Challenging Stereotypes: The Case of Muslim Female Boxers in Bengal

Abstract

I have begun by arguing that Muslim athletes in India, including the Muslim women boxers of the Khidderpore–Ekbalpore area of Kolkata, have clearly been trying to give emphasis to their national identity over their Muslim identity. This, I have argued, is a kind of negotiation that the young Indian Muslim, a woman or a man, is constantly trying to engage in since the rise of the BJP and the Hindu fundamentalists in 1992 in India. As women of the minority community, these girls are in danger of being victimized by forces both within Islam and outside. Boxing is a sport that empowers these young women against all possible odds. Finally I have argued that studies in gender and sport remain incomplete if we do not acknowledge the interrelations between gender and ethnic or religious communities and the state in which the particular subject resides.