Girls advised to pursue Home Science and House Work

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wise_guy
Posts: 700
Joined: Sat Jan 28, 2012 5:52 pm

Girls advised to pursue Home Science and House Work

#1

Unread post by wise_guy » Thu May 23, 2013 1:26 am

This is a new thing going on now... Heard that amtes and their young girls are being advised to pursue Home Science and do house work. They should not join call center or do such kind of jobs etc... I heard that there was this free trip to Raudat Tahera organized recently from one jamaat in Mumbai and people were then given this advice (Brainwashing in PDB language) over there

Bohra spring
Posts: 1377
Joined: Mon Sep 17, 2012 8:37 am

Re: Girls advised to pursue Home Science and House Work

#2

Unread post by Bohra spring » Thu May 23, 2013 7:43 am

wise_guy wrote:This is a new thing going on now... Heard that amtes and their young girls are being advised to pursue Home Science and do house work. They should not join call center or do such kind of jobs etc... I heard that there was this free trip to Raudat Tahera organized recently from one jamaat in Mumbai and people were then given this advice (Brainwashing in PDB language) over there
Why is his wife doing house work in the palace ...can he show by example and get rid the bai.

zinger
Posts: 2201
Joined: Wed Sep 26, 2012 2:40 am

Re: Girls advised to pursue Home Science and House Work

#3

Unread post by zinger » Thu May 23, 2013 8:38 am

wise_guy wrote:This is a new thing going on now... Heard that amtes and their young girls are being advised to pursue Home Science and do house work. They should not join call center or do such kind of jobs etc... I heard that there was this free trip to Raudat Tahera organized recently from one jamaat in Mumbai and people were then given this advice (Brainwashing in PDB language) over there
Wise guy, really dont know where you heard this.

We as a quom have always prided ourselves on being forward-thinking and liberal minded, so a fatwa like this is quite ridiculous

think
Posts: 1838
Joined: Fri Sep 09, 2011 10:15 am

Re: Girls advised to pursue Home Science and House Work

#4

Unread post by think » Thu May 23, 2013 10:47 am

I am not surprized. The kothar says one thing and does another. To day they are asking girls to take up stitching and house work and at the same token they demand big money from women doctors everywhere specially in the west. They ought to be ashamed of themselves.

Al Zulfiqar
Posts: 4618
Joined: Tue Mar 28, 2006 5:01 am

Re: Girls advised to pursue Home Science and House Work

#5

Unread post by Al Zulfiqar » Thu May 23, 2013 11:45 am

zinger wrote:
We as a quom have always prided ourselves on being forward-thinking and liberal minded,
wow! so doing sajdas to dai, singing sajda tujhe wajib hai, praising mola's prowess at shooting down wild animals, believing blindly in his false mojizas, sitting for hours in the markaz/masjid watching stupid movies of mola's travels and bayans, doing purjosh mataam at the drop of a hat, paying through your nose and giving into amil bullies, shouting mola, mola at the very mention of his name and crying, is all very forward thinking and liberal minded is it??? listening to muffy talking crap about hearing his brother from the grave and subsequently from jannat, his fantastic b.s. about imam hussain's conversations with his horse, his tales about millions of farishtas around his father and swallowing all that bull is forward thinking and liberal minded???

clearly zinger, you seem to be living in the world of gnomes and leprechauns!!!

zinger
Posts: 2201
Joined: Wed Sep 26, 2012 2:40 am

Re: Girls advised to pursue Home Science and House Work

#6

Unread post by zinger » Thu May 23, 2013 11:53 am

going by your behaviour and language, you obviously cannot consider yourself forward-thinking or liberal minded, so its ok. say what you like

Al Zulfiqar
Posts: 4618
Joined: Tue Mar 28, 2006 5:01 am

Re: Girls advised to pursue Home Science and House Work

#7

Unread post by Al Zulfiqar » Thu May 23, 2013 1:32 pm

zinger wrote:going by your behaviour and language, you obviously cannot consider yourself forward-thinking or liberal minded, so its ok. say what you like
please specify what you find objectionable about my language in the above post, instead of making vague and stupid comments. if you cannot stand the heat, get out of the kitchen, as the saying goes, and consider confining yourself in the future to that fine group of forward thinking and liberal minded abdes to which you belong.

wise_guy
Posts: 700
Joined: Sat Jan 28, 2012 5:52 pm

Re: Girls advised to pursue Home Science and House Work

#8

Unread post by wise_guy » Thu May 23, 2013 1:39 pm

zinger wrote:
wise_guy wrote:This is a new thing going on now... Heard that amtes and their young girls are being advised to pursue Home Science and do house work. They should not join call center or do such kind of jobs etc... I heard that there was this free trip to Raudat Tahera organized recently from one jamaat in Mumbai and people were then given this advice (Brainwashing in PDB language) over there
Wise guy, really dont know where you heard this.

We as a quom have always prided ourselves on being forward-thinking and liberal minded, so a fatwa like this is quite ridiculous
''

as I have already mentioned, heard from a person who went for the free organized ziyarat tour and the maaraaz in which they were advised.

zinger
Posts: 2201
Joined: Wed Sep 26, 2012 2:40 am

Re: Girls advised to pursue Home Science and House Work

#9

Unread post by zinger » Thu May 23, 2013 2:28 pm

Al Zulfiqar wrote:
zinger wrote:going by your behaviour and language, you obviously cannot consider yourself forward-thinking or liberal minded, so its ok. say what you like
please specify what you find objectionable about my language in the above post, instead of making vague and stupid comments. if you cannot stand the heat, get out of the kitchen, as the saying goes, and consider confining yourself in the future to that fine group of forward thinking and liberal minded abdes to which you belong.

everything about you in objectionable.
Last edited by zinger on Thu May 23, 2013 2:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.

zinger
Posts: 2201
Joined: Wed Sep 26, 2012 2:40 am

Re: Girls advised to pursue Home Science and House Work

#10

Unread post by zinger » Thu May 23, 2013 2:36 pm

wise_guy wrote:
zinger wrote: Wise guy, really dont know where you heard this.

We as a quom have always prided ourselves on being forward-thinking and liberal minded, so a fatwa like this is quite ridiculous
''

as I have already mentioned, heard from a person who went for the free organized ziyarat tour and the maaraaz in which they were advised.

Bizarre :roll:

Al Zulfiqar
Posts: 4618
Joined: Tue Mar 28, 2006 5:01 am

Re: Girls advised to pursue Home Science and House Work

#11

Unread post by Al Zulfiqar » Thu May 23, 2013 3:11 pm

zinger wrote:
Al Zulfiqar wrote: please specify what you find objectionable about my language in the above post, instead of making vague and stupid comments. if you cannot stand the heat, get out of the kitchen, as the saying goes, and consider confining yourself in the future to that fine group of forward thinking and liberal minded abdes to which you belong.

everything about you in objectionable.
obviously to you, because i kick your "forward thinking and liberal minded" a#*e all over the forum. now go back to where you came from, doing sajdas to mola, singing about it and doing purjosh maatam.

wise_guy
Posts: 700
Joined: Sat Jan 28, 2012 5:52 pm

Re: Girls advised to pursue Home Science and House Work

#12

Unread post by wise_guy » Mon Sep 01, 2014 2:15 am

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DisillusionedDB
Posts: 380
Joined: Mon Jul 07, 2014 7:20 am

Re: Girls advised to pursue Home Science and House Work

#13

Unread post by DisillusionedDB » Mon Sep 01, 2014 3:08 am

zinger wrote:
wise_guy wrote:This is a new thing going on now... Heard that amtes and their young girls are being advised to pursue Home Science and do house work. They should not join call center or do such kind of jobs etc... I heard that there was this free trip to Raudat Tahera organized recently from one jamaat in Mumbai and people were then given this advice (Brainwashing in PDB language) over there
Wise guy, really dont know where you heard this.
We as a quom have always prided ourselves on being forward-thinking and liberal minded, so a fatwa like this is quite ridiculous
This fatwa really did come to pass. So wise_guy did hear correct.

S. Insaf
Posts: 1494
Joined: Thu Sep 11, 2003 4:01 am

Re: Girls advised to pursue Home Science and House Work

#14

Unread post by S. Insaf » Mon Sep 01, 2014 12:45 pm

Why we work
Live Mint 29 August 2014
Ever since 68-year-old Mufaddal Saifuddin took over as the 53rd Dai or spiritual leader of the Dawoodi Bohras in January, his sermons have attracted curiosity from members of the million-strong sub-sect of Ismaili Shia Muslims (Dawoodi Bohras), a large section of whom live in Mumbai. His statements on women’s roles in particular have caused much debate. In his sermons, the syedna has mentioned that women ought not to work in call centres as that may lead them to “commit sins”. He has also reportedly stated that women ought to learn how to cook and stitch, and desist from attending institutions of higher education. Some households disallow women from being seen in public without the rida, a two-piece hijab; others prevent women from being photographed.

The public role played by women has been historically undervalued in the community, writes Rehana Ghadyali, a professor who retired from the department of humanities and social sciences at the Indian InstHeitute of Technology, Mumbai. In an article titled The Campaign For Women’s Emancipation In An Ismaili Shia (Daudi Bohra) Sect Of Indian Muslims: 1929-1945, she writes: “Unlike the fierce and prolonged debate aroused by the campaign to give up purdah, higher education for girls did not arouse similar passion.”
“The campaign by stressing the ideas of male/female complimentarily rather than equality left unchallenged women’s dependence on men in social, legal and economic matters. It never sought to redefine women’s sphere but only sought to extend it,” says the article, published in a 2002 book, Muslim Feminism And Feminist Movement: South Asia (Volume 1), edited by Abida Samiuddin and Rashida Khanam.
However, there are many in the community who do not subscribe to orthodox strictures on what women ought to do, education, work and domestic chores included. Zehra Cyclewala, a Dawoodi Bohra reformist who took on the earlier syedna’s 1985 dictum to give up working at the Saif Cooperative Society bank in Surat, refusing to give up her job as a manager, is one of them. Ex-communicated as a result, Cyclewala has fought a 29-year-long battle, often taking the help of courts and the police, against orthodox sections of her community. “These rules are meant to keep women oppressed. If the woman was educated, she would raise her voice and that’s what they don’t want,” says Cyclewala of the syedna’s reported remarks about women’s education.
We profile four successful professionals and their working relationship with their community.
Nushrat Bharucha, 26 Actor
Petite and diminutive Nushrat Bharucha insists that we send her the questions we intend to ask her before meeting the following day. “In this industry, half the things said are frivolous and for entertainment. But I don’t want that to happen for an issue that defines who you are,” she offers by way of explanation.
Bharucha, the critically acclaimed actor of films such as Love Sex Aur Dhokha and Pyaar Ka Punchnama, has good reason to be circumspect. Her choice of profession hasn’t gone down too well with the more orthodox members of her extended family.
Bharucha entered the profession at the age of 16. As a student of Jai Hind college a decade ago, she walked into a talent management firm hoping to volunteer as a scout. Instead, they hired her to act in a serial, Kitty Party, on Zee TV. The long work hours and shoddy treatment of newbies led Bharucha to quit the show in a year.
At the time, when her mother would accompany her to the studio, Bharucha would tell members of her extended family that acting was only a summer job. “In our community, we are encouraged to take up professions like medicine or engineering that offer consistency and job security. Acting is not a ‘real’ profession,” she says, sitting near the window of her Juhu, Mumbai, home, where she lives with her parents and paternal grandmother. “Some of them still look at me with a question in their eyes, ‘What have you done in the past 10 years?’”
Yet, after college, Bharucha found herself drawn to the studio—this time for a film offer. “It was then that I realized what acting meant. Film was nothing like television; there was a craft to it, and I realized how much hard work was needed. It was not some mindless two-bit job that only requires you to look good.”
Bharucha’s parents, Tasneem, a homemaker, and Tanvir, a businessman, were initially apprehensive but supported their only child’s decision. “I was slightly sceptical at first,” says Tasneem, adding that she had encouraged her daughter to take up theatre in school. The main concern, she says, was whether Nushrat would find a good Bohra match. Bharucha believes she will find the right man, who shares her world view, within the community. “Are there any?” we ask her father, who replies, “Of course there are.”
“We are very close as a family. There are uncles and aunts for whom I would stand in front of a truck,” says Bharucha, echoing a sentiment common in the Dawoodi Bohra community, known for its close network of familial, social and economic ties. “One can’t live in solitude. To survive as a single family unit is not possible. So my parents would still go to the mosque and happily do everything that is asked of them. Whom we are connected to matters more to us,” says Bharucha.
While her parents don’t pressure her to go to the mosque to pray or keep a fast during Ramzan (she can’t because of health concerns), Bharucha says she acquiesces to the more orthodox elements of her family when needed. “If I’m asked to wear a rida and attend a ceremony, I’d do it. I don’t get into a debate.”
At the same time, however, Bharucha espouses the need for a more liberal attitude towards religion. “A religion can’t define a person. It tells you what you should and shouldn’t do, but the choice is always up to you. The sanctity of faith gets lost if one is forced to do things. Let me listen to sermons and decide for myself what moves me, what I feel like thanking God for and asking of Him.”
In many ways, Bharucha’s attitude is a product of her parents’ choices. While Tasneem grew up in the predominantly Bohra neighbourhood of Bhendi Bazar, she moved to Juhu after marrying Tanvir, whose business of heat-resistant ceramic coating counts auto giants as clients. Moving away from the neighbourhood spelt small freedoms—to not wear a rida, for instance, each time she stepped out of home, to not visit the mosque out of compulsion, among others. Tanvir also didn’t depend on other Dawoodi Bohras for business, unlike the scores of hardware stores or clothes merchants’ shops that populate the locality. This, too, Bharucha’s parents count as a blessing.
“I’ve been brought up with both elements in family—orthodox and liberal. I would never tell my cousins who follow all that is preached that they’re wrong. I think being an actor helps me understand where they’re coming from.”
Ummul Ranalvi, 54
Corporate training firm owner

Tasneema Ranalvi, 51 Publisher
The view from Ummul Ranalvi’s drawing room is captivating—from the ninth floor of a tony apartment complex in Bandra, Mumbai, one can see the Arabian Sea and, beyond it, the high-rises along the Worli Sea Face and Parel’s behemoth glass facades. “We are Bandra girls,” laughs Tasneema Ranalvi, the younger sibling, who lives nearby. Masooma Ranalvi, a 47-year-old social activist based in New Delhi, who practised criminal law in Mumbai in the 1980s, is the youngest.
Tasneema runs Source Publishers, an offshoot of Super Book House (SBH), a firm for books on subjects like design, architecture and gemmology, among other things, started by their father, Shoaib Ranalvi, in the 1970s, when the family lived in the Dawoodi Bohra neighbourhood of Nagpada.
Ummul Ranalvi (left) at her home in Bandra, Mumbai, with younger sister Tasneema Ranalvi.
She joined SBH after completing a master’s in technology in 1988. Ummul completed her master’s in psychology and opened a training firm, Continuing Education and Training Centre (CETC), in 1986 to acquaint companies with the subjects that her father sold books on. She, however, branched out to offer soft-skills training—one of her first clients was Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd, the government’s telecommunications arm. Her firm now provides audio-visual training such as videos on sexual harassment in the workplace, content development, and assessment tools for employees, among other things.
“That’s him,” says Ummul, pointing to a black and white close-up photograph in a thin steel frame. Shoaib Ranalvi, who died in 2010 was excommunicated in 1979 for taking part in the movement which fought for reforms within the community. Led by the late Asghar Ali Engineer and late Noman Contractor, among others, the movement sought greater transparency in financial dealings by the Dai and protested the coercion to perform rites and pay annual tax.
It was the excommunication that forced the family to move to Bandra in the early 1980s. “We never felt the effects of the ostracism, because the three of us were happy to just be with each other. It was our mother who felt it most,” says Ummul. Their mother Aziza, now 82, lives with Tasneema and her husband Hemant, a nuclear physicist by training. Their daughter lives in the UK.
“Our mother loved attending prayer meetings, and was very good at recitation. However, during one majlis, she was asked by the host to not return. But she remained close to her family and maintained some ties,” says Ummul.
The sisters cannot pray in a Bohra mosque and when their father died, he was buried in a Muslim cemetery, not a Bohra one. However, the sisters, who had a fairly conservative upbringing till adolescence, don’t feel troubled by it. “Our father supported us in everything we wanted to do. He encouraged us to study and work, start our own firms. Usually in the community, girls marry early, but he didn’t pressure us into doing that,” says Ummul, crediting her success to her father’s progressiveness.
The sisters are also vocal opponents of the practice of female genital mutilation, the practice of cutting off a girl’s clitoris while still a child, followed by certain members of the community. “I don’t understand why more people don’t oppose such rites. What will people lose?” asks Tasneema.
One of the biggest challenges facing her at the moment is the Internet. Her publishing firm, which comes out with two bi-monthly magazines, The Design Source and New Age Salon & Spa, cannot sustain in the digital age, where information is now available for free, and at the click of a mouse. Together with Masooma, she is contemplating shutting down the magazines (both have a print run of 20,000 copies) and going digital instead.
“Our father learnt to operate the computer when he was in his 70s,” she says. “He would compile interesting thoughts and stories into a small booklet called Chotein Chotein Baatein, which we would deliver to companies as handouts for employees,” says Tasneema.
The booklet encapsulates the sort of humour and idealistic values that kept the Ranalvi family sane in the midst of much upheaval. “We will continue to print that booklet,” adds Tasneema.
Insia Lacewalla, 27
Co-founder of a food consultancy firm
If there is one thing Insia Lacewalla has in common with her community, it is her nose for scenting a business opportunity. Rewind to a few years ago when major metropolitan cities in India were in the throes of a love affair with food—the online food market had surged to Rs.1,000 crore the in 2012 and gourmet ingredients, plating sessions, food carving classes and MasterChef shows had everyone in thrall.
For Lacewalla, three years into food consulting for music events and restaurants and creating hospitality riders for international musicians on their India tours (including Lady Gaga), it was time to take things to the next level for home chefs without the platform to display their wares.
In June 2013, she held the first food pop-up on the rooftop of a popular Bandra store. It was called The Bakers’ Sale. “It rained all day and my phone was ringing off the hook with people wondering whether we should postpone the do. But everything had already been arranged, 13 home chefs were on board, it was too late to turn back.” The pop-up was supposed to last from 4-9pm, but by 7.30, they were sold out.
This has been a feature of Lacewalla’s pop-ups ever since—numbers that don’t let her down, and a clientele from all parts of the city.
While Lacewalla continues to work as a food consultant for food bazaars and music events, she has begun to take her food pop-up work to the point of origin: people’s homes. With friend and researcher Sneha Nair, she has held five iterations of Poppaddum, where Nair would cook a sadhya, or a traditional Keralite meal, and invite strangers (“food lovers”) to sample it. Next month, she will roll out yet another initiative for home-based chefs called Secret Ingredient. The only requirement is that members will have to cook traditional meals that are not easily available in restaurants.
“Food is a very important part of the Bohras’ community experience. We remember people’s weddings by how good the dal gosht was,” laughs Lacewalla, whose parents live in Pune. Lacewalla started her company without informing them and didn’t tell them she had quit her job. “I wanted to start my own thing, but I didn’t want them to feel that I didn’t know what I was doing,” she says. Yet, she credits her folks’ willingness to let her live alone in Mumbai for everything she has subsequently achieved.
It wasn’t easy at first, admits Lacewalla. “I’ve been meeting boys since I was 18,” she says, referring to her parents’ efforts to fix her up with a “good Bohra boy” in an arranged marriage. She was in college, but her folks weren’t averse to her dropping out. Lacewalla met the boys, but refused to quit college. “It wasn’t dramatic, like in the movies. But I pushed back slowly. I told them that I wanted to complete my education.”
In 2008, Lacewalla enrolled for a master’s diploma in public relations and corporate communication at the Xavier Institute of Communications, Mumbai. Her maternal grandmother lived alone in Bhendi Bazaar and was happy that a grandchild would live with her. “It was an emotional matter and my parents agreed to the move easily.” Three years later, her younger sister Zahabia, 26, moved to the city. She now works in the television industry as a stylist.
Moving away from her parents’ home helped Lacewalla tackle the matter of meeting potential grooms; it also offered her a level playing field to explore her career options. She started off marketing the Aamir Khan-starrer 3 Idiots. She found her niche in food after working for the NH7 Weekender music festival organized by Mumbai-based production firm Only Much Louder.
“Now they’re no longer pressuring me to marry a Bohra boy, but will be happy as long as I get married,” she laughs. “They’re proud of the work I do. I’m looking to tap into this underground food culture of home chefs, for whom cooking is a genuine passion,” she says.
Her parents, she knows, will understand.

haqniwaat
Posts: 516
Joined: Wed Aug 06, 2014 6:06 pm

Re: Girls advised to pursue Home Science and House Work

#15

Unread post by haqniwaat » Tue Sep 02, 2014 10:02 pm

Many Fatimid and Bohra women have owned and operated their own business. Molatona Khadija herself had her own business and we all know Molatona Fatema owned a farm and in fact, gave a speech to the three dawedaar khalifas and there goons in the saqifa. However, they still adhered to the Quranic ordinance of purdah. Many women today are professionals and yet still wear a rida or similar covering while working, even in the West.
I agree with those who protest extremism, but let's remember that extremism is found on both sides. Let's stride in the middle with education of our beliefs before judging them.

qutub_mamajiwala
Posts: 1051
Joined: Tue Jul 23, 2013 4:17 am

Re: Girls advised to pursue Home Science and House Work

#16

Unread post by qutub_mamajiwala » Wed Sep 03, 2014 1:59 am

bro sheik hasan
appreciate what u want to do with ur daughter.
may allah bless u and her.
but after attaining maturity, if she wants to persue some other things eg profession as
mentioned as not recommended in the photo?
then?
will u accept her freedom of choice?
or will u shackle her with ur own beleif ?
anybody--boy or girl should have freedom to make his/her own choice.
to impose ur own self modest beleif on them in the name of religion or otherwise
is pure hypocirsy

qutub_mamajiwala
Posts: 1051
Joined: Tue Jul 23, 2013 4:17 am

Re: Girls advised to pursue Home Science and House Work

#17

Unread post by qutub_mamajiwala » Wed Sep 03, 2014 3:51 am

yes i agree with u to provide best environment and education.
but going against sharia rules and do something inappopriate is relative.
what u think is not gud , is normal for others.
ur slave of ur beleif---no problem
but why enforce it on others which u think is inappopritate
u havent stll answered my question?
what will u do if she decides to persue other avenues.

humanbeing
Posts: 2195
Joined: Sun Nov 20, 2011 2:30 am

Re: Girls advised to pursue Home Science and House Work

#18

Unread post by humanbeing » Wed Sep 03, 2014 4:52 am

Sheikh Hasan wrote:I have plans to make my daughter hafizul Quran and expert in fiqh Inshallah Ameen…..we are already finding hifz school for my son and Inshallah he will start hifz really soon.
Congratulations ! and wish you all the best with up bringing your children in the best and safest environment. It is a noble thought to impart and assist your children in getting deeni education. Also pray the deeni education they acquire helps open eyes to religious frauds and oppression in guise of faith. At the same time hope you support the children to accomplish her own dreams in the secular world.

I m no one to assume your life philosophy towards secular world with your limited post.

Wish your family all the best

humanbeing
Posts: 2195
Joined: Sun Nov 20, 2011 2:30 am

Re: Girls advised to pursue Home Science and House Work

#19

Unread post by humanbeing » Wed Sep 03, 2014 5:53 am

Sheikh Hasan wrote: but if you look deep in the matter MS is not really wrong,.
Looking deep into SMS ideaology towards women education is more to do with liberated outlook of women when they acquire secular education. Women being foundational teacher at home for children ( next generation of abdes) and boss of the household.

SMS is attempting to hit 2 birds with one stone, curbing free thinking amongst women and patronizing latently seated machoism amongst abdes to gain support. His generalized comments on call centre and other customer service oriented jobs are weak. His attitude and outlook is myopic through his gold glasses. Sitting comfortably on his high pedestal golden throne, he is insensitive towards the struggling masses and opportunities they have to make a living.

Call centres have elevated many struggling youngsters and families upto decent living standards. Also increasing the Kothari coffers with tax payments. Safety and Moral issues that SMS highlighted are very subjective and can be dealt with good upbringing and supervision.

Women are also human beings, and it is high time men stop regulating them. Treat them equals, they grow up to know their responsibility like any other responsible human beings.
Sheikh Hasan wrote: I really believe our girls should excel in deeni education and become example for the world.
So should our boys !
Sheikh Hasan wrote: I am pretty sure none of bohra father ever needs money from his daughter so why not let them excel in deen and Islam and lets give them perfect environment where they can give best education to their kids and be a loyal and perfect wife for their husbands..
Why do you perceive that bohra father does not need support from his daughters ? I find this thinking very absurd. Such thinking leads to affinity towards “Sons” and perceive daughters as burden leading to biased outlook towards girl child and its related evils ( female foeticide, dowry tensions, neglect and hatred) … “Sons”.. so called “bhudaape-ki-laathi” a “Retirement assurance” etc and Daughter are overheads !

I support the idea of children taking care of the parents and that includes boys and girls, it is their equal responsibility in all ways emotional and financial to support their parents. And for that to happen we have to empower our children in secular and religious education, without any differentiation.

One shall not deprive women from secular education which can be exploited commercially to make a decent living, financial independence commands respect, support to husband and children and you will not have to worry when her husband mistreats her , because she would know how to handle her life situations.

Deerseye
Posts: 89
Joined: Fri Mar 22, 2013 10:30 am

Re: Girls advised to pursue Home Science and House Work

#20

Unread post by Deerseye » Wed Sep 03, 2014 6:08 am

A few questions crossing my mind. Why are dictates imposed on women, why are women considered incapable of deciding their dress, why can a women not decide what work she wants to do.I don't always agree with Mr Narendra Modi but one sentence in his Independence Day speech won him brownie points."ham apni betiyon ko to sanskarit kar dete he, par apne Beton ko kab sanskar sikhayege."

qutub_mamajiwala
Posts: 1051
Joined: Tue Jul 23, 2013 4:17 am

Re: Girls advised to pursue Home Science and House Work

#21

Unread post by qutub_mamajiwala » Wed Sep 03, 2014 6:50 am

bro sheikh hasan
why do u think that if fathers does not need money, women should not work?
is it only to give money to father and husband does women requires to work?
god forbid and if u have finanacial problem--then only u will allow her to work?
money needed or not---work is not only about money.
she should have freedom to do whatever she wants.
this is absurd and ridiculous concept, that she wants to work only to give money to family.
she wants to work---just coz she wants to---period. no strings attached.
and what do u mean by loyal to husband.
loyal in what sense?
infedility?
or just obey him?
and what about his loyalness?

humanbeing
Posts: 2195
Joined: Sun Nov 20, 2011 2:30 am

Re: Girls advised to pursue Home Science and House Work

#22

Unread post by humanbeing » Wed Sep 03, 2014 9:47 am

qutub_mamajiwala wrote: money needed or not---work is not only about money.
she should have freedom to do whatever she wants.
Can men also have the similar privilege ?

Lets get real bro ! people work for rewards ( money, appreciation, self worth). Money plays a dominant part. And with money lot of issues are resolved. Specially for women who are at mercy of husband’s pocket money out of love, responsibility or pity !

All this jazz of freedom and do whatever she wants types look good in philosophical talks. I believe in equal rights and responsibility !

qutub_mamajiwala
Posts: 1051
Joined: Tue Jul 23, 2013 4:17 am

Re: Girls advised to pursue Home Science and House Work

#23

Unread post by qutub_mamajiwala » Wed Sep 03, 2014 10:10 am

yes HM
i agree with u
what i really meant is ppl say why does she want to work?
she does not need any money.
and even if she needs, she can do work at home like ms is telling.
why she wants to work in any profession which is considered as not recommended in the photo.
so it is like dictating what she should do and what she should not
according to their perceived biases about gud, bad, modesty and all that
that is all i wanted to clear.
yes money is important--and nowadays with nuclear family it is more imp, if she contributes
so that both have decent std of living for them and their kids.

qutub_mamajiwala
Posts: 1051
Joined: Tue Jul 23, 2013 4:17 am

Re: Girls advised to pursue Home Science and House Work

#24

Unread post by qutub_mamajiwala » Wed Sep 03, 2014 10:13 am

my whole point so as to summarize was
if she wants to work---let her.
which profession---let her decide.

S. Insaf
Posts: 1494
Joined: Thu Sep 11, 2003 4:01 am

Re: Girls advised to pursue Home Science and House Work

#25

Unread post by S. Insaf » Wed Sep 03, 2014 11:28 am

Why is the male member of a family so privileged? And why female members so downgraded?
He can go out and mix with anyone.
He wants his wife and other female members to remain within four walls.
He can remain out of house for months and year for business/job.
He can marry together four women.
He can divorce his wife whenever he wants.
He does not have to bear labour-pain and observe Iddat.
His having extra-marital relationships are not taken so seriously.
He wants to be the sole decision-maker.
He thinks that house-keeping and serving is only wife’s duty.
He does not want his wife to work so that he can dominate her as being the sole bread-earner.
In our Dawoodi Bohra faith on three most important junctures women have played a leading role, Nabuwwat (Hazrat Khudeja), Imamat (Hazrat Fatema Zehra, Dawat (Hurra Maleka) and yet our priesthood treats our women as ehier bonded slaves. Why?????? Why??????????

MMH
Posts: 312
Joined: Tue Jan 28, 2014 2:22 pm

Re: Girls advised to pursue Home Science and House Work

#26

Unread post by MMH » Wed Sep 03, 2014 2:09 pm

Yes that's mr.insaf...who is the person next to you?
Sheikh Hasan wrote:
S. Insaf wrote:Why is the male member of a family so privileged? And why female members so downgraded?
He can go out and mix with anyone.
He wants his wife and other female members to remain within four walls.
He can remain out of house for months and year for business/job.
He can marry together four women.
He can divorce his wife whenever he wants.
He does not have to bear labour-pain and observe Iddat.
His having extra-marital relationships are not taken so seriously.
He wants to be the sole decision-maker.
He thinks that house-keeping and serving is only wife’s duty.
He does not want his wife to work so that he can dominate her as being the sole bread-earner.
In our Dawoodi Bohra faith on three most important junctures women have played a leading role, Nabuwwat (Hazrat Khudeja), Imamat (Hazrat Fatema Zehra, Dawat (Hurra Maleka) and yet our priesthood treats our women as ehier bonded slaves. Why?????? Why??????????
sorry but Is this really you? just asking because I am not sure about it

seeker110
Posts: 1730
Joined: Mon Apr 24, 2006 4:01 am

Re: Girls advised to pursue Home Science and House Work

#27

Unread post by seeker110 » Wed Sep 03, 2014 5:32 pm

Thank God for women, I would be so lost or dead without their help. The one I have is worth two brothers. The caretakers of humanity.

HMALAK
Posts: 80
Joined: Wed Sep 11, 2013 7:31 am

Re: Girls advised to pursue Home Science and House Work

#28

Unread post by HMALAK » Thu Sep 04, 2014 2:07 am

Read this Blogs of a young guy.... Seems good for the Indian Girls. Wondering if such things are happening in the Dawoodi Bohra Clergy... :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll:

http://hozefamalek.blogspot.in/2014/02/ ... women.html

http://hozefamalek.blogspot.in/2014/03/ ... lture.html

Dr Fatema
Posts: 78
Joined: Tue Feb 18, 2014 5:38 am

Re: Girls advised to pursue Home Science and House Work

#29

Unread post by Dr Fatema » Thu Sep 04, 2014 3:37 am

Another example of successful Bohra woman from Udaipur Dr Farida Shah

http://www.udaipurtimes.com/prof-farida ... s-college/
S. Insaf wrote:Why we work
Live Mint 29 August 2014
Ever since 68-year-old Mufaddal Saifuddin took over as the 53rd Dai or spiritual leader of the Dawoodi Bohras in January, his sermons have attracted curiosity from members of the million-strong sub-sect of Ismaili Shia Muslims (Dawoodi Bohras), a large section of whom live in Mumbai. His statements on women’s roles in particular have caused much debate. In his sermons, the syedna has mentioned that women ought not to work in call centres as that may lead them to “commit sins”. He has also reportedly stated that women ought to learn how to cook and stitch, and desist from attending institutions of higher education. Some households disallow women from being seen in public without the rida, a two-piece hijab; others prevent women from being photographed.

The public role played by women has been historically undervalued in the community, writes Rehana Ghadyali, a professor who retired from the department of humanities and social sciences at the Indian InstHeitute of Technology, Mumbai. In an article titled The Campaign For Women’s Emancipation In An Ismaili Shia (Daudi Bohra) Sect Of Indian Muslims: 1929-1945, she writes: “Unlike the fierce and prolonged debate aroused by the campaign to give up purdah, higher education for girls did not arouse similar passion.”
“The campaign by stressing the ideas of male/female complimentarily rather than equality left unchallenged women’s dependence on men in social, legal and economic matters. It never sought to redefine women’s sphere but only sought to extend it,” says the article, published in a 2002 book, Muslim Feminism And Feminist Movement: South Asia (Volume 1), edited by Abida Samiuddin and Rashida Khanam.
However, there are many in the community who do not subscribe to orthodox strictures on what women ought to do, education, work and domestic chores included. Zehra Cyclewala, a Dawoodi Bohra reformist who took on the earlier syedna’s 1985 dictum to give up working at the Saif Cooperative Society bank in Surat, refusing to give up her job as a manager, is one of them. Ex-communicated as a result, Cyclewala has fought a 29-year-long battle, often taking the help of courts and the police, against orthodox sections of her community. “These rules are meant to keep women oppressed. If the woman was educated, she would raise her voice and that’s what they don’t want,” says Cyclewala of the syedna’s reported remarks about women’s education.
We profile four successful professionals and their working relationship with their community.
Nushrat Bharucha, 26 Actor
Petite and diminutive Nushrat Bharucha insists that we send her the questions we intend to ask her before meeting the following day. “In this industry, half the things said are frivolous and for entertainment. But I don’t want that to happen for an issue that defines who you are,” she offers by way of explanation.
Bharucha, the critically acclaimed actor of films such as Love Sex Aur Dhokha and Pyaar Ka Punchnama, has good reason to be circumspect. Her choice of profession hasn’t gone down too well with the more orthodox members of her extended family.
Bharucha entered the profession at the age of 16. As a student of Jai Hind college a decade ago, she walked into a talent management firm hoping to volunteer as a scout. Instead, they hired her to act in a serial, Kitty Party, on Zee TV. The long work hours and shoddy treatment of newbies led Bharucha to quit the show in a year.
At the time, when her mother would accompany her to the studio, Bharucha would tell members of her extended family that acting was only a summer job. “In our community, we are encouraged to take up professions like medicine or engineering that offer consistency and job security. Acting is not a ‘real’ profession,” she says, sitting near the window of her Juhu, Mumbai, home, where she lives with her parents and paternal grandmother. “Some of them still look at me with a question in their eyes, ‘What have you done in the past 10 years?’”
Yet, after college, Bharucha found herself drawn to the studio—this time for a film offer. “It was then that I realized what acting meant. Film was nothing like television; there was a craft to it, and I realized how much hard work was needed. It was not some mindless two-bit job that only requires you to look good.”
Bharucha’s parents, Tasneem, a homemaker, and Tanvir, a businessman, were initially apprehensive but supported their only child’s decision. “I was slightly sceptical at first,” says Tasneem, adding that she had encouraged her daughter to take up theatre in school. The main concern, she says, was whether Nushrat would find a good Bohra match. Bharucha believes she will find the right man, who shares her world view, within the community. “Are there any?” we ask her father, who replies, “Of course there are.”
“We are very close as a family. There are uncles and aunts for whom I would stand in front of a truck,” says Bharucha, echoing a sentiment common in the Dawoodi Bohra community, known for its close network of familial, social and economic ties. “One can’t live in solitude. To survive as a single family unit is not possible. So my parents would still go to the mosque and happily do everything that is asked of them. Whom we are connected to matters more to us,” says Bharucha.
While her parents don’t pressure her to go to the mosque to pray or keep a fast during Ramzan (she can’t because of health concerns), Bharucha says she acquiesces to the more orthodox elements of her family when needed. “If I’m asked to wear a rida and attend a ceremony, I’d do it. I don’t get into a debate.”
At the same time, however, Bharucha espouses the need for a more liberal attitude towards religion. “A religion can’t define a person. It tells you what you should and shouldn’t do, but the choice is always up to you. The sanctity of faith gets lost if one is forced to do things. Let me listen to sermons and decide for myself what moves me, what I feel like thanking God for and asking of Him.”
In many ways, Bharucha’s attitude is a product of her parents’ choices. While Tasneem grew up in the predominantly Bohra neighbourhood of Bhendi Bazar, she moved to Juhu after marrying Tanvir, whose business of heat-resistant ceramic coating counts auto giants as clients. Moving away from the neighbourhood spelt small freedoms—to not wear a rida, for instance, each time she stepped out of home, to not visit the mosque out of compulsion, among others. Tanvir also didn’t depend on other Dawoodi Bohras for business, unlike the scores of hardware stores or clothes merchants’ shops that populate the locality. This, too, Bharucha’s parents count as a blessing.
“I’ve been brought up with both elements in family—orthodox and liberal. I would never tell my cousins who follow all that is preached that they’re wrong. I think being an actor helps me understand where they’re coming from.”
Ummul Ranalvi, 54
Corporate training firm owner

Tasneema Ranalvi, 51 Publisher
The view from Ummul Ranalvi’s drawing room is captivating—from the ninth floor of a tony apartment complex in Bandra, Mumbai, one can see the Arabian Sea and, beyond it, the high-rises along the Worli Sea Face and Parel’s behemoth glass facades. “We are Bandra girls,” laughs Tasneema Ranalvi, the younger sibling, who lives nearby. Masooma Ranalvi, a 47-year-old social activist based in New Delhi, who practised criminal law in Mumbai in the 1980s, is the youngest.
Tasneema runs Source Publishers, an offshoot of Super Book House (SBH), a firm for books on subjects like design, architecture and gemmology, among other things, started by their father, Shoaib Ranalvi, in the 1970s, when the family lived in the Dawoodi Bohra neighbourhood of Nagpada.
Ummul Ranalvi (left) at her home in Bandra, Mumbai, with younger sister Tasneema Ranalvi.
She joined SBH after completing a master’s in technology in 1988. Ummul completed her master’s in psychology and opened a training firm, Continuing Education and Training Centre (CETC), in 1986 to acquaint companies with the subjects that her father sold books on. She, however, branched out to offer soft-skills training—one of her first clients was Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd, the government’s telecommunications arm. Her firm now provides audio-visual training such as videos on sexual harassment in the workplace, content development, and assessment tools for employees, among other things.
“That’s him,” says Ummul, pointing to a black and white close-up photograph in a thin steel frame. Shoaib Ranalvi, who died in 2010 was excommunicated in 1979 for taking part in the movement which fought for reforms within the community. Led by the late Asghar Ali Engineer and late Noman Contractor, among others, the movement sought greater transparency in financial dealings by the Dai and protested the coercion to perform rites and pay annual tax.
It was the excommunication that forced the family to move to Bandra in the early 1980s. “We never felt the effects of the ostracism, because the three of us were happy to just be with each other. It was our mother who felt it most,” says Ummul. Their mother Aziza, now 82, lives with Tasneema and her husband Hemant, a nuclear physicist by training. Their daughter lives in the UK.
“Our mother loved attending prayer meetings, and was very good at recitation. However, during one majlis, she was asked by the host to not return. But she remained close to her family and maintained some ties,” says Ummul.
The sisters cannot pray in a Bohra mosque and when their father died, he was buried in a Muslim cemetery, not a Bohra one. However, the sisters, who had a fairly conservative upbringing till adolescence, don’t feel troubled by it. “Our father supported us in everything we wanted to do. He encouraged us to study and work, start our own firms. Usually in the community, girls marry early, but he didn’t pressure us into doing that,” says Ummul, crediting her success to her father’s progressiveness.
The sisters are also vocal opponents of the practice of female genital mutilation, the practice of cutting off a girl’s clitoris while still a child, followed by certain members of the community. “I don’t understand why more people don’t oppose such rites. What will people lose?” asks Tasneema.
One of the biggest challenges facing her at the moment is the Internet. Her publishing firm, which comes out with two bi-monthly magazines, The Design Source and New Age Salon & Spa, cannot sustain in the digital age, where information is now available for free, and at the click of a mouse. Together with Masooma, she is contemplating shutting down the magazines (both have a print run of 20,000 copies) and going digital instead.
“Our father learnt to operate the computer when he was in his 70s,” she says. “He would compile interesting thoughts and stories into a small booklet called Chotein Chotein Baatein, which we would deliver to companies as handouts for employees,” says Tasneema.
The booklet encapsulates the sort of humour and idealistic values that kept the Ranalvi family sane in the midst of much upheaval. “We will continue to print that booklet,” adds Tasneema.
Insia Lacewalla, 27
Co-founder of a food consultancy firm
If there is one thing Insia Lacewalla has in common with her community, it is her nose for scenting a business opportunity. Rewind to a few years ago when major metropolitan cities in India were in the throes of a love affair with food—the online food market had surged to Rs.1,000 crore the in 2012 and gourmet ingredients, plating sessions, food carving classes and MasterChef shows had everyone in thrall.
For Lacewalla, three years into food consulting for music events and restaurants and creating hospitality riders for international musicians on their India tours (including Lady Gaga), it was time to take things to the next level for home chefs without the platform to display their wares.
In June 2013, she held the first food pop-up on the rooftop of a popular Bandra store. It was called The Bakers’ Sale. “It rained all day and my phone was ringing off the hook with people wondering whether we should postpone the do. But everything had already been arranged, 13 home chefs were on board, it was too late to turn back.” The pop-up was supposed to last from 4-9pm, but by 7.30, they were sold out.
This has been a feature of Lacewalla’s pop-ups ever since—numbers that don’t let her down, and a clientele from all parts of the city.
While Lacewalla continues to work as a food consultant for food bazaars and music events, she has begun to take her food pop-up work to the point of origin: people’s homes. With friend and researcher Sneha Nair, she has held five iterations of Poppaddum, where Nair would cook a sadhya, or a traditional Keralite meal, and invite strangers (“food lovers”) to sample it. Next month, she will roll out yet another initiative for home-based chefs called Secret Ingredient. The only requirement is that members will have to cook traditional meals that are not easily available in restaurants.
“Food is a very important part of the Bohras’ community experience. We remember people’s weddings by how good the dal gosht was,” laughs Lacewalla, whose parents live in Pune. Lacewalla started her company without informing them and didn’t tell them she had quit her job. “I wanted to start my own thing, but I didn’t want them to feel that I didn’t know what I was doing,” she says. Yet, she credits her folks’ willingness to let her live alone in Mumbai for everything she has subsequently achieved.
It wasn’t easy at first, admits Lacewalla. “I’ve been meeting boys since I was 18,” she says, referring to her parents’ efforts to fix her up with a “good Bohra boy” in an arranged marriage. She was in college, but her folks weren’t averse to her dropping out. Lacewalla met the boys, but refused to quit college. “It wasn’t dramatic, like in the movies. But I pushed back slowly. I told them that I wanted to complete my education.”
In 2008, Lacewalla enrolled for a master’s diploma in public relations and corporate communication at the Xavier Institute of Communications, Mumbai. Her maternal grandmother lived alone in Bhendi Bazaar and was happy that a grandchild would live with her. “It was an emotional matter and my parents agreed to the move easily.” Three years later, her younger sister Zahabia, 26, moved to the city. She now works in the television industry as a stylist.
Moving away from her parents’ home helped Lacewalla tackle the matter of meeting potential grooms; it also offered her a level playing field to explore her career options. She started off marketing the Aamir Khan-starrer 3 Idiots. She found her niche in food after working for the NH7 Weekender music festival organized by Mumbai-based production firm Only Much Louder.
“Now they’re no longer pressuring me to marry a Bohra boy, but will be happy as long as I get married,” she laughs. “They’re proud of the work I do. I’m looking to tap into this underground food culture of home chefs, for whom cooking is a genuine passion,” she says.
Her parents, she knows, will understand.

tasneempati
Posts: 260
Joined: Sun Jan 05, 2014 3:44 am

Re: Girls advised to pursue Home Science and House Work

#30

Unread post by tasneempati » Wed Sep 10, 2014 5:31 am

Qudos to Dr Farida & woman like her.
Nushrat Bharucha is Parsi not Bohra. See link below

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nushrat_Bharucha
Dr Fatema wrote:Another example of successful Bohra woman from Udaipur Dr Farida Shah

http://www.udaipurtimes.com/prof-farida ... s-college/
S. Insaf wrote:Why we work
Live Mint 29 August 2014
Ever since 68-year-old Mufaddal Saifuddin took over as the 53rd Dai or spiritual leader of the Dawoodi Bohras in January, his sermons have attracted curiosity from members of the million-strong sub-sect of Ismaili Shia Muslims (Dawoodi Bohras), a large section of whom live in Mumbai. His statements on women’s roles in particular have caused much debate. In his sermons, the syedna has mentioned that women ought not to work in call centres as that may lead them to “commit sins”. He has also reportedly stated that women ought to learn how to cook and stitch, and desist from attending institutions of higher education. Some households disallow women from being seen in public without the rida, a two-piece hijab; others prevent women from being photographed.

The public role played by women has been historically undervalued in the community, writes Rehana Ghadyali, a professor who retired from the department of humanities and social sciences at the Indian InstHeitute of Technology, Mumbai. In an article titled The Campaign For Women’s Emancipation In An Ismaili Shia (Daudi Bohra) Sect Of Indian Muslims: 1929-1945, she writes: “Unlike the fierce and prolonged debate aroused by the campaign to give up purdah, higher education for girls did not arouse similar passion.”
“The campaign by stressing the ideas of male/female complimentarily rather than equality left unchallenged women’s dependence on men in social, legal and economic matters. It never sought to redefine women’s sphere but only sought to extend it,” says the article, published in a 2002 book, Muslim Feminism And Feminist Movement: South Asia (Volume 1), edited by Abida Samiuddin and Rashida Khanam.
However, there are many in the community who do not subscribe to orthodox strictures on what women ought to do, education, work and domestic chores included. Zehra Cyclewala, a Dawoodi Bohra reformist who took on the earlier syedna’s 1985 dictum to give up working at the Saif Cooperative Society bank in Surat, refusing to give up her job as a manager, is one of them. Ex-communicated as a result, Cyclewala has fought a 29-year-long battle, often taking the help of courts and the police, against orthodox sections of her community. “These rules are meant to keep women oppressed. If the woman was educated, she would raise her voice and that’s what they don’t want,” says Cyclewala of the syedna’s reported remarks about women’s education.
We profile four successful professionals and their working relationship with their community.
Nushrat Bharucha, 26 Actor
Petite and diminutive Nushrat Bharucha insists that we send her the questions we intend to ask her before meeting the following day. “In this industry, half the things said are frivolous and for entertainment. But I don’t want that to happen for an issue that defines who you are,” she offers by way of explanation.
Bharucha, the critically acclaimed actor of films such as Love Sex Aur Dhokha and Pyaar Ka Punchnama, has good reason to be circumspect. Her choice of profession hasn’t gone down too well with the more orthodox members of her extended family.
Bharucha entered the profession at the age of 16. As a student of Jai Hind college a decade ago, she walked into a talent management firm hoping to volunteer as a scout. Instead, they hired her to act in a serial, Kitty Party, on Zee TV. The long work hours and shoddy treatment of newbies led Bharucha to quit the show in a year.
At the time, when her mother would accompany her to the studio, Bharucha would tell members of her extended family that acting was only a summer job. “In our community, we are encouraged to take up professions like medicine or engineering that offer consistency and job security. Acting is not a ‘real’ profession,” she says, sitting near the window of her Juhu, Mumbai, home, where she lives with her parents and paternal grandmother. “Some of them still look at me with a question in their eyes, ‘What have you done in the past 10 years?’”
Yet, after college, Bharucha found herself drawn to the studio—this time for a film offer. “It was then that I realized what acting meant. Film was nothing like television; there was a craft to it, and I realized how much hard work was needed. It was not some mindless two-bit job that only requires you to look good.”
Bharucha’s parents, Tasneem, a homemaker, and Tanvir, a businessman, were initially apprehensive but supported their only child’s decision. “I was slightly sceptical at first,” says Tasneem, adding that she had encouraged her daughter to take up theatre in school. The main concern, she says, was whether Nushrat would find a good Bohra match. Bharucha believes she will find the right man, who shares her world view, within the community. “Are there any?” we ask her father, who replies, “Of course there are.”
“We are very close as a family. There are uncles and aunts for whom I would stand in front of a truck,” says Bharucha, echoing a sentiment common in the Dawoodi Bohra community, known for its close network of familial, social and economic ties. “One can’t live in solitude. To survive as a single family unit is not possible. So my parents would still go to the mosque and happily do everything that is asked of them. Whom we are connected to matters more to us,” says Bharucha.
While her parents don’t pressure her to go to the mosque to pray or keep a fast during Ramzan (she can’t because of health concerns), Bharucha says she acquiesces to the more orthodox elements of her family when needed. “If I’m asked to wear a rida and attend a ceremony, I’d do it. I don’t get into a debate.”
At the same time, however, Bharucha espouses the need for a more liberal attitude towards religion. “A religion can’t define a person. It tells you what you should and shouldn’t do, but the choice is always up to you. The sanctity of faith gets lost if one is forced to do things. Let me listen to sermons and decide for myself what moves me, what I feel like thanking God for and asking of Him.”
In many ways, Bharucha’s attitude is a product of her parents’ choices. While Tasneem grew up in the predominantly Bohra neighbourhood of Bhendi Bazar, she moved to Juhu after marrying Tanvir, whose business of heat-resistant ceramic coating counts auto giants as clients. Moving away from the neighbourhood spelt small freedoms—to not wear a rida, for instance, each time she stepped out of home, to not visit the mosque out of compulsion, among others. Tanvir also didn’t depend on other Dawoodi Bohras for business, unlike the scores of hardware stores or clothes merchants’ shops that populate the locality. This, too, Bharucha’s parents count as a blessing.
“I’ve been brought up with both elements in family—orthodox and liberal. I would never tell my cousins who follow all that is preached that they’re wrong. I think being an actor helps me understand where they’re coming from.”
Ummul Ranalvi, 54
Corporate training firm owner

Tasneema Ranalvi, 51 Publisher
The view from Ummul Ranalvi’s drawing room is captivating—from the ninth floor of a tony apartment complex in Bandra, Mumbai, one can see the Arabian Sea and, beyond it, the high-rises along the Worli Sea Face and Parel’s behemoth glass facades. “We are Bandra girls,” laughs Tasneema Ranalvi, the younger sibling, who lives nearby. Masooma Ranalvi, a 47-year-old social activist based in New Delhi, who practised criminal law in Mumbai in the 1980s, is the youngest.
Tasneema runs Source Publishers, an offshoot of Super Book House (SBH), a firm for books on subjects like design, architecture and gemmology, among other things, started by their father, Shoaib Ranalvi, in the 1970s, when the family lived in the Dawoodi Bohra neighbourhood of Nagpada.
Ummul Ranalvi (left) at her home in Bandra, Mumbai, with younger sister Tasneema Ranalvi.
She joined SBH after completing a master’s in technology in 1988. Ummul completed her master’s in psychology and opened a training firm, Continuing Education and Training Centre (CETC), in 1986 to acquaint companies with the subjects that her father sold books on. She, however, branched out to offer soft-skills training—one of her first clients was Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd, the government’s telecommunications arm. Her firm now provides audio-visual training such as videos on sexual harassment in the workplace, content development, and assessment tools for employees, among other things.
“That’s him,” says Ummul, pointing to a black and white close-up photograph in a thin steel frame. Shoaib Ranalvi, who died in 2010 was excommunicated in 1979 for taking part in the movement which fought for reforms within the community. Led by the late Asghar Ali Engineer and late Noman Contractor, among others, the movement sought greater transparency in financial dealings by the Dai and protested the coercion to perform rites and pay annual tax.
It was the excommunication that forced the family to move to Bandra in the early 1980s. “We never felt the effects of the ostracism, because the three of us were happy to just be with each other. It was our mother who felt it most,” says Ummul. Their mother Aziza, now 82, lives with Tasneema and her husband Hemant, a nuclear physicist by training. Their daughter lives in the UK.
“Our mother loved attending prayer meetings, and was very good at recitation. However, during one majlis, she was asked by the host to not return. But she remained close to her family and maintained some ties,” says Ummul.
The sisters cannot pray in a Bohra mosque and when their father died, he was buried in a Muslim cemetery, not a Bohra one. However, the sisters, who had a fairly conservative upbringing till adolescence, don’t feel troubled by it. “Our father supported us in everything we wanted to do. He encouraged us to study and work, start our own firms. Usually in the community, girls marry early, but he didn’t pressure us into doing that,” says Ummul, crediting her success to her father’s progressiveness.
The sisters are also vocal opponents of the practice of female genital mutilation, the practice of cutting off a girl’s clitoris while still a child, followed by certain members of the community. “I don’t understand why more people don’t oppose such rites. What will people lose?” asks Tasneema.
One of the biggest challenges facing her at the moment is the Internet. Her publishing firm, which comes out with two bi-monthly magazines, The Design Source and New Age Salon & Spa, cannot sustain in the digital age, where information is now available for free, and at the click of a mouse. Together with Masooma, she is contemplating shutting down the magazines (both have a print run of 20,000 copies) and going digital instead.
“Our father learnt to operate the computer when he was in his 70s,” she says. “He would compile interesting thoughts and stories into a small booklet called Chotein Chotein Baatein, which we would deliver to companies as handouts for employees,” says Tasneema.
The booklet encapsulates the sort of humour and idealistic values that kept the Ranalvi family sane in the midst of much upheaval. “We will continue to print that booklet,” adds Tasneema.
Insia Lacewalla, 27
Co-founder of a food consultancy firm
If there is one thing Insia Lacewalla has in common with her community, it is her nose for scenting a business opportunity. Rewind to a few years ago when major metropolitan cities in India were in the throes of a love affair with food—the online food market had surged to Rs.1,000 crore the in 2012 and gourmet ingredients, plating sessions, food carving classes and MasterChef shows had everyone in thrall.
For Lacewalla, three years into food consulting for music events and restaurants and creating hospitality riders for international musicians on their India tours (including Lady Gaga), it was time to take things to the next level for home chefs without the platform to display their wares.
In June 2013, she held the first food pop-up on the rooftop of a popular Bandra store. It was called The Bakers’ Sale. “It rained all day and my phone was ringing off the hook with people wondering whether we should postpone the do. But everything had already been arranged, 13 home chefs were on board, it was too late to turn back.” The pop-up was supposed to last from 4-9pm, but by 7.30, they were sold out.
This has been a feature of Lacewalla’s pop-ups ever since—numbers that don’t let her down, and a clientele from all parts of the city.
While Lacewalla continues to work as a food consultant for food bazaars and music events, she has begun to take her food pop-up work to the point of origin: people’s homes. With friend and researcher Sneha Nair, she has held five iterations of Poppaddum, where Nair would cook a sadhya, or a traditional Keralite meal, and invite strangers (“food lovers”) to sample it. Next month, she will roll out yet another initiative for home-based chefs called Secret Ingredient. The only requirement is that members will have to cook traditional meals that are not easily available in restaurants.
“Food is a very important part of the Bohras’ community experience. We remember people’s weddings by how good the dal gosht was,” laughs Lacewalla, whose parents live in Pune. Lacewalla started her company without informing them and didn’t tell them she had quit her job. “I wanted to start my own thing, but I didn’t want them to feel that I didn’t know what I was doing,” she says. Yet, she credits her folks’ willingness to let her live alone in Mumbai for everything she has subsequently achieved.
It wasn’t easy at first, admits Lacewalla. “I’ve been meeting boys since I was 18,” she says, referring to her parents’ efforts to fix her up with a “good Bohra boy” in an arranged marriage. She was in college, but her folks weren’t averse to her dropping out. Lacewalla met the boys, but refused to quit college. “It wasn’t dramatic, like in the movies. But I pushed back slowly. I told them that I wanted to complete my education.”
In 2008, Lacewalla enrolled for a master’s diploma in public relations and corporate communication at the Xavier Institute of Communications, Mumbai. Her maternal grandmother lived alone in Bhendi Bazaar and was happy that a grandchild would live with her. “It was an emotional matter and my parents agreed to the move easily.” Three years later, her younger sister Zahabia, 26, moved to the city. She now works in the television industry as a stylist.
Moving away from her parents’ home helped Lacewalla tackle the matter of meeting potential grooms; it also offered her a level playing field to explore her career options. She started off marketing the Aamir Khan-starrer 3 Idiots. She found her niche in food after working for the NH7 Weekender music festival organized by Mumbai-based production firm Only Much Louder.
“Now they’re no longer pressuring me to marry a Bohra boy, but will be happy as long as I get married,” she laughs. “They’re proud of the work I do. I’m looking to tap into this underground food culture of home chefs, for whom cooking is a genuine passion,” she says.
Her parents, she knows, will understand.