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Anxiety and Amnesia: Muslim Women's Equality in Postcolonial India
ln this thesis, 1 focus on the relationship between gender and nation in post-colonial India, through the lens of Muslim women, who are located on the margins of both religious community and nation. The contradictory embrace of a composite national identity with an ascriptive religious identity, has...
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| Format: | Printed Book |
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Faculty of Law Mc Gill University, Montreal
2005
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| Online Access: | http://10.26.1.76/ks/004535.pdf |
| Summary: | ln this thesis, 1 focus on the relationship between gender and nation in post-colonial India,
through the lens of Muslim women, who are located on the margins of both religious
community and nation. The contradictory embrace of a composite national identity with
an ascriptive religious identity, has had critical consequences for Muslim women, to
whom the state has simultaneously granted and denied equal citizenship. The impact is
felt primarily in the continuing disadvantage of women through the denial of gender
equality within the family. The state's regulation of gender roles and family relationships
in the 'private sphere', inevitably has determined women's status as citizens in the public
sphere.
ln this context, the notion of citizenship becomes a focus of any exploration of the legal
status of Muslim women. 1 explore the idea of citizenship as a space of subaltern
secularism that opens up the possibility for Indian women of aIl faiths, to reclaim a
selfhood, free from essentialist definitions of gender interests and prescripted identities. 1
evaluate the realm of constitutional law as a counter-hegemonic discourse that can
challenge existing power structures. Finally, 1 argue for the need to acknowledge the
hybridity of culture and the modernity of tradition, to emphasise the integration of the
colonial past with the postcolonial present. Such an understanding is critical to the
feminist emancipatory project as it reveals the manner in which oppositional categories of
public/private, true Muslim woman/feminist, Muslim/Other, Western/Indian, and
modern/traditional, have been used to deny women equal rights. |
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