‘MUSLIM women’ have repeatedly been used as pawns in the game of politics, in the Indian context as well as internationally. This was demonstrated most clearly in the Shah Bano case in the 1980s, which has come to exemplify the supposed conflict between religion/culture and women’s rights. This case first brought the ‘plight of the Indian Muslim woman’ onto the national stage in a situation where religious identity was pitted against women’s rights by conservative Muslim groups as well as by proponents of the Hindutva ideology. It clearly demonstrated the dilemmas of competing identity-based claims within a political environment that was becoming increasingly polarised along religious lines. Within these debates ‘Muslim women’ became the symbols of community identity for Muslim conservatives and Hindu nationalists alike, without their voices actually being heard in public debates.¹ The Shah Bano case was significant at many levels – in terms of national politics and the state’s attempts to manipulate religious identity as part of vote bank politics, as well as in terms of the women’s movement for which questions of competing identities were becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.

 

Since then several similar cases have been brought to national attention, including the cases of Gudiya (2004) and Imrana (2005) where again, the national media highlighted Muslim women’s oppression, and the conservative ulema was yet again called upon to represent ‘the Muslim community’.² In most of these cases, the voice of actual Muslim women, whether those who are directly involved or others who identify as such, is rarely heard. Rather, the oppression of ‘Muslim women’ becomes a marker of the supposed backwardness of the community, pathologizing Muslim men as particularly oppressive and conversely silencing Muslim women as voiceless victims without agency. The actions of the ulema, who are only interested in defending their idea of ‘the community’ against any perceived attack, basically serve to validate these stereotypes.³

However, since the occurrence of the Shah Bano debates, several individuals and groups have been striving to change this situation. This article highlights two such groups, the Muslim Women’s Rights Network (MWRN) and the Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan (BMMA). Both these networks emerged in the last ten years, and are working to challenge the notion that Muslim women are voiceless victims by refashioning this identity into one that signifies an assertion of political agency. In doing so, they challenge both the authority of conservative, male-dominated forums such as the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) to speak for the Muslim community, as well as that of the historically upper caste dominated women’s movement to represent their needs and interests. These groups question the construction of ‘Muslim women’ as a uniformly oppressed category while also refashioning this category as a means of asserting their political agency.

 

The emergence of Muslim women-led networks must be looked at in the context of the contemporary women’s movement which, in general, has had a problematic and often unclear relationship with religion since its inception in the ’70s. In contrast to the pre-independence social reform movements and the early women’s movement which used religion in order to support their arguments, the contemporary women’s movement has repeatedly challenged religious precepts, whether in the campaigns against dowry, sati or in their position on personal laws.

This antagonistic relationship with religion can be attributed partially to the fact that many who joined the women’s movement had their political roots in the Marxist left, which they felt did not adequately address the multiple layers of oppression faced by women.⁴ Furthermore, the Indian women’s movement was influenced by the growth of second wave feminism around the world at the time, which was committed to the political project of secularism and, for the most part, rejected religion as being irredeemably patriarchal.

 

However, this supposed secularity has also been questioned by several of those involved in the women’s movement as well as by its external critics. Flavia Agnes has written extensively about the ways in which the women’s movement’s ‘neutral’ religious identity has actually masked its upper caste Hindu orientation in terms of the language used and the way that it has framed its strategies.⁵ For example, she points out that while focusing on the inadequacy of Muslim personal laws, the women’s movement has historically neglected the discriminatory aspects of Hindu personal laws.⁶

Furthermore, some within the women’s movement have argued for an approach that embraces Indian spiritualism as a means of connecting with a wider segment of the population and taking a more ‘indigenous’ approach.⁷ However, this appeal to ‘spiritualism’ often relies upon Hindu religious symbols which may alien-ate women from non-Hindu communities and inadvertently support the ideology of Hindu nationalism. This uncomfortable relationship with religion, which vacillates between being anti-religious and inadvertently pro-Hindu, has left little space for non-Hindu women, including Muslim, Christian and Dalit women within the movement and has led women of marginalized communities to form their own networks and coalitions beginning in the ’90s, thus creating a ‘third space’ in which they can claim their multiple identities.

 

The Muslim Women’s Rights Network (MWRN) was created by a group of Mumbai-based activists in 1999 in order to connect individuals and organizations around the country who were working in some capacity to protect the rights of Muslim women. Since this time, the MWRN has remained a loosely organized and largely informal network which meets once a year in alternating cities. It is spearheaded by the Mumbai-based organization, Awaaz-e-Niswan, which works largely within Muslim communities, but is committed to taking a secular, human rights-based approach. Though the MWRN is open to women of all religious communities, it is focused on connecting individuals and groups working on issues affecting Muslim women in particular, regardless of the religious identity of the activists themselves.

Building on the concerns raised by women’s rights activists during the Shah Bano campaign, the MWRN continues to focus on issues related to Muslim personal laws as well as for securing women’s matrimonial rights in general. In addition, it is committed to creating understanding amongst women of all religious communities in order to construction a united stand against communalism, as well as advocating for rights related to the expression of women’s sexuality – an issue that rarely gets discussed both within and outside of the Muslim community.

The Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan (BMMA) was formed more recently in 2005. It too is composed of organizations working with Muslim women across the country, some of which had previously been members of the MWRN. The BMMA also includes a large number of individual members, over 10,000 according to its organizers, who are spread across the country but concentrated mainly in the states of Maharashtra, Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh.

Although the BMMA mainly advocates around the issue of matrimonial rights and for a reform of Muslim personal laws, it also looks at broader issues facing the community. Following on from the findings of the Sachar Committee Report, it focuses on improving the socio-economic status of the Muslim community as a whole and promoting the role of Muslim women within the community to act as leaders in working towards the amelioration of ‘social, economic, political, legal and educational backwardness and fight for justice’.⁸

 

Both networks move away from looking at Muslim women’s issues as only consisting of parda, polygamy and triple talaq, the main tropes through which ‘Muslim women’ have been constructed as a category and understood in the Indian context. Zakia Jowher, who helped found the BMMA, says that one must move out of the confines in which the problems of Muslim women have traditionally been understood:

There are these people who say, ‘What are the issues of Muslim women: Triple talaq and parda.’ No, of course triple talaq is an issue; of course parda is an issue, but before that hunger is an issue; education is an issue; jobs are an issue. Triple talaq and parda are one of several issues. If you abolish triple talaq and take [Muslim women] out of parda but there is no food in her house, how will she ask her husband for her share?... What is he going to share with her? Till we address the overall exclusion of the community, Muslim women’s exclusion cannot be addressed.⁹

Similarly, the MWRN has expanded the scope of the issues that have traditionally been associated with Muslim women by drawing attention to problems related to violence against the community as a whole, and women in particular, as well as addressing issues related to the targeting of Muslims by the state apparatus. This does not mean that the issue of personal laws has been forgotten, but that both networks are attempting to place this concern within the wider context of the economic, social and political exclusion of the community with an understanding that Muslim women do not exist in a vacuum and face multiple forms of insecurity and exclusion depending on their context.

 

Unlike the MWRN, which respects the right of its members to practice religion but does not explicitly use religion as a campaign tool, the BMMA is also experimenting with ‘Islamic feminist’ approaches to women’s rights, asserting that it is not Islam but years of male interpretation of Islamic texts that is responsible for the injustices experienced by Muslim women. Members of the BMMA argue that one must take an approach that not only tolerates religion but also provides an option of working within a religious framework in order to gain acceptance within the community. Moreover, that this does not have to mean abandoning one’s feminist principles as justice and equity are core principles in Islam.

For this reason, it is working on projects that encourage women to engage with Islamic texts in order to claim their rights, including those related to inheritance, marriage, and political empowerment. It is also working with scholars such as Asghar Ali Engineer, Zeenat Shaukat Ali and with progressive religious clerics in order to create a more just and equitable set of Muslim personal laws, which explicitly claim the rights granted to women in Islam.

Such efforts follow the footsteps of Muslim feminist groups such as the Malaysian Sisters in Islam, and are pioneering in the Indian context where little effort has previously been made to reconcile religion and feminism. In a context in which Muslims feel increasingly under attack, such a reformist approach may prove to be an effective strategy. However, it may also limit the terms of the debate around Muslim women’s rights to one that can only take place within the confines of religious discourse, leaving little or no space to those who are not believers themselves or feel that religion should remain a private matter. Equally, this approach may continue to have a limited appeal in the context of continued religion based insecurity.

 

While these groups may differ in their strategies, they are in agreement about the need to challenge traditional structures of authority such as the AIMPLB to speak for the Muslim community. Although the MWRN has attempted to lobby the AIMPLB in the past on women’s matrimonial rights and on the need to reform Muslim personal laws, it has now largely abandoned this strategy because of the Board’s perceived resistance to change. Many members of the BMMA have also expressed their frustration with the AIMPLB for refusing to engage seriously on questions of women’s rights. Both networks recognize that although the AIMPLB continues to hold sway amongst certain sections of the Muslim community, it is in fact ‘just an NGO’ and should therefore not be granted any privileged authority.

 

The release of the AIMPLB’s nikahnama, or marriage contract, in 2005 only solidified this position for most women’s rights activists, who saw this document as weak and retrogressive in many of its provisions.¹⁰ At the same time, the very fact that the AIMPLB finally did release a document that was intended to protect women’s rights is also a sign that the efforts of feminists and reform-minded Muslims may be effecting some kind of change within the Board, regardless of how limited this may be. However, the Board must go further in at least appearing to be open to dialogue and reform if it hopes to maintain sway with large sections of the community. For most women’s rights activists, its efforts so far have been disappointing at best.

The challenge to the Board’s authority presented by Muslim women’s rights activists has been compounded by the appearance of several alternative personal law boards in recent years including the Shia Personal Law Board, the All India Muslim Women’s Personal Law Board and the Barelvi Personal Law Board. Whether these boards will be able to match the size and strength of the AIMPLB is doubtful, but their very existence does mark a challenge to the traditional control and authority that the Board enjoyed during the ’80s and ’90s. Undoubtedly, the critique of women’s rights activists, such as those within the MWRN and the BMMA, has contributed to this fragmentation of authority.

 

The MWRN and the BMMA also represent important developments in the context of the women’s movement and can be seen as a sign of the movement’s diversification, although both networks situate themselves differently vis-a-vis the women’s movement. While the MWRN feels that it is an important part of the movement, the BMMA sees itself as separate from the women’s movement. Hasina Khan, a key figure within the MWRN, feels that while there is a need to focus on Muslim women’s particular concerns, this should be done within the context of the wider women’s movement:

Muslim women do need to make a space for themselves, but this does not mean that Muslim women make their own space and also carry out their struggle alone. If we say this, then we might become divided. Then we will say that Hindu women also should fight for their own rights and create their own space. Then we will not be able to call ourselves ‘a women’s movement’. There will be a Muslim women’s movement, a Hindu women’s movement, a Christian women’s movement.¹¹

Members of the MWRN argue that the women’s movement has created this space for discussion on issues affecting Muslim women, and that it is growing. However, they also admit that there is a need for more support from within the movement, and they are actively working to engage with women across the boundaries of community in order to fight against the ghettoisation of Muslim women’s issues.

On the other hand, members of the BMMA are more open in their criticism of the women’s movement’s historical upper caste bias as well as its aversion to religion. Noorjehan Safianiaz, who helps coordinate the BMMA and also works for the Women’s Research Action Group in Mumbai, argues that Muslim women have been let down at multiple levels, including by the Muslim leadership, the state, and the women’s movement which has had ‘an allergy to religion’ that has alienated so many within the Muslim community in the past.¹² BMMA members argue that the leaders of the women’s movement have not gone far enough in cultivating new leadership, especially amongst women from marginalized communities. Furthermore, the movement has been insensitive to the issue of Muslim insecurity. It is for this reason that members of the BMMA feel that it is crucial for Muslim women to lead their efforts. Although membership is open to women and men across communities, the BMMA have incorporated a rule that 70 per cent of the membership will be comprised of Muslim women and that Muslim women will also be in the leadership at all levels to ensure that their empowerment is prioritized.

 

The emergence of both networks over the past ten years marks a turning point in the evolution of the women’s movement, which had reached an impasse on the question of representation after the Shah Bano affair. One could argue that the organizing around the issue of Muslim personal laws planted the seeds for the emergence of the MWRN and the BMMA by focusing public attention to the issue of Muslim women’s rights. At the same time, the fact that few Muslim women were themselves involved in the Shah Bano debates also revealed the extant upper caste Hindu domination of the women’s movement and raised questions about who the women’s movement could legitimately claim to represent.

This is not to deny the fact that, though most of the leadership of the movement has come from the Hindu, upper caste, urban elite, the women’s movement has always taken up cases of women from the most disadvantaged sections of society. For this reason the emergence of Muslim women-led networks can be seen either as a sign of the movement’s failure to represent everyone or, more positively, as evidence of its success in creating the space for new forms of organizing amongst women from marginalized communities and as a mark of its evolving maturity as a movement.

 

Although no substantive legal reforms have taken place with regard to Muslim women’s rights since the Shah Bano affair, the presence alone of Muslim women-led networks marks a significant shift in the Indian discursive landscape. This is even more remarkable given the recent increase in insecurity amongst Muslims after the 2002 Gujarat pogrom and the series of terrorist attacks in cities across India between 2006 and 2008, which have led to the targeting of young Muslim men by the state authorities. Such an atmosphere could easily silence Muslim women’s rights activists, as has been the case in the past. As Aqeela, a young member of the MWRN and librarian in the Rehnuma Women’s Centre in the Mumbra suburb of Mumbai says:

When riots happen, Muslim women’s rights fall further behind, so our effort is that Muslim women’s rights aren’t left behind. You can’t say that [because] there is an atmosphere or communalism or terrorism right now, you cannot talk about Muslim women’s rights. That is what we have always said in our campaigning no matter what the political atmosphere has been.¹³

Aqeela voices a new sense of determination and defiance that is growing amongst women of marginalized communities across India who are refusing to be silenced by the gatekeepers of religious identity. These activists are claiming their authority to speak about their own problems and refusing to let women’s rights to continue to be sacrificed for the sake of ‘the community’.

 

The appearance of the MWRN and the BMMA demonstrates the diversification of the women’s movement and of the political sphere in general as women from marginalized communities find new ways to engage with and challenge structures of power and authority at multiple levels. Their efforts are beginning to create a ‘third space’¹⁴ in which Muslim women are actively engaged in redefining their identities and reformulating relations of power, thus challenging the long-held notion that religious identity and women’s rights are diametrically opposed. This also questions the idea that Muslim women are a silent and homogenous mass living behind the parda who lack any form of agency.

These activists challenge this construction through their own political assertion and ideological diversity while at the same time refashioning this category as a means of organizing women to claim their rights. Although their impact so far has been limited, they are laying the foundation both for a new understanding of ‘feminism’, which does not alienate large sections of the population, and of ‘community’, which respects the diverse voices and needs of all of its members.

 

* This paper is based on research conducted for the Religions and Development Research Programme funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID). However, the views expressed are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of the sponsors.

Footnotes:

1. Much has been written about the dilemmas posed by the Shah Bano case for supporters of women’s rights. See for example, Asghar Ali Engineer (ed.), The Shah Bano Case, Orient Longman, Hyderabad, 1987; Zoya Hasan, ‘Gender Politics, Legal Reform, and the Muslim Community in India’, in Patricia Jeffrey (ed.), Appropriating Gender, Routledge, New York, 1998; Madhu Kishwar, ‘Pro-Women or Anti-Muslim? The Shah Bano Controversy’, in Madhu Kishwar (ed.), Religion at the Service of Nationalism, Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1998.

2. Farah Naqvi, ‘Constructing Community’, Seminar 557, January 2006.

3. This strategic use of ‘Muslim women’ as a means of defending or attacking Muslims as a group has been taking place in India and internationally from the colonial period to the present, and has only accelerated during the age of the ‘war on terror’ after 9/11.

4. Gail Omvedt, Reinventing Revolution: New Social Movements and the Socialist Tradition in India, M.E. Sharpe, New York and London, 1993.

5. Flavia Agnes, ‘Redefining the Agenda of the Women’s Movement within a Secular Framework’, in Tanika Sarkar and Urvashi Butalia (eds.), Women and Right-Wing Movements: Indian Experiences, Kali for Women, New Delhi, 1995, pp. 136-157.

6. However, the Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act (2005) made significant progress in correcting many of the discriminatory aspects of Hindu Personal Laws by granting women increased inheritance rights.

7. Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, ‘Is the Hindu Goddess a Feminist?’ Economic and Political Weekly 33(44), 31 October-6 November 1998, pp. WS34-WS38.

8. Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan pamphlet, received in December 2008.

9. Interview with Zakia Jowher in Delhi, 15 December 2008.

10. Anupama Katakam, ‘Reluctant Reform’, Frontline 22(11), 21 May-3 June 2005.

11. Interview conducted with Hasina Khan in Mumbai, 26 September 2008.

12. Interview conducted with Noorjehan Safianiaz in Mumbai, 22 September 2008.

13. Interview conducted with Aqeela and other members of Awaaz-e-Niswan in Mumbai, 20 September 2008.

14. See Shehnaz Khan, ‘Negotiations in the Third Space’, Signs 23(2), 1998, pp. 463-494.