Ghazala Jamil - Muslim Women Speak: Of Dreams and Shackles

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Ghazala Jamil

Copyright Ghazala Jamil, 2018

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

First published in 2018 by

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Published by Vivek Mehra for SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd, typeset in 10/12 pts Berkeley by Zaza Eunice, Hosur, Tamil Nadu, India and printed at Chaman Enterprises, New Delhi.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available

ISBN: 978-93-528-0502-0 (ePub)

SAGE Yoda Team: Sonjuhi Negi, Alekha Chandra Jena and Ishita Gupta

Contents

Chashm-e-nam, jaan-e-shoreeda kafi nahin

Tohmat-e-ishq-e-posheeda kafi nahin

aaj bazaar main pa-bajolan chalo

Faiz Ahmed Faiz

Teary eyes and stormy life are not enough

Even the accusation of a hidden passion is not enough

Come, walk today in public, wearing your shackles

Translated by Ghazala Jamil

Let me begin by expressing my gratitude to the Bhartiya Muslim Mahila Aandolan (BMMA) for giving me the opportunity to create this work with the help of all its activists. Special thanks are due to Zakia Soman, one of the founders of BMMA, who trusted my ideas right from the word go and provided me with all possible support and space. Each member on the research team at the field level completely owned this study right after I conceived it in its present shape. Without their collective experience and skills it would not have been possible to realise the theoretical ideas.

This work continued to be a passion for me long after I had submitted the project report to BMMA. I kept chiselling the manuscript though the years, and growing and learning with it. Needless to say all its shortcomings are my own although I do hope that all the participants of the study will own the work in its present form too.

My acquaintance with many of the ideas and approaches presented in this report began as a student of Professor Manoj K. Jha at Jamia Millia Islamia. His faith in my ability to rise up to the demands of any occasion and do the necessary work has seen me successfully finish many assignments including this one. He offered painstaking comments on my ideas and writings, always giving critical suggestions that improved my work while still respecting my voice.

Thank you Arpita Das, my editor at Yoda Press for seeing the potential in the manuscript. Her faith in this work gave me the confidence to put it out in the public domain at a time when the reactions of many others made me anxious.

Thanks are due to my partner and friend Nasir for his love, humour, and indulgence; our daughters Miftah and Mael for accepting and challenging their Ulti-Sulti Amma . No amount of gratitude can ever capture the love and limitless generosity of my familyZafar, Salma, Faiz, Paromita, Sidra and Andleeb I can only ever thank inadequately.

The memory of my parents Azmat Ullah and Anwari Begum narrating their own experiences to me, is my most empowering resource. I dedicate this work to you Amma and Abbafor never discouraging me (their most talkative child) from spinning a yarn and for enabling the daughter to find her voice.

Thanks are due to Baaraan Ijlaal and Sadbhavana Trust for their kind permission to use the artwork on the cover, and to Dipta Bhog and Purwa Bharadwaj for their introduction to the artist and facilitating the permissions.

Research Team Members

A. Siddique, Abhishweta Jha, Aparna, Azra, Balkeis Begum, Farhat Amin, Father Anil, Ghazala, Ghazala Jamil, Hashmi Bano, Isabella, Jamsheena KP, Jasla K, Jeibunisha R, Kamila, Majida CV, Mali Sawariya, Mubeena NP, Muskaan Shaikh, Naaz Raza, Naghma Nadaf, Naish Hasan, Namita Jainer, Nazia Perveen, Nazneen Falaq, Nishat Hussain, Noorjahan Diwan, Noorjahan Safia Niaz, Nusrat Yakub Pathan, Pallavi Patnaik, Parveen Kokianwala, Preety Rani, Rafat Jahan, Rajiya Begum, Riyaz Babu, Rozalin Sahoo, Rubeena Bano, Sabiha Rehman, Salima Akhtar, Samira Shah, Sarwar Raza, Shafeena TNK, Shah Alam, Shahda Bari, Shameem Khan, Shehzadi Parveen, Subair CK, Subhashree Sanyal, Suraiya Shaikh, Tasleem Banoo, Zakia Soman, Zuleikha Jabin.

Title of Kamla Bhasins book. (Trans.) Topsy-turvy mom.

I

Allah taala ne aurat ko bhi insaan banaaya hai

(Allah has created woman too, in the human form)

On the first reading, these words, spoken by a young Muslim woman from Mumbai, are simply a statement of a person of faith about her own creation. On a closer second reading, the statement seems to be accessing and commenting upon various realities. It is a comment on the inequality that women are subjected to, how they are made to feel subhuman, a commodity to be consumed. The statement is an assertion that a woman too is a human being, a human being just like a man. On another and deeper reading the statement seems to include a firm belief of the speaker that there is inherent justice in this narrative of creation of a woman in human form and a complaint that this justice has been subverted. This reading includes a cognisance of her conviction that her emancipation as an equal human being is thus possible within the arena of her own faith.

How do we begin looking at the possibility of a just and humane world that treats Muslim women as equal human beings? In this work I have attempted to engage in a critical exercise of recounting a complex web of problems which get into the very way of imagining such a world. Although critical, it is not meant to be an exercise in cynicism. It is conceived in a way, however inadequate, to regard the experiences of Muslim women in India and the philosophical problems of our times embedded in these experiences. In terms of research, the attempt is to respond to the problem posed by Horkheimer (1931, p. 14), as symbolic of the peculiar difficulty of social philosophythe difficulty concerning the interpenetration of general and particular, of theoretical design and individual experience. Towards this attempt I navigated the boundaries of disciplines such as Sociology, Politics, Psychology, etc., and used hybrid methodological and epistemological resources. This allowed me to recast the problems of Indian Muslim Woman and Indian Muslims in newer concepts and frames of inquiry.