Nida Kirmani

Beyond the impasse ‘Muslim feminism(s)’ and the Indian women’s movement

Since its inception, the contemporary women’s movement has had a contentious relationship with religion. This was demonstrated most clearly in the debates around the cases of Shah Bano and Roop Kanwar during the 1980s, which sparked a period of reflection within the women’s movement over the question of representation. Since then, the movement has evolved considerably, becoming increasingly institutionalised at one level, and at the same time experiencing fragmentation and diversification. This article looks at the emergence of two networks advocating Muslim women’s rights, the Muslim Women’s Rights Network (MWRN) and the Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan (BMMA), and contextualises their emergence within the wider context of the women’s movement and the evolution of feminism in India. MWRN and BMMA are indicative of the growing assertion of ‘minority feminisms’ in India and aim to represent women’s multiple identities, including their religious identities, while also struggling for gender justice. Both networks differ in the way they approach religion ideologically and strategically as well as in the way they position themselves vis-à-vis the women’s movement. However, their appearance marks an important shift both within the women’s movement as well as in the formulation of community identities in India, with ‘Muslim women’ being positively reformulated by these networks as a category that asserts political agency rather than passivity and victimhood.

Deconstructing and reconstructing ‘Muslim women’ through women's narratives

‘The plight of Muslim women’ periodically surfaces in the Indian media as well as in academic forums. These discussions often focus on the tropes of parda, polygamy and personal laws with ‘Muslim women’ often placed in the position of symbolic bearers of the identity of ‘the Muslim community’. This article explores the construction of ‘Muslim women in India’ outside of media and academic discourses, looking at the ways that women, who are identified as Muslim, themselves construct this category in their personal narratives. The analysis is based on discussions with women living in a majority-Muslim area of Delhi, Zakir Nagar. These discussions reveal competing constructions of ‘Muslim women’ in relation to parda and personal laws as well as in comparison with various groups including ‘Hindu women’, ‘the poor’, and ‘the uneducated’. ‘Muslim women’ is thus revealed as a category that has limited and differing resonance in the ways that women themselves represent their identities. The article calls for an exploration of womens identities outside of the over-determined category ‘Muslim women’, taking into account multiple and contingent identifications including religion but also including class, regional affiliation, age, migration history, status, etc.

Engaging with Islam to promote women’s rights: exploring opportunities and challenging assumptions

Although the promotion of women’s rights is often seen as a ‘secular enterprise’, efforts to incorporate religion within gender-related advocacy are growing. Muslim faith-based organisations (FBOs) are also being encouraged to engage in gender-related projects because of their supposed ‘comparative advantage’ in Muslim communities. This article critically analyses the efforts made by development agencies and women’s organisations to promote women’s rights within an Islamic framework or with the involvement of religious leaders. It then explores the possibilities and dangers of such approaches with a particular reference to Muslim FBOs.

Constructing ‘the other’: narrating religious boundaries in Zakir Nagar

Abstract The research for this paper is based in a majority-Muslim neighbourhood in South Delhi, Zakir Nagar. As with most urban localities, the borders around Zakir Nagar are permeable—with residents frequently moving in and out of the neighbourhood and coming into contact with members of other religious groups. Many of the residents of Zakir Nagar have also lived in religiously mixed areas previously. Furthermore, although the neighbourhood is itself identified as ‘Muslim’, it is by no means homogeneous, so that multiple social boundaries operate even within this locality. This paper looks more closely at the issue of religious identity as it was narrated in relation to various and shifting ‘others’. These ‘others’—referred to in the context of friendship, neighbours and marriage as well as in terms of discrimination, riots and ‘communalism’—were often identified as ‘Hindus’ or as ‘non-Muslims’, but were also often referred to members of different class, status or regional groups. Hence, boundaries around ‘us’ and ‘them’ shifted according to context and were contingent upon various factors alongside religious identity. Through the narratives of Zakir Nagar residents, religious identity emerged as itself a problematic category whose meaning and salience was continuously shifting.

Fear and the City: Negotiating Everyday Life as a Young Baloch Man in Karachi

This article explores the impacts of continuing conflict on the everyday lives of people living in Lyari, one of the oldest areas of Karachi. It focuses on fear and insecurity as emotional practices that structure the spatial and social relations in the city. Using the narratives of young Baloch men who must negotiate the threat of violence at the hands of criminal gangs and state security forces within their area and rival political parties outside the area, the article highlights how fear and insecurity must be understood as being contextually situated, depending on one’s social and geographical position within the city. The experiences of these young men demonstrate how emotions such as fear and insecurity are both produced by and reproduce spatial configurations of power.

Earning as Empowerment?: The Relationship Between Paid Work and Domestic Violence in Lyari, Karachi

Based on extensive interviews in one of Karachi’s oldest working-class areas, Lyari, this chapter explores the relationship between women’s engagement in paid work, their experiences of domestic violence, and the issue of empowerment more generally. The research includes interviews with women engaged in domestic service, in the public and private education sector, in the field of health, in the service sector, and in short-term and seasonal work in factories or small-scale industries. The chapter explores women’s ability to negotiate and resist violence at the hands of their husbands and other family members. Despite the persistence of patriarchal structures, women’s narratives demonstrate the emergence of new models of womanhood at the local level as a result of wider economic, social, and cultural shifts.

For the Love of God: NGOs and Religious Identity in a Violent World

governments, non-government organisations, and international development agencies seeking to assist women in coping with the loss of quotas, sectoral protection, and preferences, to help them to adjust to competition and quality standards, and which try to balance gender asymmetries in access to information and technology. However, this is not at all sufficient for reducing women’s trade-induced vulnerability, nor does it make for sustainable empowerment. In her conclusion, Mariama Williams suggests a two-track approach. Firstly, pro-poor and gender criteria have to be systematically integrated into the design of trade agreements, such as protection policies for those sectors which are critical for poverty reduction and food security. Secondly, a compensatory trade adjustment fund, and social safety nets / including health services / have to be set up to mitigate the negative effects of trade. However, instead of challenging liberalisation policies and the current rules of the game, Trading Stories / published by the UK’s Commonwealth Secretariat / lays emphasis on improvement through gender-sensitive support measures. For a complete picture, the point must be made that mitigation, adjustment, and compensatory programmes will not change the basic structures of today’s trade regimes, for which gender issues, poverty alleviation, and food and social security are not at all a priority.