A curtain or screen, used mainly in India to keep women separate from men or strangers.
The Hindu or Muslim system of sex segregation, practiced especially by keeping women in seclusion.
Social seclusion: "Never have artists been more separate: their inordinate fame, wealth, drug use have driven them into luxurious purdah"(D. Keith Mano).
[Urdu pardah, veil, from Persian, from Middle Persian pardak, from Old Persian *paridaka-, from pari-dā-, to place over : pari, around, over; see per1 in Indo-European roots + dā-, to place; see dhē- in Indo-European roots.]
[pur-duh] 
də