labrys, études féministes/ estudos feministas
julho/dezembro 2015 - juillet/décembre

Muslim Women’s Activism in India: Negotiating the Customary Laws and Feminism.

Arvinder A.Ansari

Abstract

In India in recent years, Muslim women’s rights have come increasingly under the spotlight and Muslim women themselves have started to organize collectively in order to demand their rights both within and outside the mainstream women’s movement. In recent years, women and religion have received considerable attention, especially in the context of Muslim communities. Not only has religion acquired a new public presence, but in Muslim contexts the use of religiously grounded arguments by Muslim women to further their rights has also generated considerable excitement. The paper focuses on the Indian Muslim Women’s Movement, the emergence of organizations and networks constituted around Muslim women’s rights since the 1990s, including the Muslim Women’s Rights Network (MWRN) and, more recently, the Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan (BMMA) The BMMA is comprised of feminists who are attuned to global discourses and at the same time want answers to immediate issues. Formed at a time following the Gujarat pogrom in 2002, the BMMA self-consciously promotes certain markers of identity around which an emancipatory movement is organized, and seeks to position itself as an alternative radical voice from the community. These networks are looked at as part of the shifts occurring within and outside the wider women’s movement and in the context of the politics of religious identity in general. An analysis of their discourses and activities provides insights into the complex processes of identity construction that take place within and outside social movements as they evolve and interact with wider socio-political contexts. Advocates for Muslim women’s rights are engaged in processes of collective identity construction, either to enrich the wider women’s movement or to spark an alternative movement of their own. These processes, whether within or outside women’s movements, aim to achieve social change in terms of expanding Muslim women’s access to power and resources. Though the networks have increasingly used the language of “Islam” to promote its concerns, representing a concerted shift away from earlier positions but the network’s members believe in “positive, liberal, humanist, and feminist interpretations of religion for ensuring justice and equality.”

Key-words: Muslim women, rights, religion, social change

The notion that ‘Muslim women’ is minority within minority represents a distinct category and has thus gained a symbolic importance as part of the wider discourse of ‘communalism’ in India. ‘Communalism’ refers to the notion that Muslims and Hindus constitute separate and antagonistic groups. Within this discourse ‘Muslim women’ stand as symbol of the Muslim community as a whole, both for Muslim conservative groups as well as for members of the Hindu Right, who echo orientalist discourse by arguing that it is the oppression of Muslim women by Muslim men that proves the inferiority and backwardness of Muslims in general (see Bacchetta 1994).

Studies of Muslim women in India view Muslim women as a subgroup within the wider ‘Indian Muslim community’. Such construction is also influenced by a more general interest in studying Muslim women across the world. The intellectual curiosity in Muslim women has its underpinnings in the orientalist enchantment with the veil and the harem, which has painted a picture of Muslim women as symbols of the insensitivity of colonised people and the symbolic ‘Other’ to Europe’s rational civilisation (see Mabro 1991, Lazreg 1998, Yegenoglu 2003). In the Indian context in particular, contemporary concern with studying and understanding Muslim women increased greatly during the 1970s when the cause of ‘Third World women’, more particularly  ‘Muslim women’ often assumed to be the most oppressed members of this group – became the focus of attention for Western feminists (see Mohanty 1988). Lot of scholarly interest was generated to study  ‘Indian Muslim women’ during the mid-1980s and early 1990s in response to the national debates occurring around the issue of personal laws during the Shah Bano controversy in 1986, (Discussed Below). A series of studies have been published since this time that look at the social problems of Muslim women, beginning with the premise that Muslim women are disadvantaged in particular ways because of their religious identity and gender hence focusing on issues related to personal laws, veil and segregation (see Lateef 1990, Kazi 1999, Hasan and Menon 2006).

The focus of this paper is to understand, Are Muslim women in India empowered to deny patriarchy, and ignore customary laws? Or if they are able to cross over the hurdles of the patriarchal society; what are the ways or mechanisms through which one can see Muslim women climbing up the ladder of equality doctrine today? The paper is trying to argue and understand the contradictory pulls of culture, religion, law and politics that play upon her life and how does she position herself within these contradictory thresholds of customary laws and feminism? This paper explores the complexities, negotiations and contradictions entailed in the process of claiming a “Muslim” identity in an attempt to complicate the present understandings of this activism. The larger question for discussion is how activism of the Muslim Women’s networks have negotiated theses spaces. More importantly, how does she relate to the vocal, visible and highly articulate women’s movement that brought gender concerns within the political arena. In the first section an attempt has been made to locate Muslim women in wider women’s movement, disenchantment of minority women from secular women’s movement and emergence of Muslim Women activism in the aftermath of Shah Bano judgment and subsequent communalisation of Indian society. The second section of the paper is analysing the engagement of prominent Muslim women organisations and networks, their vision and mission to fight for Muslim Women rights and promote gender justice and equality in within the community.

Minority within Minority: Locating Muslim Women in Feminist Movement in India:

Muslim women in India face considerable challenges as citizens and as members of the largest minority. They suffer from many disadvantages in areas such as education, employment and access to welfare programmes. As pointed by Hasan and Menon (2006) the status of Muslim women broadly indicates the shortage of three essentials: knowledge (measured by literacy and average years of schooling), economic power (captured through participation in paid work and income), and autonomy (measured by decision making and physical mobility) as the defining features of women’s low status. Further the contestation between personal laws and constitutional law has subjugated her rights and this is viewed as major stumbling block in her empowerment.

Since its inception, the contemporary women’s movement has had an indifferent relationship with religion. Sands (2008) mentions that the Indian women’s movement was influenced by the growth of second-wave feminism around the world at the time, which for the most part rejected religion as being inherently patriarchal and was committed to the political project of secularism. Despite this ambivalent relationship with religion, some sections of the movement have also attempted to positively engage with religious discourses and symbols but have focused almost exclusively on Hindu religious imagery. Sunder Rajan (1998: WS36) points to the strategic co-optation of religious symbolism by some members of the women’s movement who ‘invoked “traditional” (read: Hindu) symbols in some cases as a means of diluting, if not countering, the western bias of “feminism”’. The use of goddess imagery, such as the naming of the first feminist publishing house, ‘Kali for Women’, and celebrations of women’s spirituality, spearheaded by Madhu Kishwar in the journal Manushi, can be seen as attempts to broaden the women’s movement’s appeal by ‘indigenising’ feminism. (Kirmani 2011:3). Same has been affirmed by Omvedt (1993: 205–06) in context of eco-feminist movement, it has also been receptive to religious language and symbolism with the idea of Prakriti (nature) or the feminine nurturing force within Hinduism, being celebrated as a reclamation of ‘tradition’ for women. These developments, although limited in extent and debated among their supporters, may have inadvertently contributed to the alienation of non- Hindu women from the women’s movement (Agnes 1995; Sunder Rajan 1998).

The Shah Bano controversy marked a decisive moment in the history of women’s movement in India. Shah Bano, an elderly Muslim woman from Madhya Pradesh, had filed a case for maintenance from her ex-husband after almost fifty years of marriage in 1978 and was granted a small amount of maintenance by the Indore Magistrate’s Court, which was later, increased marginally by the Madhya Pradesh High Court. This decision was disputed by her husband as a violation of Muslim personal law and was taken to the Supreme Court in 1985. The Supreme Court ruled in favour of Shah Bano, arguing that she was entitled to maintenance, which upheld the right of a divorced Muslim woman for maintenance under the Criminal Procedure Codes Section 125. Furthermore, the Supreme Court judgment called for the abolition of separate personal laws and the creation of a Uniform Civil Code (UCC). The Supreme Court’s judgment prompted strong protests by bodies such as the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB), which was established in 1973 with the express purpose of protecting Muslim personal law from state intervention. The AIMPLB and its supporters mobilised around the idea that ‘Islam was in danger’, arguing that a secular court could not decide on matters related to sharia and especially on matters related to the home and family. (Agnes 2004) In order to counter the Supreme Court’s verdict, a Member of Parliament, G.M. Banatwala, drafted a Bill that sought to exclude Muslim women from the purview of the Criminal Procedure Code and thousands were rallied in its support around the country by the AIMPLB (Kumar 1994: 84). The government introduced a Bill in the Parliament, yielding to the pressure exerted by the Muslim orthodoxy, excluding divorced Muslim women from the purview of Section 125 of Cr.PC. This move was considered most blatant instance of the defeat of the principle of gender justice for by the secular women’s movement in India. They felt that Act not only deprived divorced Muslim women of the rights granted under a secular provision, S.125 Cr.PC on the basis of religion alone but also violated the Constitutional mandate of equality. (Agnes, 2002)

The fallout of this was the large-scale campaign organized by the women’s movement, to evade the question of religious identity by focusing on Shah Bano’s right to equality and dignity as a citizen of India and not as a member of a particular religious community which was in line with the movement’s overall secular approach till then. Shah Bano case became political bait in the hands of the Hindu Right. They used this case as a political opportunity. Hindu nationalist groups argued in support of Uniform Civil Code (UCC), citing the opposition to the Shah Bano case as evidence of Muslim ‘backwardness’ and resistance to national integration. Muslim women and personal law became a terrain on which political battles were fought between Hindu Right and Muslim conservative groups. Hindu Right argued that the Muslim Women’s Bill was an example of the ‘minority appeasement’ and ‘pseudo-secularism’ practiced by the ruling party, forgetting the resentment of Hindu revivalists during the 1950s debates over the Hindu Code Bill, which legislated on Hindu personal laws (Hasan 1994, 1998; Kishwar 1998; Kumar 1994).

Women’s groups protested the government’s pandering to religious conservatives as vote bank politics at the expense of women’s rights (Butalia, 2002: 17). Passing of the Muslim Women’s (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act (1986) raised serious questions of representation for the women’s movement in terms of the caste, class and religious backgrounds of its members, as well as calling into question its supposedly secular stance in the face of wider processes of religious consolidation and polarisation taking place in India at the time.

The debate on Muslim personal laws alongside the selective use of Hindu religious imagery led some critics of the women’s movement (Agnes 1995,2002) and (Sunder Rajan2003) to argue that the women’s movement had not developed a clearly secular position. The women’s movement’s orientation of a liberal-democratic approach to secularism advocating separation between religion and politics left little choice but to campaign for a Uniform Civil Code, rather than explore alternative avenues for reconciling religious identity and gender-related concerns. (see Kumar 1994,Menon,2011).The passage of the Muslim Women’s Protection Act (1986) was seen as a defeat by the women’s movement, the ripple effects of the activism surrounding the Shah Bano case continued long after into the 1990s, creating cracks among the members of women’s movement which had further escalated with Hindu women’s participation in the massive violence in the destruction of the mosque, and against the Muslim community in 1992 in the aftermath of the demolition and it was again repeated in 2002 in Gujarat Violence ,this questioned the category of “woman” itself. The women’s movement could no longer envision an unmarked “woman” available for mobilization, forcing members of the women’s movement to critically reflect on questions related to communalism, secularism and representation. (see Butalia 2002)

The feminist movement, too, had to confront the reality that it was, itself, marked by a majoritarian identity and symbols, whereby “Muslim” appeared as something different and aberrant from its discourse. In an attempt to circumvent criticisms of being alien to local culture and Western in orientation, the women’s movement, despite being secular, had adopted symbols of female power from Hindu mythology. Very few women from minority communities were present in these organizations; those that were, were in turn trying to prove their secular credentials by trying to fit in (Agnes 1995: 137–143; Subramaniam 2006:50). This uncomfortable position vis-à-vis religion and Muslim women’s rights in particular would continue to haunt the women’s movement, with no reforms made to date on Muslim personal laws. Marginalization of Muslim Women’s rights in post Shah Bano controversy and subsequent victimization of Muslim women’s in communal riots of 1993,2002, and 2013 highlighted the sense of alienation among minority women and those from marginalized communities.

Anti Women Fatwas: Muffled Voices

As the discussion above demonstrates, the manner in which the Shah Bano case unfolded and the subsequent events of communal violence and marginalization meant that Muslim women were under pressure to subordinate their gender concerns (Hussain 2007: 72–73). As community boundaries have hardened, Muslim women have borne the brunt of identity politics in terms of violence (from outside the community) and control over their life choices (from within the community). Flavia Agnes sums up the double marginalization of Muslim women thus: the intersectionality of Muslim women cannot be accommodated in a “raceless tale of gender subordination,” nor in a “gender-less narrative of minority victimization for the Muslim community” (Agnes 2002: 3698).

Discussions on Muslim women continued to focus on their status within the community and position in Muslim personal law even though they are also the most likely to belong to low- income, low-educational-attainment, low-aspiration groups, along with being among the most vulnerable citizens of society (Hasan and Menon 2006: 2–7). Shah Bano case brought the ‘plight of the Indian Muslim woman’ onto the national stage. Her case highlighted the dilemmas of contending identity-based declarations in a political environment that was becoming increasingly polarised along religious lines. Muslim women oppression was once again brought to national attention with the case of Gudiya in 2004 and then of Imrana in 2005. The conservative Ulema  (Muslim religious scholars) yet again took it upon itself to represent ‘the Muslim community’. Throughout these debates the voices of Muslim women speaking for themselves were rarely heard in public debates. Gudiya’s case is the most tragic of them all. Her husband Arif, who was serving in the Indian army in Kashmir, became a prisoner of war and was unheard of for five years. Subsequently she married Taufiq and when she was pregnant from this second marriage, the first husband returned and expressed his desire to reunite with his wife. When reported in the media, television channels hopped into the tussle and publicly paraded the anguish of a young girl,

One channel went to the extent of holding a live ‘panchayat’, which projected the eight months pregnant girl burning with fever. The panchayat gave its verdict in full public view that Gudiya should now return to her first husband and it is his prerogative either to accept her first child or discard it. All the channels had a field day projecting this story and interviews with various relatives of the three persons concerned and Muslim maulavis. Finally, it seemed that Arif had agreed to accept the child and Gudiya was happy to keep the child. Though in her earlier interviews she had made a caustic comment: “Yeh koi khel thody hai, aaj iske saath kal uske saath(This is no game. Living with someone today, another tomorrow)”. ( see.Agnes, Shah bano to kauser Bano). But after the verdict ,she returned to her husband’s home as reported in Indian Express she was calm, composed and relaxed and commented that this is her destiny and further endorsed this statement with a comment that it is her wish. Unfortunately a few months later Gudiya passed away and her voice was stifled with her burial, without any public debate on how Gudiya died.

In another case, Imrana was allegedly raped by her father-in-law. Upon her complaint, another quasi-judicial court with the help of a local Maulvi  declared her haram, or forbidden to her husband, and she was told to leave her marital home, while the father-in-law went scot-free. It was only with the intervention by women’s groups that the father-in-law was booked and his subsequent bail applications thwarted. Both cases caught national attention and received enormous media publicity followed by a blitz of anti-Muslim coverage. Although such quasi-judicial systems operate across all communities, in the case of the Muslim community it is difficult to appeal against the rulings. As Muslim personal law remains uncodified, there is no legal protection for the Muslim woman. The combination of self-reflection within the movement together with the burgeoning of various types of NGOs as well as the general diversification of the political sphere has led to the emergence of new forms of identity-based organizing both within and apart from the women’s movement by women of marginalized communities who address multiple axes of power based on gender, caste, religion and class. (See Zaman, 2013)

Active Voices of Muslim Women Organisations: A Glimpse

Women’s activism has started very late in India. The inherent patriarchal structure of Indian society was not very accommodative with women raising voices for their rights. Nonetheless, it started during the era of late 70’s with a very Hindu feminist undertone, which needs to be studied separately. However, since the 1990s, several individuals and groups of Muslim women activist have emerged across India and are working to change this situation by claiming their right to represent themselves. Vatuk’s (2008) pioneering ethnographic study of Muslim women’s organizations in India mentions the emergence of these groups founded in order to pursue the goal of legal reforms, nor to create more publicity for the Islamic feminist agenda.

Most of these organizations have emerged from local grass- roots initiatives, first among these is Mumbai Based oldest Muslim women organistion Awaaz-e-Niswan (AeN),it had taken important initiatives, which have gone beyond personal laws to promote gender equality. They aim to provide aid and support to poor, illiterate and marginalised women, while at the same time raising their consciousness about the gender inequities that exist in society and the need to strive to overcome them. Their engagement with legal reform is an outgrowth of these broad-based activities. Much like other women’s groups Muslim women’s groups engage with a range of issues that include education, employment and domestic violence. These services are not only available to Muslim women exclusively. Nor does the way in which this counselling is carried out refer to a specific Muslim tradition, but rather follows a pattern which according to Vatuk(2008) is very typical for the world of feminist or women’s NGOs in India. Although these efforts have not to date inspired the development of a major reform movement among Muslims, they represent vital steps in seeking to build a rights-based movement.

The other organization, named the Muslim Women’s Rights Network (MWRN), was founded in 1999 by activists from AeN and from the Mumbai-based Women’s Research and Action Group (WRAG), is the most successful network with a nationwide radius. WRAG conducted an extensive study in 1994-98,titled “Women & Law in the Muslim Community”, with the declared aim of collecting, documenting and analysing the diverse civil or family laws that are applied to Muslims in India. It is often over- looked that the term Muslim Personal Law does not refer to a codified or unified family law code and that laws may differ more or less significantly from region to region (see Mahmood 1986, 1993). One of the findings of this research project was that Muslim women in India clearly support the demand for reform of Muslim Personal Law in India (Nainar 2000). As WRAG /MWRN describes on its homepage, it was this claim, which among other things, led to an increase in awareness-rising campaigns, which shall help to inform Muslim women about the rights that are guaranteed to them in the Quran (holy book of Muslims)and thereby encourage new impulses for debate on reform of MPL.The present very active group named Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan (BMMA) was formed more recently in 2005,

Although the BMMA advocacy deals with the issue of matrimonial rights and the reform of Muslim Personal Laws, it also tackles broader issues facing the community including socio-economic and political deprivation. BMMA claims to be the first pan-Indian movement uniting Muslim women across the various existing castes and classes in Muslim Indian society. It is this organization that most explicitly states its reference to the global discourse of Islamic feminism in the formulation of goals by declaring that BMMA strives “to explore possibilities of reforming personal laws based on male dominance”(Schneider 2009:66,).Both networks Muslim Women's Rights Network (MWRN) the Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan (BMMA)  are challenging the notion that Muslim women are voiceless victims by asserting their political agency. In so doing, they question the authority of conservative Muslim male-dominated forums such as the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) to speak for the Muslim community, as well as changing the face of the women’s movement, which has had a troubled relationship with religion in the past. The emerging Muslim women-led networks in India are challenging the authority of the religious elite to represent the ‘Muslim community’ while re-framing the category ‘Muslim women’ in order to assert political agency.

Both networks move beyond looking at Muslim women’s issues as consisting only of parda (veiling and segregation) polygamy and triple talaq,(divorce) which have been the main tropes through which ‘Muslim women’ have been constructed and understood as a category in the Indian context. The BMMA does this by placing the exclusion of Muslim women in the wider context of the exclusion faced by Muslims in India in general. Similarly, the MWRN expands the scope of the issues 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 is forgotten, but rather, that both networks are attempting to contextualize the multiple disadvantages and insecurities faced by Muslim women in a broader pattern of economic, social political exclusion of Muslim community as pointed in Sachar committee Report (See Sachar 2006:19-20)

In contrast to the MWRN, which does not explicitly use religion as a campaigning tool and is committed to a secular approach, the BMMA is experimenting with Islamic feminist approaches, asserting that it is not Islam per se that has oppressed Muslim women, but centuries of male interpretation of Islamic texts. Members of the BMMA argue that standing up for women’s rights does not have to mean abandoning one’s religious identity, and are involved in projects that encourage women to engage with Islamic texts in order to be able to claim their rights, including those related to inheritance, marriage, and political empowerment. Such efforts are pioneering steps in the Indian context where little attempt 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, as many members of the MWRN point out, it may also limit the terms of the debate to the confines of religious discourse, leaving little or no space to those who are not believers themselves or who feel that religion should remain a private matter. This approach may also have limited appeal in a context where many within the Muslim community feel that their religious identities are being threatened and are hence less receptive to reformist ideas.

The MWRN and the BMMA also represent important developments in the context of the women’s movement in India and can be seen as a sign of the movement’s fragmentation and diversification. While the MWRN feels that it is an important part of the movement, the BMMA sees itself as separate from the mainstream women’s movement. Hasina Khan, who is a leader within the MWRN and works with the Mumbai-based group Awaaz-e-Niswan, feels that it is important to work within 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 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".(as Cited In Kirmani ,2009:35)

Members of the MWRN argue that the women’s movement has created space for Muslim women. 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 communal boundaries in order to fight against the ghettoization of Muslim women’s issues. On the other hand, members of the BMMA are critical of the women’s movement’s historical upper caste bias as well as its aversion to religion. 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. It is for this reason that members of the BMMA feel that it is crucial for Muslim women to build their own movement.

The activists who came together to form the BMMA felt that an organization for Muslim women should be one that attaches a positive value to “Muslim” and “Islam.” This notion represents a significant difference from the approach of the MWRN: the BMMA acknowledges the role and importance of religion and culture in women’s lives and seeks to positively reclaim those structures.(Schneider,2009) Although there is a broad spectrum of engagement with Islam (as a faith) within the BMMA, there is strong sense of identification with “Muslim” as a sociocultural identity. This position stresses the value that culture holds for this minority community, including its women challenging the view that culture and religion, especially Islam, are only oppressive. On the other hand, members of the BMMA are more forthright in arguing that the women’s movement and civil society in general have failed to address the needs of women from marginalised communities and to engage positively with religion. Zakia Jowher, founder member of BMMA, describes the position vis-à-vis the women’s movement:

“In our vision mission document it is very clear that we will always build our struggle along with other excluded people, which includes all of the dalits and adivasis, all other women, and the workers, labourers, all other excluded people.... We are very clear that whosever’s fight it is, they are the ones who should lead. We don’t need a brahmin woman to come and lead us... If for 60 years we haven’t received justice, it is because the males have led, and within the women’s it is always women from creamy layer.”(Kirmani 2009; 20)

While these groups may differ in their strategies for women’s rights advocacy, they are in agreement about the need to challenge the prerogative of male-dominated institutions such as the AIMPLB to speak for the Muslim community. Many Muslim women activists joined the board called All India Muslim Women’s Personal law Board(AIMWPLB) and its decision-making bodies to draw attention to and resolve women’s issues under the Muslim personal law. For example, to put an end to the predicament of triple talaq, some female members prepared a model marriage contract (nikahnama), which allowed women to stipulate conditions in the contract such as an option for delegated divorce (talaq-e-tawfiz), through which the husband permits his wife to initiate divorce at her own will, and presented it to the board for approval. However, the male-dominated board rejected it on the claim that it was an “un-Islamic” proposal and swiftly silenced uncompliant women’s voices throughout the organization

The AIMWPLB released a new nikahnama in 2008 that consisted of seventeen-point guidelines for marriage for bride and groom under the Islamic law (hidayatnama) and an eight-point section on divorce process.Ms.Shaista AmberPresident of the AIMWPLB reports that It prohibits triple talaq through text messaging, email, video-conferencing, or phone, and recognizes women’s right to delegated divorce (Talaq-e tawfiz) and Khul. The model nikahnama also details women’s right to post-marital maintenance and Mehr. To pre-empt the possible attacks of the traditional Ulema on the new nikahnama, the new marriage contract carries extensive quotes from relevant verses of the Quran.

In addition, AIMWPLB has established its own court structure (mahila adalat), deciding cases according to a women-friendly interpretation of Sharia. The women’s court is located in Lucknow and convenes every Friday at a local mosque. Ms.Shaista Amber had reported that fifty couples have married under the new nikahnama, as it steadily gains acceptance in the community (as citied in Sezgin). It also deals with divorce cases, both male and female judges (qazis) sit together at mahila adalat. The law applied is not substantively different from the Sharia law applied by AIMPLB courts, but qazis at the mahilaadalat implement it with an eye to “universal standards of human and women’s rights.”(See Sezgin)The BMMA working to secure the rights of women through feminist and humanist interpretations of Islam, has taken the women’s cause one step further and made history by allowing a female qazi, Syeda Hamid, to solemnize a nikah (marriage) ceremony where all four witnesses were also women.(as quoted in Sezgin 2012) While the members of the mainstream ulema questioned whether a woman could solemnize marriage under the Islamic law, BMMA silently broke the tradition and opened a new page for Muslim women in India who could rely on neither the secular state nor male-dominated communal institutions but their own initiative to end the discrimination they suffer under Muslim personal laws.

The activism of these networks illustrates important initiatives, which have gone beyond personal laws to promote gender equality. They aim to provide aid and support to poor, illiterate and marginalised women, while at the same time raising their consciousness about the gender inequities that exist in society and the need to strive to overcome them. Their engagement with legal reform is an outgrowth of these broad-based activities. Much like other women’s groups Muslim women’s groups engage with a range of issues that include education, employment and domestic violence. (Hasan2010) Although these efforts have not to date inspired the development of a major reform movement among Muslims, they represent vital steps in seeking to build a rights-based movement. There are, for the first time, the beginnings of serious debate on social reform. But before getting into the discussion about the reforms, one needs to understand the challenges faced by these organisations and networks to take on to activism.

Although no further legal reforms have taken place with regards to Muslim women’s rights since the Shah Bano affair, the presence of Muslim women-led networks alone marks a significant shift in the Indian political landscape. 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 creating a space for Muslim women to actively engage in redefining their identities and reformulating relations of power within an increasingly constrained and polarised political context, one in which feminists have little room to manoeuvre outside of the confines of religious boundaries.

Muslim Women’s Feminism: Challenges and Dilemmas:

Muslim women activism has come often under attack from their own community. Most of the time they have to defend themselves against both direct attacks and subtler, deceptive whispers from the religious leadership and from members of the wider community, including male members of their own families. The activities they engage in often prevent their conforming strictly to orthodox standards of seclusion and Islamic femininity. They are also susceptible to criticism for being engaged in activities where they jeopardize the community honor in being inadvertently tricked into participating in dubious activities harmful to the community, thus accusing them for putting their interests as women ahead of the community's need to maintain a united front against the communal forces rampant in the society at large. (see Vatuk,2008 Schneider,2009 Zaman,2013)

Though large number of Indian young women are being educated in women's madrasas, some even earning the title of 'alima ('female scholar'), but very few of them have shown proclivity to involve themselves publicly in fighting for women's rights, even those who succeed in presenting themselves as devout Muslims can be dismissed as lacking in scholarly qualifications, whenever they begin to cite the Quran or other religious sources to support their demands for gender justice.Their Islamic credentials are consistently questioned. Although growing numbers of activists argue that one doesn't need to be a highly-trained religious expert in order to read the Quran and discover for oneself that Indian Muslim women today are not being given their God-given rights.(Vatuk 2008;512)

In case women activist are associated with non-sectarian women's organisations or to Muslim organisations that work closely with secular ones on controversial issues of current concern to Muslims than the intensity of their loyalty to the community is often questioned as well they may be suspected either of knowingly allowing themselves to be used by politicians .Most of these discussions have grown out of the debates surrounding Muslim personal laws and have, therefore, focused to a large degree on the issue of women’s matrimonial rights.(Schneider,2009)argues that there exists a dilemma within the women activists, despite sharing with self-identified feminists 'a theoretical perspective and a practice that criticizes social and gender inequalities, aims at women's empowerment, and seeks to transform knowledge, there is reluctance to claim that they are a 'feminist' since the term has quite negative connotations, not only within Muslim community but in India more generally. While campaigning for women's rights before a Muslim audience, they wish to avoid the term as it calls up images of an markedly Westernized woman, unfeminine, aggressive, antagonistic toward men, and careless of domestic and family responsibilities. Thus, they shy away from adopting the label for themselves.(see Zaman,2013 Vatuk 2008).Ms. Uzma Naheed, an Islamic Scholar is of the opinion that it is important to be in the good books of clergy and speak the language of Sharia ,she said that she was able to sustain her struggle for women’s rights as she has good terms with the AIMPLB leadership because, they know “I am working for women,. It is because our religion has given us rights that I am doing, they know that I am not a feminist”. (Vatuk 2008; 513)

There exists difference of opinion about whether and how to work with the ulema on issues of personal law. Some activists felt that being not strongly feminist helps. Most Muslim-led women's NGOs do maintain contacts with local qazis or the imams of nearby mosques and regularly seek the cooperation. Some spend considerable time and effort trying to develop relationships with and keep open lines of communication with the local religious authorities. But they are often frustrated by these men's frequent reluctance or refusal to heed their recommendations when dealing with issues that affect women's well being.

Inspite of this reluctance,all the Muslim women's networks have tried into dialogue with the higher religious leadership, in particular with the AIMPLB. Those who are themselves members of this Board naturally believe in working closely with the ulema, exerting whatever influence they can from within, they believed in positive approach rather than confrontational'.Some women activists had shared with Vatuk (2008)that  since masses have great respect for the 'ulema, it is counter-productive to tell women not to heed what they say. It is much better to show that one is willing to give them proper deference and work with them to the extent possible. The MWRN and some of the smaller coalitions, positioned well outside of the AIMPLB and not so averse to confrontation, have on different occasions invited members of the Board and other prominent clerics to discuss issues of women and the law. Though there is still a large gap between what most women activists would like to see the AIMPLB do and the steps that it has actually taken, there are clear signs that the reformist women's voices are being heard by The members of this body and are even having some impact-though hardly a dramatic one-on their decision-making.

Some women are pleased by the results of their efforts to exchange ideas with the Board, while others are discouraged by what they perceive as an absence of positive results. In order to overcome the impasse, both networks employ a kind of ‘strategic essentialism’ (Spivak 1989, 1990, 1993) and use the unifying category of Muslim women as a means of exerting rights. This tactical use of Muslim women wrests the category out of the hands of the Hindu Right and the male-dominated ulema in order to assert a feminist political stance that recognises the importance of religious identity without sacrificing women’s rights. Muslim women who are pressing for social and legal change in pursuit of gender equity always have to concern themselves about 'framing' the issue of women's rights in such a way that they are not 'put on the defensive and made to prove that they are not spouting alien and Western concepts’, forced, as these women are to operate within a context wherein a more radical secular feminist approach is certain to attract strong community antagonism, an Islamic feminist approach may indeed be the wisest choice.

Codification of Islamic Laws

The project of legal reform is greatly complicated by the problems confronting the Muslim community, which remains a vulnerable minority in India. A high-level committee on the status of the Muslim community, known as the Sachar Committee, has shown that they are impoverished, marginalised and underrepresented in public institutions They do, however, have the right to have their own personal laws and to continue to practise these under state protection.(See Sachar Report 2006) From the point of view of Muslim women this has meant that the articulation of gender interests has been tightly controlled and articulated within the terms of an identity discourse.

Both Muslims and Muslim women continue to be defined by birth-bound identities, and consequently the notion that Muslim women’s status is attributable to certain intrinsic, immutable, ‘Islamic’ features is widely prevalent. All the debates tend to revolve around either the desirability of reform from within the community and with religious sanction in order to preserve a Muslim identity, or on the need to transcend community and end the gender discrimination inherent in personal laws by working towards a uniform civil code that will govern all citizens. Political negotiations over personal laws have invariably favoured conservative voices among Muslims to the detriment of women’s voices and women’s rights. In order to come over this impasse several scholars have suggested codification of Muslim Personal law as a possible strategy to bring about reform within Muslim community. The current set of personal laws is not properly codified, which is why they are not easily comprehensible and there are abundant ambiguities. This is one of the reasons for their abuse by those with vested interests. Hence, codification of the entire gamut of Muslim personal laws should be given high priority. Citing the experience of enacting the Dissolution of Muslim Marriage Act, 1939, several scholars have pointed out that it would be possible to create a broad forum of legal scholars and Ulemas to lay ground for eventual codification.(Engineer 2005).BMMA have pursued the codification of Muslim personal law in consultations with various concerned groups and lawyers across the country with the objective of preparing a draft code that would then be placed before the parliament. The attempt at codification has been criticized not only by outside groups such as the MWRN, but also internally in the BMMA.

While agreeing that there is value in reclaiming the cultural category of “Muslim,” and while supporting women’s initiatives to reclaim their rights to religion and religious interpretation, many women activist are critical of codification. However, negotiations on codification based on the use of divergences in interpretation within various Islamic schools of thought cannot elicit all that the BMMA may want to achieve. So while, for instance, in the consultation held in Delhi in February 2012, there was agreement on limiting polygamy to the extent that the practice becomes impossibly difficult, the BMMA’s demand that it be completely abolished was not met (Hasan, 2010). According to press reports, a group of Muslim scholars and activists have made a valiant attempt towards codification of Muslim Personal Law. The national consultation on codification has prepared a progressive draft, which among other things bans triple talaq and restricts polygamy. According to the reformist scholar Asghar Ali Engineer,the group is not bringing any new law but only reiterating the provisions which the Quran makes for Muslim men and women.

The other side of the story is that there is difference of opinion in regard to codification among the women networks all of those involved in fighting for Muslim women's rights say that their goal is to achieve gender equity under the law, there are some important differences of opinion among them. The question naturally arises whether all of those who use religious arguments in arguing for gender equity are truly convinced that Islam-when interpreted 'correctly'-can provide everything that women need. The choice of an Islamic discourse can be 'both genuine an expression of religious convictions-and a strategic attempt to acquire legitimacy that also serves to broaden the base of support for women's rights ‘within the community. As pointed by Vatuk (2008) on the basis of her discussion with Noorjehan Safia Niaz, a Co-Director of WRAG, that, since there are some areas of Islamic law that are inherently biased against women, WRAG advocates taking what is relevant from the Quran while at the same time pressuring the state to codify Muslim law a new (as quoted in Vatuk 2008). Those who argue for reform from within of Muslim personal laws as the best strategy for enhancing the scope of Muslim women’s rights ignore the fact that such an approach tends to freeze identities within religious boundaries. 'So we need to go outside it to provide women those rights as well. This is not to say that religious law should not be followed. But it is not enough (MWRN activist to Kirmani 2009)'

Here Moghadam's (2002) distinction between 'Islamic' and 'Muslim' feminists is relevant: the latter are 'believing women who agree that Islamization has been detrimental to women and approach issues of legal reform from that perspective but also 'often use familiar cultural concepts and religious phrases' in order to promote their reformist goals more effectively to a Muslim audience. However, there is little doubt that others sincerely believe that Islam already provides women all the rights they could possibly require, some activists are of the opinion that it is enough if women get the rights that they are given by Islam'. (Vatuk 2008,Kirmani, 2009a,Zaman,2013)

These differences of opinion among the Muslim society have diluted the spirit of activism. This point has made it somewhat difficult for MWRN to keep its membership rolls intact and to present a united front toward the male religious establishment that most regard as their principal adversary in the battle for legal reform. But thus far it has not led to a permanent cleavage. All of those involved seem to believe that more is to be gained from continuing to work together than from allowing their differences to derail the larger effort. Whereas those who resist going outside of sharia are naturally averse to state intervention in reform of MPL, they do not necessarily rule out supporting pro-woman legislation that impinges only indirectly upon their code of personal law.

Conclusion

Islamic feminist activism in India is not yet an organized 'social movement', in the strict sense of that term. It is being pursued by a rather amorphous assortment of individuals and groups, all engaged in avid discussion and debate about the negative impact of MPL on women but only loosely organized in terms of action. These women share similar goals-to spread awareness of 'the correct teachings of Islam' about women's rights (huquq-e-niswan) and find ways to help women gain practical access to them.(Vatuk,2008,Schneider,2009)  After analysing the vision and mission of different Muslim women rights organization and also understanding the fallout of Muslim women Maintence Act there has been overwhelming engagement of Muslim women activists over the question of changing the situation of Muslim women, which cannot be disassociated from the fact that her category is constructed through her community. Therefore, the first question which has haunted the Muslim community in India is how to change the situation of Muslim women, how to emancipate her from oppressive personal laws so that cases like ShahBano, Imrana and Gudiya are not repeated and there are no more sacrifices of Muslim women on the alter of Muslim Personal laws. These cases are clear evidence that process of reform is at standstill. One course can be for concerned Muslims to begin lobbying for codification of Muslim personal law. The other course can be to work for piecemeal reforms, taken upon a priority basis those provisions where the contradiction between the constitutional law and the personal law is severe or the law as understood and applied at present is clearly in dissonance with the principles of equity, justice and good conscience.

Undoubtedly codification can go a long way toward removing the existing contradiction between the constitutional and personal laws as well as making them consonant with the principles of equity, justice and social conscience. A noted social scientist Imtiaz Ahmad(1994) has pointed out there are two catches in this ,first codification is difficult. Yet, it may turn out on close led from the top often ends up creating unforeseen difficulties which are subsequently difficult to rectify. Second, codification can only follow emergence of an agreed upon draft code of Muslim personal law. Such an agreed upon code will present the same difficulties as those implicit in the rationalization and/or reform woman of specific provisions. Indeed, there is every possibility that the difficulties may be greater as the process of codification of their law may be seen by the community as a wholesale change of Muslim personal law against which a strong sentiment already exists. It may also be recalled that the reforms that took place in the 1930s were not concerned with gender justice but rather with the establishment of a more authentically “Islamic” social world for the community (Minault 2009: 83; Metcalf 2002: 2–3)

Legal reform becomes tricky because the moral and legal framework on which it is based is supposed to be immutable. In addition, it is projected as an important issue for all Muslims because it supposedly defines their identity. Rather than focusing all energies on changing personal laws in one go, a piecemeal process, of reform promoting gender equality and justice will be the appropriate course, it would be more rewarding to make a small beginning and work towards an eventual codification of the entire corpus of Muslim personal law. The need of the moment accordingly is to build consensus across the community about the need for reform. Muslim women’s activism needs to promote women’s rights to enhance Muslim woman’s situation based on the everyday experiences of Muslim women.

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Biography

Dr. Arvinder A. Ansari is Sociologist-holding degree in Masters from Jamia Millia Islamia in Sociology, M.Phil. and PhD From JNU, New Delhi; she was awarded PhD in ‘Impact of Communal Violence on Women – A Sociological Study of Delhi and Surat Riot Victims’ by Jawaharlal Nehru University in 1997. Presently she is working as Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, Jamia Millia Islamia and New Delhi. In a distinguished academic career of more than eighteen years in Jamia Millia Islamia, she has taught postgraduate and under graduate students and supervised many PhD students. She has many research projects and publications to her credit. Her areas of specialization are- Sociology of Gender, Feminist Theory, Sociology of Ethnicity and Minorities, Cultural Studies and Identity, Sociology of Violence. She has successfully completed many minor and major research projects. She has presented papers and participated in many International and National Conferences. At present, she is working on f major project titled ‘Half Widows, Permanent Victims Of Violence: Gendered Implication of Conflict in Kashmir’, sponsored by Indian Council of Social Science Research.  Some Her Recent publications are

  •“Permanent Victim of Violence: A Sociological Study of Women Victims of Communal Violence” in South African Review of Sociology 2009 (40)1 PG 62-75  

• Communalization of Indian Society, Aakar Publications, Delhi. 2011

• Inter-Religion Marriages in Indian Society: Issues and Challenge. LG Publishers.2013

labrys, études féministes/ estudos feministas
julho/dezembro 2015 - juillet/décembre