will challenge women to think critically, and with the creativity essential to reworking our cultures so that both women and men are able to realize themselves more wholly.

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This thesis examines educational reforms initiated by British colonial officials in late nineteenth/early twentieth century India and the responses they ensued from Indian Muslim reformers. Focusing on the "woman question," British colonizers came to the conviction that the best method to "civilize" Indian society was to educate women according to modern Western standards. Muslim reformers sought to resolve the "woman question" for themselves by combining their own ideologies of appropriate female education with Western ones. Muslim reformers were also deeply concerned with the disappearance of Islamic identity owing to colonial educational policies. Reformers placed the responsibility of maintaining Islamic culture on the shoulders of women so as to both resolve the debate over the proper place of women in society and retain a distinct Islamic identity in the changing Indian context. This resolution limited Indian Muslim women's access to education as well as their participation in Indian society at large.

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