Passage 1
Our good Queen liked science very much. She circulated an order that all the women in her country should be educated. Accordingly a number of girls' schools were founded and supported by the government. Education was spread far and wide among women. And early marriage also was stopped. No woman was to be allowed to marry before she was twenty-one. I must tell you that, before this change we had been kept in strict purdah. While the women were engaged in scientific research, the men of this country were busy increasing their military power. When they came to know that the female universities were able to draw water from the atmosphere and collect heat from the sun, they only laughed at the members of the universities and called the whole thing "a sentimental nightmare"! Then the Lady Principal with her two thousand students marched to the battle field, and arriving there directed all the rays of the concentrated sunlight and heat towards the enemy. The heat and light were too much for them to bear. They all ran away panic-stricken, not knowing in their bewilderment how to counteract that scorching heat. When they fled away leaving their guns and other ammunitions of war, they were burnt down by means of the same sun-heat.
Government, measurement, and surveillanceTechnological catastropheHabit and self-commandcultivate capacities · advanceshuman institutions · advancesgovern · considersRights and self-governmentScientific or empirical evidenceConsequences and welfareConditional or mixedInstitutionalCivilizationalAdministration and public orderMachine or artificial systemHuman future and environment
Hossain’s inversion makes women’s public education and scientific institutions the condition of collective self-rule, while retaining the ambivalence of a technology used as a weapon.
“Sultana’s Dream,” Ladyland’s scientific education and defeat of invasion