This book discusses the growing influence of communalisation of Hindu-Muslim relations in India and how it has affected Muslim women’s negotiation and engagement with the public sphere including professional spaces, marketplaces, universities, literary creations, the burqa and public mobilisation.
Muslim women have remained sidelined in the post-Partitioned public sphere in India. To overcome the marginality of voice and visibility, they have travelled from the private world to the public sphere; they have crossed several milestones- tin talaq (arbitrary divorce), polygamy, the burqa and Muslim personal law reform. These discursive pillars have recurrently defined and redefined their identity. This book discusses the growing influence of communalisation of Hindu-Muslim relations in India and how it has affected Muslim women’s negotiation and engagement with the public sphere including professional spaces, marketplaces, universities, literary creations, the burqa and public mobilisation.
It addresses ‘the ways’ Muslim women have been negotiating through this changing public sphere in West Bengal and predominantly in Kolkata. The conceptual and methodological frameworks of the book look at lived experiences and subjectivities of Muslim women in these changing spaces and contexts. It focuses on the multiplicities of public spheres, women’s experiences and disruptions in these conceptualisations in the past and the present and delineates Muslim women’s role as counterpublic. It also examines the ‘new’ ways of asserting identity, visibility and rights for Muslim women.
This book will be of interest to students and researchers of political science, sociology, women’s studies, gender studies, cultural studies and South Asian studies.
Arvustused
'As India assumes the full-blown character of a Hindu majoritarian, authoritarian state, how are Muslim women negotiating the new and still emerging public sphere? Esita Sur asks this question with reference to West Bengal which has been assumed to have a 'progressive and secular' ethos, now increasingly showing signs of fracture. This book identifies Muslim women as an articulate counterpublic, both to the politics of Hindutva as well as to the patriarchy of the community. Based on extensive fieldwork and complex in its theorization, this book is a powerful reminder that projects of assimilation and homogenization are bound to fail, as counter narratives inevitably emerge.'
- Nivedita Menon, Author and Former Professor in Centre for Comparative Studies and Political Theory, School of International Relations, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi
Foreword. Preface. Acknowledgements.
1. Introduction - Muslim Women and
the Politics of Religion and Secularism in the Public Sphere: Revisiting the
Journey in India
2. Evolution of the Muslim Public Sphere in West Bengal:
Politics of Religion, Language and Community Identity
3. Locating the Muslim
Womens Question in the Public Sphere: The Changing West Bengal Scenario
4.
Muslim Women and the Burqa (Veiling) in Modern Times: The Past and the New
Present
5. Visible Muslim Women and their Invisible Citizenship Rights:
Revisiting the Idea of Secular India
6. Muslim Women in Search of Democracy
and Secularism: An Assessment of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
7.
Conclusion - Deconstructing Muslim Women and Theorising the Public Sphere: A
New Journey. Bibliography. Index.
Esita Sur is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Scottish Church College, Kolkata. Her research interests include gender, religion, minority community identity and politics. She is the author of Revisiting Muslim Womens Activism: Islam, Political Field and Womens Rights (Routledge, Taylor and Francis, 2022) and has contributed numerous articles and book chapters to reputed journals and volumes.
