Feminists against Fascism: The Indian Female Muslim Protest in India

Laila Kadiwal

doi:10.3390/educsci11120793

Abstract

This article explores contestations around ideas of India, citizenship, and nation from the perspective of Indian Muslim female university students in Delhi. In December 2019, the Hindu majoritarian government introduced new citizenship legislation. It caused widespread distress over its adverse implications for Muslims and a large section of socio-economically deprived populations. In response, millions of people, mainly from Dalit, Adivasi, and Bahujan backgrounds, took to the streets to protest. Unprecedentedly, young Muslim female students and women emerged at the forefront of the significant public debate. This situation disrupted the mainstream perception of oppressed Muslim women lacking public voice and agency. Drawing on the narratives of the Indian Muslim female students who participated in these protests, this article highlights their conceptions of, and negotiations with, the idea of India. In doing so, this article reflects on the significance of critical feminist protest as a form of “public pedagogy” for citizenship education as a powerful antidote to a supremacist, hypermasculine, and vigilante idea of India.

Highlights

In recent years, universities have seen a global surge in student activism [1]
The overarching proposition of this article is that the conceptions of nation and belonging which Indian Muslim women and students negotiated on the streets presented an alternative possibility to imagine a more intersectional, pluralistic, and transformative
I interrogate how they practiced the public pedagogy of critical citizenship education in their interaction between higher-educational space and community

Summary

Introduction

Universities have seen a global surge in student activism [1]. Apple and Buras [2] p.n.d. note that they are sites where various forms of power operate and “in which subaltern groups act to reassert their own perceived identities, cultures and histories”. Likewise, when four young female students of Jamia Millia Islamia in Delhi courageously stood up to the policemen to protect a Muslim male student, they disrupted the mainstream perception of subaltern Muslim women who lack public voice and agency, they asserted alternative ideas of the nation, democracy, and citizenship. The feminist “public pedagogy” of protest led by Muslim female students and women offered a powerful rebuttal to the “vigilante citizenship” advanced by the current ruling party. In doing so, they modelled what an anti-oppressive public citizenship education looked like, against the backdrop of rising hyper-nationalism. To make sense of this overarching argument, I will first explain the wider context

Methods

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Conclusion