Logic of Life In Bhopal

Daughter of Hamidullah Khan, Abida Sultan the heir apparent, was married to Nawab Sawar Ali Khan of Kurwai. The marriage did not work out, and Abida Sultan started living in Bhopal with her father. She gave birth to a boy, Shehryar Mohammad Khan, who became the bone of contention between Abida Sultan and Sawar Ali Khan when Sawar Ali Khan complained to the English Viceroy, Lord Willingdon that he was being denied his legal rights to custody. Abida Sultan, the true inheritor of the traditional courage of Bhopal begums, says in her biography "Memoirs Of A Rebel Princess" that on 22 March 1935 around 10 p.m. she drove down the dirt roads from Bhopal to Kurwai. When she arrived at the Kurwai Palace at about 1 a.m. Sawar Ali Khan had already retired to bed. When Abida Sultan entered the bedroom

"There I saw a reclining figure, curled under a quilt who then sat up, bolt upright 'What are you doing here at this hour?' he said, alarmed. 'I have come alone to inform you, once and for all, that I will never part my son. I would rather die. I am giving you a very sporting chance to kill me and say that I was responsible for it. 'I replied, my heart pounding. Taking out my revolver, I threw it in Dadabhai's lap and said, 'The weapon is my mine and loaded - use it and shoot me or else I will shoot you. 'Dadabhai visibly squirmed: 'But I am his father. I have a right to my son', he stated. The reply sent my heart pounding and we then had a physical confrontation in which he came off second best, eventually hiding under his quilt and holding his pillows to protect himself. He began pleading 'Go, please, go from here. I am not making any more claims on my son - just leave me and go away'."

Some seventy years down the line more and more Muslim women in Bhopal are taking the initiative to end marriages, contrary to the general impression that they are at the receiving end in most divorce cases. As per a report of the 285 divorce cases last year, 200 had women opting for khula (where the wife takes the lead in annulling the marriage), statistics at the city Qazi’s office, which maintains marriage records under the Shariat, showed. The approval of the office is mandatory for executing divorces. The Qazis, community leaders, women activists and psychologists have argued that such a ‘progressive’ trend did not augur well for society. According to them 'Divorce is a necessary evil, more evil than necessary' and, therefore, needs to be discouraged rather than encouraged. The reasons attributed vary from the new trend to changing social mores and the Nawabi era in Bhopal during which women ruled for more than 120 years, and even to soap operas on television.
Slate has published two excerpts from Tim Harford's new book, The Logic of Life, which is premised on the notion that if we want to understand our world - or how to change it - we must first understand the rational choices that shape it. In the piece titled "Divorce Is Good for Women", Harford observes not about Bhopal but the world:

"the divorce revolution was driven by a more fundamental economic force: the breakdown of the traditional division of labor identified by Adam Smith. At the beginning of the 20th century, housework took many hours, and only the poorest and most desperate married women had jobs. As the decades rolled past, technological change made housework less time-consuming. It became easy—and quite common—for older women to enter the workforce after their children were grown and housework was easily manageable.
About women getting more career options in the booming economy of India
"Did women really need career options before they could get divorced? In all but the most desperately unhappy marriages, they did. Contrary to the popular bar-room grumbles of divorced men, alimony alone doesn't take women very far financially. Fewer than half of single divorced mothers get any child support at all, and for those who do, child support is just a few thousand dollars a year, typically about one-fifth of the mother's total income. If a woman, especially a mother, was determined to get a divorce, she almost always needed to find a job. More and more women realized that they had the ability to do exactly that.
That started a second reinforcing loop—some people regard it as a vicious circle. Because divorce was conceivable, women preserved career options. But because women had career options, divorce became conceivable. It became less and less likely that a woman would become trapped in a miserable marriage out of pure economic necessity.
The serious entry of married women into the workforce has meant that they spend a little less time baking cookies, and perhaps also that their husbands spend a little more time with the children. It has empowered them to leave marriages that are not working, making them happier and safer from abuse. It has truly been a revolution, and the price of that revolution is more divorce and less marriage. That price is very real—but it is almost certainly a price worth paying."

Many historians have pondered about the four generations of women rulers (Qudsia, Sikander, Shahjehan, Sultan Jahan) of Bhopal, wondering what has happened to the traditional males? To answer the more basic question of this traditional division of labor between women and men, Tim Harford says:

"Elizabeth is a more productive worker than James but also a more effective parent. James is a bad worker but a worse dad, and so Elizabeth takes the rational decision to stay home baking cookies and looking after the kids, while James tries to scrape together a living as a real estate agent. The logic of comparative advantage highlighted something that most men—except economists—have found it hard to get their heads around: there is no reason to believe that men were breadwinners because they were any good at it. They might simply have been breadwinners because getting them to help around the house would have been even worse."

The Bhopal male rulers proved to be bad workers, bad parents and worse rulers. The takeover of women rulers was only the most logical thing to do.