Asiya Alam is assistant professor of history at Louisiana State University. She has published articles on women and Islam in South Asia in Modern Asian Studies, and in edited volumes.

• AcknowledgementsList of IllustrationsA Note on TransliterationIntroduction1 Women, Islam and Social Reform2 Ethics and the Question of Family3 Urdu Public Sphere4 Gender and Nationalism5 Structure of the Book1 Familial Ethics and the Critique of Social Reform1 Nineteenth Century Debates on Akhlaq: Ethics as Relationships2 Reformist Censorship and the Battle for Women’s Voice3 Fatherhood and Contentious Advice4 Disruption of Social Reform: ‘Respectability’ as Oppression5 Parent-child Relations, Rights and Social Authority6 Conclusion2 Marital Consent and the Discourse of ‘Women’s Freedom’1 Coercive Marriage and the Vision of Compatibility2 Marital Compatibility as Social Practice3 Marital Consent in Urdu Magazines4 Pardah: Seclusion and/ or Participation5 ‘Women’s Freedom’6 Conclusion3 Conjugal Sexuality and the Politics of Reproduction1 Bodily Health and Conjugality2 Masculinity and Global “Anti-Vice” Campaigns3 Sexual Pleasure, Female Sexual Desire and Reproduction4 Eugenics and Family5 Niyaz Fatehpuri: Colonial Knowledge and History of Sexuality6 Conclusion4 Polygyny1 Sexuality and ‘Legitimate Polygyny’2 Social Reform and Its Advocacy of ‘Legitimate Polygyny’3 Critiques of Polygyny4 Muslim Women’s Conference, 1918, Lahore5 Polygynous Marriage of Saiyid ?Abid Husain and Saliha ?Abid Husain6 Conclusion5 Marital Annulment and Separation of Family1 Talaq (Divorce)2 Divorce and Male Authority3 Respectability, Equality and Marital Annulment4 Debating Strategies for Change5 Women’s Freedom, Female Apostasy and Marriage6 Two Men on Divorce: Dissolution of Muslim Marriages Act of 19397 Mahr and the Economy of Marriage8 Ethical Dilemmas: Non-Legal Familial Conflict9 ConclusionPostscript1 Saiyida Bano Ahmad: Intimacy outside MarriageBibliographyIndex