In such a context, it is refreshing to come across a study that seeks to go beyond the sociological veil spread by a focus on purdah, and actually examines the conditions faced by different categories of Muslim women in the country. A new book by Zoya Hasan and Ritu Menon (Unequal Citizens: Muslim Women in India, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004) presents the results of a national survey covering around 10,000 Muslim and Hindu women.

This is the first such survey of this magnitude, covering the whole country, and obviously therefore, the findings deserve attention. But perhaps even more interesting than the results themselves are the insights that are drawn into the interplay of various factors that determine the conditions of Muslim women's lives.

Of course, there are some easily predictable conclusions, especially with respect to economic status. The low socio-economic status of Muslims is now well-known; like the Scheduled Castes, they are disproportionately represented among the poor and have the lowest per capita income indicators. This is ascribed not only to the lack of access to asset ownership, but also to poor educational attainment and occupational patterns, which show clustering in low-paid activities, as well as the concentration of the Muslim population in the economically backward regions of the country.

This economic differentiation constitutes probably the primary source of differentiation in status between Muslim and Hindu women in the aggregate, since the household's level of assets ownership, occupation and income possibilities critically determine the basic conditions of life of the women. However, there are significant regional differences in this: Muslims are generally poor in the north (especially rural areas) and the east, but less so in the south.