Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood [Illustrated] 9780199484225, 9780199097708, 0199097704, 9780199092062, 0199092060

Citation preview

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

Hem Borker

1

1 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries. Published in India by Oxford University Press 2/11 Ground Floor, Ansari Road, Daryaganj, New Delhi 110 002, India © Oxford University Press 2018 The moral rights of the author have been asserted. First Edition published in 2018 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. ISBN-13 (print edition): 978-0-19-948422-5 ISBN-10 (print edition): 0-19-948422-8 ISBN-13 (eBook): 978-0-19-909206-2 ISBN-10 (eBook): 0-19-909206-0

Typeset in Minion Pro 10.5/13 by Tranistics Data Technologies, New Delhi 110 044 Printed in India by Rakmo Press, New Delhi 110 020

For My family

Figures

4.1 During Classes. The girls are seated on the floor in the dozanu style wearing white salwar kameez.109 4.2 Studying in classes. 109 4.3 After classes. The girls change into colourful salwar kameez once classes are over. 110 4.4 Iron grills on windows and the jali-cut windows by the staircase. 111 4.5 Institutions in which girls studied prior to joining the madrasa. 118 4.6 The standard till which the girls had studied prior to joining the madrasa. 119 5.1 Ceremonial faraghat (graduation ceremony) of the panjum (Class Five) girls. 122 5.2 The fun and frolic following the formal ceremony where the girls let go of all restraint. 123 5.3 Security Arrangements in madrasas. A teacher locking the gate to the terrace in Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat to ensure students don’t run wild on the pretext of drying their clothes on the terrace. 145 5.4 Grilled windows of a madrasa in Moradabad, Uttar Pradesh. 146 5.5 The Board of Announcements in the madrasa in Moradabad clearly states that it is a purdah institution.  147

x

Figures

5.6 The private cabin for male teachers in the classroom of a girls’ madrasa in Moradabad.  5.7 and 5.8 Students being taught ‘Computers’ in the madrasa.  5.9 ‘Dini Lab’ in a madrasa, which stores teaching and learning material to instruct students about Islamic prescriptions. 5.10 and 5.11 Selected works of art and craft by madrasa students displayed on the classroom walls. Arts and crafts, especially stitching, embroidery, and painting, are encouraged in girls’ madrasas. 5.12 and 5.13 A view of the corridors during classes with pin drop silence.  6.1 A view of lessons being held in the classroom. 6.2 The practice of purdah is strictly followed in the madrasa. The rules of purdah prescribed in the madrasa include wearing salwar-kameez with a hijab (headscarf) covering the head and bosom at all times. 6.3 Republic Day celebrations being held in Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat.  6.4 The stage was decorated in the Indian Tricolour theme with the Indian flag at the centre.  6.5 The girls presented a skit that demonstrated instances of everyday harassment and abuse of women.  6.6 and 6.7 The adab of sitting in a classroom involves sitting on one’s haunches or in the dozanu style. 6.8 Latticework screens accompanied the grilled windows of the madrasa.  6.9 Girls playing on the terrace of Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat on the pretext of drying clothes.

149 151 157

158 165 169

178 182 183 183 187 203 209

Acknowledgements

Idhar aa sitamgar hunar aazmaaen Tu teer aazma hum jigar aazmaaen (Come O Tyrant let us try our skills You try the bow and arrow, I shall try my heart) —Bismil

The research for this book began as a part of my DPhil in the University of Oxford. I am grateful to my DPhil supervisors Dr David Mills and Dr Mohammad Talib for encouraging me to follow my heart and enabling me to develop my own voice as a scholar. They have been the anchors of my academic journey. Had it not been for Dr David Mills, this work would be a mere shadow of its present self, much like its author. For initiating me into anthropology, for seeing my academic strengths, for inspiring me to never get entrapped into silos—I am grateful to Dr David Mills. I am indebted to my co-supervisor Dr Mohammad Talib for ensuring that I am not an ethnographer without access to the field and inspiring me to see how actions have unanticipated consequences. I would have been quite homeless had it not been for the generosity of both my supervisors and their families, who welcomed me into their homes for all the four years I was in Oxford. To Dr Aseem Prakash, without whom none of this would have happened. Pursuing a DPhil from the University of Oxford was my dream, a dream made possible by your belief and guidance. This work was made possible by the award of the Clarendon-St. Edmund Hall College scholarship, which allowed me to take up the

xii

Acknowledgements

DPhil place offered by the Department of Education. During the writing phase of my DPhil I was fortunate to receive generous support from the Allan & Nesta Ferguson Charitable Trust, The Leche Trust Award, Clarendon Extension Award, Frere Exhibition for Indian Studies Award, Department of Education Final Year Fund, and St. Edmund Hall Writing up Bursary. My DPhil examiners Dr Caroline Osella and Dr Nigel Fancourt painstakingly read my entire work and offered invaluable suggestions, I cannot thank them enough for the thought-provoking two hour examination at Examination Schools. Professor Ingrid Lunt, Professor Amy Stambach, and Dr Jane Dyson assessed my work at various stages. I would like to thank them for their inputs and constructive feedback. My understanding of madrasa curriculum owes much to my conversations with Maulana Ibrahim Mohammad Amin. I would also like to thank Dr Alfred Gathorne-Hardy, Mr Richard Briant and Dr Adnan Farooqui for all their help. I would like to express my deep gratitude to the then Vice Chancellor of Jamia Millia Islamia, Mr Najeeb Jung, for going out of the way to help me. For enabling my fieldwork in Delhi I am indebted to Mr Mohammad Muzammil  and Mr Shakeel  Ahmad. I am thankful to Justice Rajinder Sachar, Mr Syed Shahbuddin, Mr Wajahat Habibullah Dr Syeda Saiyidain Hameed, Maulana Wali Rehmani, Professor Imtiaz Ahmad, Dr Arshad Alam, and Dr Tanweer Fazal for sparing the time to talk to me. Most importantly my heartfelt thanks to all the participants in my research, who let a stranger into their institutions, their lives, their thoughts, their imagination, and experiences. Being a part of this research has been the most rewarding and humbling experience of my life, and there is so much that I have learnt from each one of them. This research is written with the hope that I have done justice to what each of them wanted me to take from their experiences. I would like to thank my publishers OUP, India, for seeing merit in my research and publishing my first monograph. I am especially grateful to the OUP team for all their encouragement and support from the very first reading. I would also like to thank the peer reviewers for reading my draft manuscript closely and giving their insightful comments and suggestions. I found their suggestions immensely helpful and my work has greatly benefitted



Acknowledgements

xiii

from their suggestions. A special thanks to my father for taking time out to design the evocative cover of my book—it graphically reflects my optimism with three different students of a madrasa walking confidently into a new morning onwards to their chosen goals. I am thankful to Nishtha Vadhera for her assistance in editing. I would like to thank Mr Mohammad Irfan for his help in translation, transliteration, and transcription, Ms Anahita Mir for her assistance in transliteration and Ms Suchi Kapoor for her help in digitizing the information. Through my DPhil journey, the friends I made in Oxford were a source of great strength. I couldn’t have reached this far had it not been for their incredible support, love, and laughter. They were my family away from home. To Abhishek for being there for his technically challenged friend, Narendra and Gautam for being the hope and helping hand that saw me through the most difficult of times, Kunchok for introducing me to the beauty of Oxford, the first glimpse of the rainbow of hope beyond the grey skies, Fatima for all her wise advice, Anirudh for all his care, Sudakshina for adding so much cheer, Sadia for the fun and laughter; Anisha, Amogh, Bishwanath, Dhruti, and Simin for their listening ear and Anish for all his advice. I could not have completed my thesis without the encouragement and unconditional help of my friends Jafar, Jaishree, Samrata, Rakesh, Aditya, and Deepti chechi. A special thanks is also due to Mr Yusuf Mohammad. I would also like to thank my almamater especially my teachers at Modern school, St. Stephen’s College, and Department of Social Work, University of Delhi, who enabled my educational journey. Last but not the least, I would like to thank my family to whom I owe my courage of conviction and whose unwavering support has been my guiding spirit. My extended family in the UK, Mala Mami, GC Mama, and Yash, thank you for making Victoria Gardens feel like my home. To my family back home Nani, Mama, Mami, Geeta Mausi, Sunita Mausi, my cousins, Sheila Aunty, and most importantly my brother-in-law Raghav: I could not have lived in Oxford all these years had I not known you were a shout away from Mohanalaya. I wish Shekhar Uncle were here to see this, he passed away a few months ago before my viva and if there is one thing that I could change it would be to have shared this with him and my Granny. Uncle and Granny thanks for watching over me from the skies. To my parents

xiv

Acknowledgements

and younger sister, Girija—I am everything I am because of you. To my husband, Ray, thank you for your friendship and love and being there by my side every step of the way. None of this would mean anything without having you to come back to Ray, after a long day (years now!). A special thanks to Monty, Marcus, and Eni, our labs who were my companions during the long midnight hours spent writing. My daughter Avya was born while I was converting my thesis into the present book. Each time I tore myself away from her I could feel her eyes following me and while I worked on my laptop she would wonderously look at me, propelling me like never before to give this my all. This one is for you—Mumma, Papa, Giru, Ray, and Avya.

Note on Translation and Transliteration

All the English translations from Urdu and Hindi are mine. I transliterated the Urdu and Hindi words into English following standard transcription convention. I tried to remain as close as possible to the pronunciation of colloquial Urdu used by my respondents. I chose not to use any transliteration guideline, as I did not want to make my respondents seem/appear chaste speakers of literary Urdu while writing the field-based narrative. Following Barbara Metcalf in her book Islamic Revival in British India: Deoband, 1860–1900, I too chose to ‘transliterate without diacriticals in order to present a less encumbered appearance’ (p. xxix). For readers who are keen to know the literary Urdu rendition of the colloquial urdu used by my respondents, I use diacriticals in the glossary following the Annual of Urdu Studies transliteration guidelines, 2007. The only exceptions are words that are commonly used in the English like madrasa, burqa, ummah, purdah, sharia, namaz, haram, halal, etc. and names of institutions like Darul Uloom Deoband and Darul Uloom Nadwatul Ulama, etc. for which I have relied on the English names used in their publications/ websites.

chapter one

Introduction

junctures and framings

‘I am going to Jamia, Api,’ Nikhat’s1 excited voice reverberated through my phone. I had first met Nikhat as a student of Panjum (Class Five) during my preliminary fieldwork in Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat2 in March 2012. She was 20 years old then and was introduced to me as a model student who spoke fluent Urdu and English and sang beautifully. In appearance, Nikhat conformed to all the ideals of a madrasa student: her thick black hair was tied in a tight plait with not a strand of hair visible below the white headscarf, her kohl-lined brown eyes were cast downwards, and her very still hands and feet were only just visible beneath her loose, long-sleeved salwar kameez.3 When I 1 

All names of individuals used in this book are pseudonyms. madrasa in which the fieldwork was conducted has been anonymized. 3  A common traditional dress worn in India, which resembles a long, loose-fitting tunic paired with long, loose-fitting pants. It is worn with a long scarf (dupatta) which is used as a headscarf by the girls in the madrasa. 2  The

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood. Hem Borker, Oxford University Press (2018). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199484225.003.0001

2

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

returned to the madrasa in August 2012, Nikhat had been appointed as a teacher. Nikhat joined Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat in 2007. The 15-year-old Nikhat had just finished Class Ten from a private English-medium school in Tijarpur, Rajasthan, when her father, uneasy about his daughter’s obliviousness to Muslim culture, decided to shift her from the neighbourhood village school to a girls’ madrasa in Delhi. Nikhat wrote the madrasa admission test at her father’s behest. Over time, she grew to like the madrasa; she felt privileged that she had got a chance to study her religion in the madrasa and learn to live her life the ‘right way’. Her status as an alima4 won her adulation from parents, relatives, and neighbours each time she returned home during the vacations. Interacting with other girls in the madrasa and hearing the examples of madrasa alumni studying at a big nearby university, Jamia Millia Islamia, Nikhat realized that after her madrasa education she could go to university too. When I last met her, Nikhat had just entered her second year of BA (Honours) Urdu at Jamia Millia Islamia. Nikhat’s journey from a village school to a prominent university in Delhi exemplifies the profoundly important role played by girls’ madrasas in India today, and why they deserve scholarly attention. Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat provides the context in which Islamic womanhood becomes the focus of this monograph. Few other studies have sought to capture the unfolding of these young women’s lives over time. This book focuses on three key junctures, or transitions, in the girls’ lives and is unique in bringing together an attention to community, piety, and gendered aspiration. The first juncture is the girls’ transition from their natal homes in villages and small towns across India to Jamiatul Mominat, primarily a result of their parents’ decision to educate their daughters in a residential girls’ madrasa in Delhi. The second juncture is the manner in which the girls’ aspirations are aided, abetted, and strengthened at the madrasa. This is in spite of the fact that madrasas envision and encourage girls to largely restrict themselves to religious activities and family life. The third juncture is 4  Alima means learned woman. It is generally used to refer to women who are learned in Islamic knowledge. Girls who graduate from the madrasa are called alima. In fact, the brochure of Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat refers to its course as the ‘Alima course’, spanning five years.



Introduction

3

the transition made by some students, like Nikhat, from the closely scrutinized and externally monitored environment of the madrasa to university life. I focus on these three junctures to examine how education becomes the site where the meaning of what constitutes a Muslim woman is negotiated in the everyday lives of madrasa girls. Drawing from the lives of madrasa students like Nikhat, I argue that the imagination and aspiration that constitutes the experience of learning to become a kamil momina5 tells a very different story of what girls make of madrasa education. The ideal womanhood that the madrasa students learn, enact, embody, and aspire towards differs from the ‘pious subjects’ (Mahmood 2005) envisaged in the education mission of the madrasa and envisioned by the parents. The girls’ aspirations and world views have an inherent flexibility that allows them to legitimately express themselves as pious and educated women within the larger socio-religious context. At one level, girls value and adopt many of the markers taught in the madrasa as essential to amal or the practice of piety based on religious knowledge. At another level, there is a more tactical aspect to cultivating one’s identity as a madrasa-­educated girl. The girls use the legitimacy that madrasa education confers on them to redefine social expectations around marriage, further education, and employment. By highlighting the everyday dilemmas and tensions that madrasa education brings in its wake, my research uncovers significantly new understandings of girls’ Islamic education and its contribution to the negotiation of gender in the family and the wider community. In making this argument, this text engages with anthropological literature on imagination, aspirations, gender, and Islamic piety. In the first part of this introduction, I present the larger theoretical debates within which I weave my argument. A key contribution of this book is to put these debates into dialogue, showing how work on imagined communities, feminist and anthropological scholarship on women’s piety, and Appadurai’s (2013) concept of the ‘capacity to aspire’ can together help us to think through the possibilities and constraints shaping a new kind of educated Muslim woman in India. In the second section I describe my experience of being in the field and the last section presents an outline of the following chapters. 5  Kamil Momina in Urdu means an ideal, complete, or perfect Muslim woman.

4

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

idealizing islam : an imagined community of piety

Any attempt to examine schooling in girls’ madrasas prompts an understanding of the larger context in which these institutions are acquiring increasing salience in India. This book is set within the broad field of gender, religion, and education, in particular Islam and schooling in girls’ madrasas. While the institution of Muslim girls’ schools in India can be traced to the colonial period, the concept of separate girls’ madrasas, which train women as religious specialists, as distinct from the mosque-school or maktab, is relatively recent. In the past, girls’ religious training was restricted to basic Islamic rituals and was largely confined to the home. Today, a number of girls’ madrasas in various parts of India are engaged in training girls as alima and fazila, specialists in Islamic studies and communicators of sacred knowledge, a domain that was conventionally restricted to men. This raises the question: What conception of education, and to what end, is being pursued in the schooling of Muslim girls? In unpacking the question raised in the preceding paragraph, I draw on concepts of communities as imagined entities (Anderson 1991; Appadurai 1996) to understand the notion of an ideal Muslim community. An important building block of this moral community is the imaginary of the kamil momina or ideal Muslim woman who is invested with the role of preserving and communicating the community’s moral sanctity. This ideal Muslim woman is widely regarded as one who has a deep knowledge of her faith and uses that knowledge to help raise a Muslim family and fortify its commitment to the faith (Sikand 2005). However, I do not deploy the ‘ideal’ of Muslim womanhood as a predefined category. Instead, it is presented as an open-ended question, an aspired ideal. Education, I argue, is amongst the key processes through which the imagination of an ideal Muslim woman is ‘transformed and vitalised into practice’ (Schmidt 2005: 577). I demonstrate how certain forms of religio-moral education, such as madrasa education, which are perceived as subscribing to the same principles that the imagined community upholds and wants its members to practice, acquire great significance. I choose the girls’ madrasas as the focal site to investigate the role of education in translating the vision of an ideal Muslim woman into



Introduction

5

practice. As institutions that sustain, preserve, and promote Islamic traditions, girls’ madrasas are emerging as significant players in the education of Muslim girls in India (Gupta 2009; Jeffery, Jeffery, and Jeffrey 2004; Metcalf 2007; Nayar 2011; Sikand 2005; Winkelmann 2005). In the larger social landscape of India marked by rapid change, the expectations around girls’ education and marriage are also altering. In this context, the choice of sending daughters to girls’ madrasas can be seen as subjecting the girls to a form of anticipatory socialization (Merton 1957). Girls from villages and small towns are sent to residential madrasas in cities in the anticipation that madrasa education will equip them with the requisite values and standards of a pious, educated girl. This highlights how a strong consensus about a certain kind of education for Muslim women is being fostered, supported by a wide network of actors. This network of significant actors such as the ulama, religious heads, and a significant section of the community, believe that madrasas are institutions where the imagined construct of an ideal Muslim woman can be achieved through the template of education that girls’ madrasas offer. What is intriguing is how little the above consensus tells us about the girls’ perspectives and the experience of the acquisition of knowledge, values, and morals taught in the madrasa. As Michel de Certeau writes: The presence and circulation of a representation tell us nothing about what it is for the users. We must first analyse its manipulation by users who are not its makers. Only then can we gauge the difference or similarity between the production of the image and the secondary production hidden in the process of its utilisation. (1988: xii)

It is this second image hidden in the girls’ experience of madrasa education which constitutes the focus of my work. I investigate what the girls make of (De Certeau 1988) madrasa education. By focusing on the experiences of girls, my work highlights the differing visions of Islamic womanhood that emerge in madrasas and how madrasa education becomes a space and a resource in negotiating the tensions arising from these multiple visions. This brings me to my first subquestion: What is the role of education in defining and translating the imagined ideal of Islamic womanhood into practice?

6

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

Gender, Islam, and Piety

In exploring the students’ engagement with madrasa education, I focus on how girls understand, experience, and embody Islamic piety. To understand this, I draw on feminist and anthropological work that emphasizes Muslim women’s pious submission as an expression of agency and means of self-fashioning (Deeb 2006; Frisk 2009; Mahmood 2005). These debates challenge the deterministic binaries conventionally applied by feminist scholarship that conceptualize Muslim women’s engagement with Islam in terms of subordination (Kandiyoti 1991, 1996; Wikan 1991) or resistance (Abu-Lughod 1986; Boddy 1989; Hegland 1998). This is best exemplified in the seminal work of Mahmood (2001a, 2001b, 2003, 2005). Through her ethnographic study of an urban women’s mosque movement as part of the larger Islamic Revival in Egypt, Mahmood (2005) presents an alternative conception of piety which questions the assumptions made in feminist and liberal scholarship about women’s agency, freedom, and autonomy. What is most relevant to my argument is Mahmood’s (2005) analysis of the role of religious arguments and bodily practices in the cultivation of the pious self. Mahmood (2005) demonstrates how women actively embody Islamic virtues to develop a pious self. For example, she exemplifies how veiling is constitutive of piety and not the reverse (2005: 23). The mosque women that Mahmood (2005) studied found self-fulfilment by subjugating themselves to the Islamic doctrine. Mahmood illustrates this by drawing on the example of the pianist who surrenders his body to master the performance of the art, to argue that mosque women participate in embodied Islamic practices like fasting and praying to develop the capacity to act piously. She contends that women’s repeated embodied practices reveal how we can identify agency not only in the acts that resist norms but the multiple ways in which ‘norms are lived, inhabited, inspired to, reached for and consummated’ (2005: 23). My work draws on Mahmood’s (2005) idea of a practical, conscious, embedded agency to understand how girls’ engagement with madrasa education in their everyday lives shapes and reflects the manner in which norms governing Islamic womanhood are not just received but also inhabited, aspired to, searched, and consumed. Mahmood’s attention to the embodied agency underlying Muslim women’s cultivation of a shy, modest, feminine, pious self



Introduction

7

in accordance with prevalent Islamic prescriptions is an important analytical step which allows us to challenge the notion of agency as being restricted to ‘acts that challenge social norms and not those that uphold them’ (Mahmood 2005: 25). She nevertheless tends to overstate the role of piety, presenting an idealized picture of ‘nonconflicted coherent moral selves’ (Bangstad 2011: 32), which seem to remain static over time. Mahmood’s ethnography makes little effort to discuss the ambiguities, partialities, and complexities of Muslim women’s lives. As Bangstad argues, ‘one gets little sense of the actual behaviour of these pious Muslim women in other social fields’ (2011: 32). Despite her assertions regarding the need to pay attention to the context, Mahmood’s own work does not reflect on the constraints that limit the women’s ability to exercise agency emanating from their socio-economic context. These criticisms highlight how Mahmood’s work, though important, fails to look at instances when piety is not an end in itself or absolute or stable over time, but ambivalent, partial, contradictory, and changing in light of the constraints under which it is articulated. It fails to look at the personal journeys of women, future aspirations, the possibility of women acting differently in different spaces, or of pious submission having a strategic agenda. This critique is particularly relevant given my focus on piety inculcated through institutionalized Islamic education in a madrasa. Recent anthropological work from across diverse sites and contexts in India— be it middle-class young men and women in Kerala colleges (Lukose 2009), Dalits in a rural village (Ciotti 2006), lower-caste women in Nampalli (Still 2011), or children studying in Marathi schools with Hindu nationalist agendas (Benei 2008)—highlights how education represents a paradoxical resource. A particular educational project may be envisaged with the view of producing practices and identities consonant with the local cultural notions of an educated person, but the adoption of some of these learned practices and identities may challenge those very notions. Mahmood’s work allows us to analyse the conformism within madrasa education as agential but it provides no understanding of the more paradoxical and ambivalent aspects. Recent work on madrasas (Alam 2011; Jeffery, Jeffery, and Jeffrey 2004, 2006, 2008; Winkelmann 2005) alludes to the tensions that are arising as madrasas open up to new possibilities for mobility and change.

8

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

However this body of work does not delve deeper to explore how the tensions between the enabling and constraining aspects of madrasa education play out in the students’ lives and influence family and community norms. The focus on madrasa prescriptions and students’ espousal of these practices within institutions obscures attention to the everyday lives of students that lie outside these bounds. Further, there is little attention to the role of future aspirations of students. This brings me to my second sub-question: How does the disjunction between the ideational construct of an ideal Muslim women and its practice reveal itself in everyday life? Aspirations

I apply Appadurai’s (2013) conceptualization of the ‘capacity to aspire’ to analyse the madrasa girls’ envisioning of their future and how this demonstrates the complex relationship between the girls’ expression of Islamic womanhood and the larger context. Appadurai elaborates the capacity to aspire as a ‘cultural capacity’ (2013: 187) to exemplify the complex dynamics of the conditions and constraints in which the poor negotiate with the norms that frame their social life. What is particularly relevant to my work is his analysis of aspirations as ‘social’ and ‘relational’, finding expression in what he terms as ‘densely local ideas’ (Appadurai 2013: 187) about marriage, work, leisure, respectability, and so on. Appadurai sees the capacity to aspire as a ‘navigational capacity nurtured by real world conjectures and refutations’ (2013: 189). For marginalized girls belonging to the minority community, madrasa education enhances their capacity to aspire. For example, it provides them ready access to alumni networks comprising of girls who have availed higher education and employment opportunities. As more girls nurture aspirations drawing on local ideas, these new opportunities are starting to get included in the vocabulary of the kamil momina that the girls are fashioning. However, the process of translating this imagination into practice is far more complex, as the reality of achieving aspirations means balancing these with circumscriptions stemming from girls’ socio-religious and gender location along with madrasa prescriptions. As girls embody new ways of balancing aspirations and pious prescriptions, they contribute to a changing imagination of gender in the wider community and the processes of future-making. This



Introduction

9

understanding brings me to my third sub-question: What is the role of future aspirations in the girls’ self-fashioning?  Bringing these together, my work examines the relationship between madrasa education, Islamic gendered ideals, and everyday aspirations of Muslim girls through an ethnographic account based on 12 months of fieldwork. in the field

On one of the Thursdays in 2012, I was sitting on my haunches as a part of an audience of 350 girls in the basement of the madrasa trying to ensure the unaccustomed dupatta on my head remained in place each time I bent to scribble something in my notes diary. All my senses were focused on the makeshift, slightly elevated stage where some of the students were performing. Every Thursday, students organized this halfday session of performances, which included taranas and naats (poetic glorifications of the Prophet of Islam) and taqrir (speeches). The rhythmic words of the naat ‘Sahibe Taj wo, Shahe Miraj wo’ (He wears a crown, ruler of the celestial kingdom) were still resonating in my head, when, all of a sudden, I heard my name being called out on the slightly screechy mike at the end of the hall. One of the students was saying, ‘Now I would request Hem Apa, who is studying our madrasa, and Insha Allah is going to write a book on us, to come and say something to us in English.’ This innocent introduction, given by one of the students, captures who I was as a researcher in the madrasa. I was the student’s Apa, a term of respect and endearment for an elder sister, who was studying Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat and who was teaching some of the students and most of the teachers English for almost an entire academic year in the madrasa. Much like the fate of the message in the game of Chinese whisper, my ‘doing my research in the madrasa’ was communicated, interpreted, and interpolated by the students, and the above illustrates how my being a part of the madrasa while doing research was generally understood in the madrasa. In this section I explain how I conducted my ethnographic research and made sense of my fieldwork. In the last part, based on the understanding that as the teller this ethnographic representation is the tale as seen, heard, and experienced by me, I discuss my own socioreligious and educational background and its potential influence.

10

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

Researching Madrasas

The core of this book stems from my fieldwork in Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat, Delhi. I spent close to a year in the madrasa, in three phases—the first phase was a month-long preliminary attachment (March to April 2012); the second phase, which constituted the bulk of my engagement with the madrasa, was from August 2012 to March 2013; the third phase was from August to September 2013. I also visited prominent girls’ madrasas outside Delhi, in Uttar Pradesh (Lucknow, Rampur, Moradabad), Madhya Pradesh (Bhopal), Bihar (Gaya), and Jharkhand (Dhanbad). Recognizing that ‘the field’ is in many ways an ethnographer’s ‘construction’ (Emerson, Fetz, and Shaw 2001: 354), the fluid boundaries of my field were not confined to the physical boundaries of Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat. Even though the madrasa constituted the primary site for interacting with the staff and the girls, interactions also took place outside its boundaries with parents, relatives, community members, former students of the madrasa, and gatekeepers of the madrasa. Further, ideologically, the madrasa as a social, educational, and religious institution cannot be isolated from the wider canvas of which it is a part. In subscribing to the Tablighi Jamaat,6 the madrasa is deeply embedded in a dense network of believers who conform to a particular religious tradition. As a madrasa which is ‘not affiliated to any government madrasa board’ but has adopted some modern subjects and sought accreditation from central universities, it is a participant in the ongoing ‘madrasa modernization’ process in India. As an institution engaged in training girls to be alima, it is catering to the socio-religious needs of the community. Though the ideological boundaries traversed by Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat are difficult to define in precise terms, they were, in various ways, a part of my engagement with the ‘field’. 6 Inspired by Maulana Muhammad Ilyas Khandhlawi, the Tablighi Jamaat emerged as a ‘faith movement’ in the late 1920s within the broader trend of Islamic revival in India. It aimed at reinvigoration of Islam through individual reform and renewal. It is one of the largest transnational movements of present times (Sikand 1999). It calls for self-purification by strict adherence to Islamic codes and practices. It attends to personal/private life rather than political transformation (Rodrigues 2011).



Introduction

11

My original intention was to spend a year teaching in a girls’ madrasa. However gaining continuous access to a girls’ madrasa was the biggest obstacle I faced in my research. In recent years, especially in the aftermath of 9/11, madrasas in India have been subject to unprecedented attention and surveillance in light of their alleged links with anti-national activities and terrorism. Highly suspicious of any outsider, the madrasas generally tend to brand people interested in studying madrasas as ‘journalists out to tarnish their image’ or ‘covert representatives of the government who want to inspect madrasa teaching, facilities, source of funding to blacklist or co-opt them’. Girls’ madrasas are a notch higher with respect to being guarded and fenced, lending the appearance of ‘garrisoned spaces’ (Hameed 2012). All the madrasas I explored for fieldwork welcomed me as an ‘interested guest’ but were highly uncomfortable and suspicious regarding a ‘single Hindu researcher studying abroad’ wanting to do research which did not involve ‘form (questionnaire) filling’ or just ‘two–three visits’ but continuing access for 12 months. My eventual success in securing access to Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat was in many ways the result of a combination of persistence, flexibility, and luck. I opted to conduct my fieldwork at Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat, Delhi, because the madrasa in Delhi allowed the best possible access, as the administration was open to the possibility of conducting participant observation for an entire academic year. During my attachment with Jamiatul Mominat, on an average I spent three to four days a week in the madrasa. I was never assigned a timetabled class with the students as initially planned but I spent a large part of my time in the madrasa teaching English to the madrasa teachers and students. I volunteered for everything that involved helping the girls to speak/understand English, from debates, speeches, words they could not understand, basic grammar, and filling out the university applications for admission and registration for examinations. In many of the classes I conducted variants of group exercises and experimented with varying forms of self-portrait exercises with girls from the chaharum (year four) and panjum (year five). Further, a lot of my interaction with the girls happened while doing mundane everyday activities like picking clothes that were hanging out to dry on the terrace, playing badminton in the narrow corridor of the madrasa,

12

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

putting mehendi7 on our hands, or simply while waiting in the corridor, library, or staffroom for the teachers to arrive. Over time, as I became a part of the madrasa, I was invited for several ceremonial occasions that were organized throughout the year such as the Republic Day function, Thursday performances which included speeches and naats, inter-house painting competitions, skits, and speeches. In terms of being part of such ceremonial functions, it is important to note that for most of these activities the alumni, parents, and women from the neighbourhood constituted the bulk of the audience. Initially, there was a reluctance to include me in these events as despite my attempt at moulding my appearance to look like I ‘fit in’, I still stood out in the way I carried myself and spoke. In this regard, a discernible turning point was the peaceful protest that the madrasa organized against the blasphemous content of a ­movie.8 The madrasa authorities organized a function in which the girls gave speeches about the history of Islam. After this, a protest march was taken out wherein all the students and teachers of the madrasa (wearing a burqa and black head-bands as a mark of protest) took to the street, walking till the end of the road shouting slogans such as ‘We Love Prophet Muhammad’. The principal of the madrasa asked me if I would like to be part of this protest, and when I said ‘yes’, she expressed her utter surprise, saying that she did not ever expect that I, being a non-Muslim, would agree to be part of such a protest where I was in full public view. My participation in this event was a very significant turning point in my relationship with the administration and, to some extent, the staff of the madrasa, as I had not shied away from public association with an ‘Islamic cause’ that the madrasa had clearly taken a stand on. 7  Mehndi, also known as henna in the western world, refers to the paste prepared from the henna plant and the art of temporary tattooing using the paste. 8  The movie/footage, a trailer for a longer low-budget film made in the US entitled Innocence of Muslims, depicted Islam as a religion of violence and hate, and mocked at Prophet Muhammad. The 14-minute video was first posted on YouTube on 1 July 2012 without attracting much attention. Various TV channels later picked it up. In September, thousands of people took to the streets and protested across the Middle East, North Africa, and Asia.



Introduction

13

All through my engagement with the madrasa, I largely relied on participant observation. However, as the nature of my participation in the ordinary routine and conditions of the madrasa kept changing, what I was observing around me varied accordingly. The manner in which I was participating in the everyday activities and what I was doing—be it teaching the teachers and girls as a teacher figure, or activites outside classrooms—allowed me a chance to simultaneously understand and experience the different shades and meanings daily life took in the madrasa. It allowed me to see first-hand and upclose, how girls live and learn in the madrasa, how meanings emerge through student–teacher and peer group interactions, how belief makes certain actions and associations beyond questioning, and how uncertainties girls and teachers grapple with are reflected in their imagination of their future. All through the research process, all conversations and interviews were conducted in Urdu/Hindustani. Urdu was the spoken language of the madrasa used by the madrasa authorities, teachers, and girls while speaking amongst themselves. However, here it is important to say that while I am proficient in Hindustani and over time improved my knowledge and delivery of its more chaste vocabulary, I cannot read or write Urdu as I have no knowledge and training in the Urdu script. This was amongst one of the reasons why my research does not focus on the madrasa curriculum. Even when I observed a few classes sitting at the back, I could never read the textbooks, which were mostly in Arabic, Persian, and Urdu. I had to generally wait for the teacher’s explanation of the written text to the students, which was in spoken Urdu. The methodological implications of this were that all my jottings and notes in the field were written in English or Hindi, which transliterated what I had just heard. With respect to structured interviews and self-portraits, the girls mostly wrote in Urdu, which I later got transliterated in English but did the translation myself. Here it is important to add that a sizeable number of written responses in the case of both self-portraits and interviews were not in Urdu but in  Hindi. This was particularly so in the case of self-portraits, wherein my general instructions to the girls were to write about themselves in whichever language they were most comfortable in, including regional languages. When I asked many of the girls how come they opted to

14

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

write in Hindi they all shared that their primary schooling had been in Hindi and at home, while their parents spoke Urdu, they did not write it, so they were formally learning Urdu for the first time in the madrasa. Interestingly, there were many who were in their fourth or fifth year at the madrasa and still said that they felt more comfortable writing in Hindi. The use of mobile phones, recorders, cameras, and laptops was strictly prohibited in the madrasa. Therefore, I largely relied on taking notes in the field and subsequently supplementing them with ‘mental notes’ (Angrosino 2007) that I would jot down at the end of each day, in an attempt to capture, more comprehensively, the experience of ‘seeing’ and ‘being’ there (Mills and Morton 2013: 78). During all my time at the madrasa, I openly jotted down notes as and when I thought appropriate. This was partly in response to the teachers and administrators’ expectations that ‘doing research’ meant I should be writing something, especially during interviews, and partly to make the girls comfortable with me scribbling things while talking to them—as part of reiterating my persona as a researcher. However, I was very conscious about not taking any notes during informal chats outside class or when we were discussing anything sensitive or personal. Sometimes, when I would be quickly jotting down a few words after a class with teachers or students (as teaching them with a book and chalk did not allow me to write), the teachers or girls would peer over my shoulder, asking me what had I just written, or read my notes aloud; for instance, ‘h-u-d-u-d’, followed by ‘Oh you have written hudud in English (or Hindi)’. The first few times it happened, I would just say ‘yes’ and go on scribbling, but in some instances the still-in-process-of-disbursing teachers’ group would start discussing the word. Soon I realized that I could have more discussions around such words to see what they meant to the girls: Did the word have different connotations in different contexts? Was my understanding of it correct? Thus, in a rather unanticipated way, my jottings became a way for me to also ‘think aloud’ with the girls and teachers and get their views on them. As mentioned earlier, any form of recording was prohibited in the madrasa, owing to concerns of purdah, especially purdah of the voice (awaz ka purdah). In fact, the teachers had been clearly instructed that I was not to use a recorder or camera or laptop or anything that could capture the girls’ images or voice. But on two instances I was allowed



Introduction

15

by the principal to take photographs at the insistence of the teachers (I believe, due to my prodding), but even there, she maintained that none of the girls’ or teachers’ faces should be revealed. One instance was the farewell of the panjum students and the other was a regular day in the madrasa. Both these were unanticipated occurrences; hence, I did not have a camera and took the photographs with my phone as quickly and as innocuously as possible. All the photographs of Jamiatul Mominat in this book have been taken by me during fieldwork. Some of them were taken in course of my visits to madrasas in other states. I also conducted interviews and group discussions with parents of the madrasa students. Most of these interactions with parents happened during ‘mulaqat’9 (meeting) days or on occasions like Republic Day and Independence Day, when the madrasa invited mothers to attend the day-long performances of their children. Largely spontaneous, these interactions allowed me an opportunity to understand the parents’ perspective on madrasa education especially their reasons for opting for madrasa education for their daughters. Talking to the alumni of the madrasa was another important aspect of my study. During the early stages of my fieldwork, I tried tracking some of the recent graduates of the madrasa to get a better idea of what they were doing. However, this proved rather untenable since a majority of the alumni of Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat who pursued higher education enrolled in the University as private/distance mode10 candidates rather than regular students. This led me to rethink my approach. 9  Friday was allocated as a day of mulaqat or meeting in Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat wherein the mothers would come and meet their daughters. Fathers and brothers would generally be waiting outside the premises of the madrasa in the parking lot or by the road. 10  The reasons that the girls cited ranged from parental opposition to coeducation, living in a hostel, lack of safety, affordability, inability to qualify in the entrance examination, and so forth. Several parents whose younger children were still studying in the madrasa also stated that when they had come to collect their elder children’s migration certificates, the madrasa authorities explicitly discouraged them from enrolling their children into regular undergraduate courses. They advised the parents that it was better to make their daughters do a BA through private mode rather than the regular mode, citing arguments like ‘Jamia ka mahaul achha nahin hai’ (the atmosphere of Jamia is not good), it encourages fitna (exposes them and lures them towards behaviour that’s not befitting of Muslim girls)’.

16

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

I realized that it would probably be a better idea to try and reach madrasa graduates presently studying full-time in Jamia Millia Islamia11 through the university channel. Through interactions with the faculty and students in Jamia Millia Islamia I came to know that there were certain courses in which madrasa students were present in greater numbers, such as Arabic, Urdu, Islamic Studies, and Persian. I was able to get in touch with two female students through one of the teachers. Once I spoke to the first set of students, the chain of referrals was set in motion. Through this chain I eventually managed to interview 20 girls who had previously studied in madrasas and were now enrolled in regular classes at Jamia Millia Islamia University. These girls came from the 10 girls’ madrasas across India whose degrees were recognized by Jamia Millia Islamia University for admission to higher education courses. The girls had studied in madrasas located in different places across India—Lucknow, Rampur, and Moradabad in Uttar Pradesh, Patna and Gaya in Bihar, Malegaon in Maharashtra, Hyderabad in Andhra Pradesh, and Delhi. We would often sit in a circle on the grass, at the far end of the park opposite the Faculty of Humanities and Languages in the Jamia Millia Islamia campus where the girls would collect. Very often, along with the girls who were from madrasas, their classmates (only girls) would also come and sit around and the interviews would become group discussions. representation and reflexivity

Following an ethnographic research design brought me closer to the field, allowing me an opportunity to listen to and observe the girls express their daily experiences, but the eventual power of (re)presenting those experiences lay with me. This raises questions of power, authority, and voice. My interpretation and representation of the field has been greatly influenced by my personal experiences and cultural assumptions. My engagement with the field and how I understand it, as well as the manner in which the staff, teachers, and students in the madrasa perceived me, had an important bearing on the research 11 Students from certain madrasas ‘recognized’ or listed in the Jamia Millia Islamia prospectus are eligible to sit for the entrance exams for all courses.



Introduction

17

process. Given this understanding it becomes imperative to discuss what I brought to the field. My position as both an insider and an outsider had a bearing on the research process. As an Indian and as a woman I was an insider. Given that I am conversant in Urdu/Hindustani and a few years older to the girls and near about the same age as the teachers was a huge asset in communicating with the girls and teachers formally and informally. Further, my background as a social worker working in the neighbourhood allowed me a level of access and trust that I may not have otherwise enjoyed. However, as a Hindu, middle-class researcher who had been educated entirely in mainstream schools and was studying in the UK, I was an outsider. In the next section I try and turn the ‘anthropological lens back upon the self ’ (Karp and Kendall 1982: 250 as cited in Heyl 2001: 378) to acknowledge and explain how this ethnographic research was mediated by my persona, experiences, and views as the ethnographer (Emerson, Fretz, and Shaw 1995). reflexive lens on the researcher

When you attempt to describe some aspects of a group’s life, you may be drawing from conversations, casual observations, twenty formal interviews, a previous ethnography, two novels, your general idea of the human condition, childhood experiences with your parents and who knows what else. (Agar 1980: 6)

The following is my attempt to describe my understanding of which aspects of my identity influenced the research process, and reflections on how my personal background and assumptions may have filtered what conclusions I drew and how I represent my engagement with the field. The madrasa environment was very different from anything that I had been exposed to in the course of my own education or professional experience as a social worker in educational settings. Despite having worked with members of minority communities in the past, I had never engaged with an institution which is so Muslim, not just in terms of the student and staff composition, but also in its cultural norms, behavioural practices, and ethos. Further, as an institution

18

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

this particular madrasa was rather zealously fenced, with multiple layers of security, which can be quite unwelcoming and intimidating. The staff and students of the madrasa were all Muslims. Hence, as a Hindu I was quite an anomaly in the madrasa. I felt really intimidated during the first couple of visits, by the layers of security, the dress code and protocol, though over time I became more comfortable in the set-up. I got a distinct feeling after meeting the president of the madrasa the first couple of times that he viewed me as a young, unmarried Hindu girl, studying abroad, displaying a rather unwarranted interest in madrasas, not very different from the bandwagon of journalists who want to research madrasas to reinforce images of conservative Muslims girls. However, given the credibility of the persons who introduced me to him and my acceptance to abide by all his instructions regarding dress and behaviour, he allowed initial contact on the condition that his daughter, Safia, accompanies me. In fact, he even told me that Safia would interview me to ascertain ‘my suitability’ to work in the madrasa and ‘decide what level of interaction can be allowed between me and the girls’ (President of Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat, 20 March 2012. Personal communication). However, I felt he became increasingly more amenable after Safia and I developed a rapport, easing the dressing requirements and allowing me to spend a lot more hours in the madrasa than he had originally permitted. He even consented to allow me to teach in the madrasa for over a year to facilitate my participation in the madrasa and to ‘respect my wishes of giving something back to the madrasa’ (President of Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat, 20 March 2012. Personal communication). The manner in which I met the staff at the madrasa for the first time also influenced our interaction. My initial contact with the staff was mediated through Safia. Being the founder-president’s daughter she commands a lot of respect in the madrasa and since she introduced me as a friend who was researching madrasas there was no objection to my presence by the teachers. Obviously, my presence generated a lot of curiosity; in fact, many times Safia would tell me, ‘Everyone keeps asking me about you.’ I introduced myself as a PhD student researching girls’ madrasas with a special interest in gaining insight into how the girls view their life in the



Introduction

19

institution, their everyday concerns, and future aspirations. My interactions with the teachers were polite but extremely formal and distant, with them directing any questions about me or concerns regarding my presence—such as ‘Hem’s presence in the madrasa during exam time might disturb the girls’—to Safia rather than me directly. With the small group of teachers I soon graduated from being a visitor to a friend. They referred to me as apa . Being close in age they would often discuss madrasa gossip with me—tell me who is who, who is planning to do what, who is from what family, and so forth. As someone who they perceived as being more educated, many sought assistance with their exam preparations for Jamia Millia Islamia and teacher training course work. As someone who was studying abroad, they were curious to know about the general behaviour of girls in western societies, especially Muslims—‘do they pray, how do they dress, do they respect the practice of halal, do they interact with non-Muslim boys, is boyfriend-girlfriend bazi all pervasive’ and so forth. However, there was also an understanding that I was Hindu. A lot of my time with the teachers was spent listening to their stories about the greatness of Islam as a religion and benefits of conversion. Often the teachers would make me hear recordings of Hindu girls converting to Islam and the benefits they attained, or how popular traditions in Hinduism, such as burning the pyre, worshipping idols, were baseless. With the girls I went from being a stranger to visiting teacher to an elder friend. My initial interactions with the girls, especially during the preliminary attachment, were marked by a certain amount of formality, largely on two accounts: First, I was allowed to talk to the girls only in the last two weeks of my preliminary attachment, and second, I was seen as being on the same side as the teachers. It is only during the second phase of my attachment that I graduated to the visiting-teacher-and-friend phase owing to the prolonged multifarious interactions described in the earlier sections. Overall, I got the distinct impression that the staff and students were quite comfortable with my presence. Reflecting on my interactions and experiences in the madrasa, I feel that four aspects of my persona had a particular bearing on the research process—my religious identity, my identity as a doctoral researcher from Oxford and

20

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

past training as a social worker, and my newly acquired status as a married woman in the midst of my fieldwork. Rather unexpectedly, and despite all the early signs pointing to the contrary, my being Hindu, in many ways, facilitated my interaction with the staff and girls. A great degree of apprehension had been expressed by the people who had brokered my meeting with the madrasa authorities, including by the president himself, regarding how my faith may prove to be an impediment to my being completely accepted in the madrasa. In fact, the president suggested that I not only adhere to the Islamic dress code and behavioural norms of the madrasa, but also consider adopting a ‘Muslim name’ which would immediately signal my religious affiliation as being Muslim (President of Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat, 20 March 2012. pers. comm.). However, exercising my personal discretion, I decided that while I would subscribe to the prescribed dress code and try to follow the behavioural code, I would continue to use my own name and be honest about my religious identity. Being open about the fact that I was Hindu actually made it easier for me to ask questions and slip into the role of a ‘learner’ while interacting with the staff and students on matters of religious customs and daily practices of the madrasa. I feel that the very fact that I was an adult educated person who was not prescriptive and curious to learn from them, was some sort of a novelty for the girls. In my interaction with them they would try and simplify things, translate from Arabic to Urdu to explain what they were doing and thinking, and in many ways this brought me closer to understanding their experiences. I had presumed that being a doctoral researcher from the University of Oxford would go a long way in establishing my credibility. While to some extent it did establish my trustworthiness with the people who brokered my initial meeting with the madrasa, it was a cause of concern with the madrasa authorities, especially the President. He rather pointedly asked me why I had chosen to study girls’ madrasas in India while being in the UK and alluded to the general mistrust in ‘western countries’ about madrasas ‘housing terrorists and bomb factories’ (President of Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat, 20 March 2012. Personal communication). I did try to clarify my position as an independent researcher, but the statement he repeatedly made was: ‘This is a pious place where we are doing community service and all



Introduction

21

the girls studying here are an amanat.12 I hope you have not come here with the intention to malign it or with some other agenda of your university because they have these preconceived notions of what happens inside. I am putting myself on the line by letting you in’ (President of Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat, 20 March 2012. pers. comm.). Similarly, the fact that I was studying in UK13 initially made the staff and girls very guarded. At various times during interactions they wanted to know about my personal boundaries of appropriate behaviour, dressing, and talking—‘Do you wear cut sleeves, make-up, do girls and boys live in the same place, do you sit next to boys, do you have male teachers, how do you travel without a husband, and so on. As Safia put it, ‘They want to know if you are a “hi-fi” girl— Indian in looks but western in mind set—or as simple, grounded, and friendly as you seem’. My experience as a social worker had equipped me with social skills that went a long way in helping me wriggle out of awkward moments, striking a conversation and building a rapport especially with young girls. In the field, I would often tend to spontaneously draw on things I have learnt as a part of my training such as elements of street theatre like breaking into a jingle or just playing a game to break the ice. For instance, in the initial days of fieldwork each time I was allowed access to some of the students by their respective teachers, there was such an air of formality in the classroom that the girls would not really talk. On one such day after about half an hour or so it became really awkward, as there was just no conversation. So I just asked if the girls would like to play a game so that we could get to know each other better. I asked the two teachers present to also participate. We simply divided ourselves into two circles, one within the other. The two circles then began to rotate in opposite directions, and each of us had to introduce ourselves to the person facing us and ask any one question of our choice, before moving to the next. After an 12 

Amanat is something that belongs to another person that he or she gives to you for safekeeping. It is given on the basis of a relationship based on trust. In this case, the girls are referred to as an amanat sent by the parents to the madrasa for education based on a sense of trust. 13  Variously referred to as ‘England’, ‘foreign’, ‘Wilayat’ (abroad) by the staff and girls during interactions.

22

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

entire round, the directions reversed. It took some time for the game to take off, but the teachers seemed rather excited about it. I started by asking the teachers simple things like their favourite food, favourite colour, and the circle started moving. The girls asked me where I was from, what my name meant, why I had come there, was I vegetarian, was I Punjabi, did I have siblings, why was I still studying, where did I study, where was Oxford? By the time the game was over everything seemed a lot more relaxed and thankfully less awkward. While such activities greatly helped me to ease into the daily life of the madrasa, gain acceptance, and become a part of the institution without falling into the category of either a teacher or a visitor. My social work training has equipped me with the set of skills and temperament required to gain access, acceptance, and foster relationships; however, in retrospect I feel that in many ways it coloured the manner in which I approached my research, including the initial formulation of my questions. Having worked as a social worker on projects which were largely directed at ensuring that basic services reached the more marginalized sections of society, I would often be struck by the manner in which categories such as biradri, religion, class, gender, and community fuse to create opportunities and obstacles and shape daily choices. With respect to Muslim women, particularly, seeing their daily lives and hearing them talk about their experiences, I felt the popular discourses around me which generally oscillated between attributing the condition of Muslim women to the inherent conservatism of the community or solely blaming it on discrimination by the state and majority community, were rather simplistic. To my mind there were twin processes of accommodation and contestation that were operating in tandem. Hence, when I initially framed my research proposal and research questions, it was within the agency structure paradigm. However, as my research progressed I became less interested in finding demonstrations or making revelations about the girls’ agency in the madrasa, which initially seemed like a total institution. As I observed and heard the girls talk about their future I realized that their imagined futures were centred more on spiritual progress, respect within the family, concerns of marrying well, and pursuing higher education. However, as an educated Indian woman who intrinsically believes in equality and economic independence of women, I realized that my own preconceived notions, which



Introduction

23

accorded higher education, employment, the right to choose one’s spouse as ‘the way most girls would think if they are not constrained by gendered social norms’ were possibly preventing me from processing what I was seeing and hearing. I had approached this research from an advocacy position, yet the story that was emerging was not one of Muslim girls from poor, marginalized families getting an opportunity to avail education in madrasas, which were providing a socially permissible opportunity to girls who otherwise might as well have remained illiterate. It was not about girls valuing their madrasa degree because it was recognized by universities and opened higher education and job opportunities. It was a lot more nuanced than that. Realizing, accepting, and presenting these nuances has been one of the most humbling and important parts of doing this research. Another unanticipated factor that impacted the research was transitioning from being an unmarried girl when I initially gained access to the madrasa to becoming a married woman while I was doing my fieldwork. I use the words ‘girl’ and ‘woman’ very consciously as I feel that both elicited very different responses from the madrasa authorities and teachers. Before I was married, the rules that the madrasa authorities expected me to adhere to generally pertained to dressing modestly, covering my head, and so forth. I was initially asked if my parents were all right with me working in the madrasa and studying abroad but beyond that there weren’t too many enquiries about the permissibility of my work. This completely changed once I got married. I had to not only answer very direct questions about whether my husband was all right with me working in the madrasa and studying abroad, but I was also told that irrespective of his ‘liberality’ in allowing me to pursue my studies, I was not conducting my life the way a newly married wife should. Some of the wrongdoings that were often listed to me included staying and working in Delhi when my husband was in another city, not attending to him and taking care of him, travelling unaccompanied by him, not just in India but also abroad. Explaining my behaviour in a way that would not offend and at the same time convey my attitude and beliefs proved very difficult. On the other hand, being married allowed me insights into concerns and dynamics in the madrasa that I had previously not known even existed. For example, I discovered that many girls in the madrasa were married but did not refer to themselves as being married, as

24

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

they had not yet had their ruksati or left their parents’ home for their husband’s. This is similar to the gauna ceremony popular in northern India, associated with consummation of marriage, whereby marriage is considered only a ritual union and conjugal life begins only after the gauna ceremony until which time the girl continues to stay with her parents. My newfound status as a newly-wed also led to curious enquiries about my husband and our relationship. Discussions around such topics, though often rather embarrassing, brought me face to face with the way girls imagined marriage, the importance attached to it in their lives, their conception of a married Muslim woman, and their questions and concerns about the kind of transition marriage and motherhood brought about. For example, on one occasion, during my class with the teachers, we were discussing the poem, ‘Bangle Sellers’ by Sarojini Naidu (1912), which is part of the Jamia Millia Islamia syllabus. The poem describes the different bangles adorning women at different stages of their lives—as young maidens, brides and old women. Some are meet for a maiden’s wrist, Silver and blue as the mountain mist Some are like fields of sunlit corn, Meet for a bride on her bridal morn Some are purple and gold-flecked grey For she who has journeyed through life midway (Excerpts from Bangle Sellers by Sarojini Naidu)

My attempts at helping the teachers understand the meanings of the lines led to a personal discussion about their present lives as of the maiden described by the poet, the way they thought of marriage, bearing children, and growing old. Amidst giddy laughs and hush-hush voices we discussed topics such as the first night after marriage, how and when to have children, how not to have children, how to deal with the in-laws, and so forth. I feel this sort of a spontaneous interaction would have been totally different had I not been married. The above section has detailed my personal journey through fieldwork. I have also reflected on aspects of my persona that I feel



Introduction

25

influenced my engagement and subsequent representation of the field. In the next section I sketch out the following chapters. book outline

In this ethnography I examine the everyday lives and aspirations of students in a girls’ madrasa in Delhi. I explore how the girls’ educational journeys from their homes to the madrasa and beyond define their understanding of an educated Muslim woman. Focusing on three key transitions—home to madrasa, inside the madrasa, and life after the madrasa—this work contends that Islamic notions of womanhood are shaped by imaginings of community, piety, and gendered aspirations. In Chapter Two, I begin by tracing the historical roots of contemporary madrasas in India. I turn to contemporary girls’ madrasas highlighting how most research theorizes madrasa education in conceptual binaries of social reproduction and empowerment. Emphasizing the centrality of everyday experiences of students in understanding madrasa education, I discuss the theoretical concepts of community, pious self-fashioning, and aspirations that inform my work. Drawing from field notes, interviews, and self-portraits written by students and teachers in the madrasa, Chapter Three presents a series of ethnographic portraits. Each of the portraits embody, manifest and, to some degree, comment on the different faces of women’s engagement with girls’ madrasas against the backdrop of India’s social, religious, and educational landscape that is changing. Chapter Four situates madrasas within the larger socio-political context of India. Exploring the rising salience of girls’ madrasas, it examines the growing influence of Islamic reformist movements and how it impacts the everyday lives of Muslim women, especially their engagement with public spaces like education. Having painted the larger canvas with a very broad brush, in the last section I focus on Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat where I conducted my fieldwork. In Chapter Five, ‘Making of Kamil Momina: Girls’ Madrasa and the Fashioning of Moral Community’, I examine the role of education in defining and translating the imagined ideal of Islamic womanhood into practice. In the next chapter, ‘Becoming a Kamil Momina: Girls’ Lives Inside Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat’, I focus on the everyday lives of girls to understand the disjunction between

26

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

the ideational construct of an ideal Muslim women and its practice. In Chapter Seven, I map the lives of some girls who have completed their madrasa education and are pursuing higher education, to examine the fluidity of pious ideals and the role of aspirations in the girls’ selffashioning. Chapter Eight, the conclusion, brings together the insights that emerge from the discussion in the earlier chapters drawing together the different strands of the argument this book makes on the ideal womanhood that the madrasa students learn, enact, embody, and aspire towards. The book concludes by outlining the policy reflections that emanate from this research. It highlights the need to include girls’ madrasas in the Indian policy discourse on Muslim women’s education, which continues to emphasize mainstreaming and empowerment, often overlooking the nuanced concerns and social norms that drive members of Muslim communities to opt for madrasa education for girls. Further, it problematizes the policy approach of locating ­contemporary madrasas in the conventional binary of tradition ­versus modernity.

chapter two

Situating Madrasa Education for Girls

Perhaps there are few communities of the world among whom education is more generally diffused than among Muhammadans in India. He who holds office worth 20 Rupees a month commonly gives his sons an education equal to that of the Prime Minister. They learn through the medium of Arabic and Persian languages, what young men in our colleges learn through Latin and Greek—that is grammar, rhetoric and logic. After his seven years of study, the young Muhammadan binds his turban upon a head almost as well filled with things which appertain to these branches of knowledge as the young man raw from Oxford—he will talk fluently about Socrates, Aristotle, Plato and Hippocrates, Galen and Avicenan (alias Sokrat, Aristotalis, Alflatun, Bokrat, Jalinus, and Bu Ali Sena); and, what is much to his advantage in India, the languages in which he has learnt what he knows are those which he most requires through life (Sleeman quoted in Dalrymple 2006: 95).

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood. Hem Borker, Oxford University Press (2018). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199484225.003.0002

28

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

These words of British administrator Colonel Sleeman quoted in William Dalrymple’s book The Last Mughal (2006 ) paint a picture of madrasas as educational nerve centres of Mughal India. Dalrymple (2006: 94) goes on to describe the imagery of eager boys running despite the pouring rain to attend their classes in a nineteenth-­ century Delhi madrasa of the kind reported by Colonel Sleeman above. Two centuries later, researching madrasas in the same capital city, I found myself facing an equally enthusiastic bunch of students actively participating in madrasa education. However, the students that I interacted with were not boys but demurely dressed girls studying in a girls’ madrasa in Delhi. These two images provide a glimpse of the continuity and change that characterizes the long history of madrasa education in India. With a view to situate women’s madrasa education in the wider academic literature, this chapter traverses through a broad canvas focusing on junctures, debates, and concepts that bring together education, women, and Islam, especially in the South Asian context. The first section examines the historical roots of contemporary madrasas in India, highlighting the critical role played by the colonial encounter. I also discuss the nineteenth-century image of Muslim womanhood constructed by Muslim reformers in response to colonization that continues to define the educational vision of contemporary girls’ madrasas in India. In the second section, I discuss the literature on contemporary girls’ madrasas focusing on the Indian context. I argue that most research has tended either to completely ignore the everyday experience of students studying in madrasas or bracket it in binaries of social reproduction and empowerment. Drawing on recent anthropological work, I illustrate an important conceptual gap in the study of madrasa education—a tendency to conflate madrasa educational regimes with student practice. In the third section, I look at recent anthropological research on women’s engagement with Islam that has theoretically influenced the present work, especially Mahmood’s (2005) work on pious self-fashioning. The fourth section overviews research that examines the relationship between women’s participation in religious piety projects and gender relations. I highlight the relative lack of attention in literature to shifting forms of pious self-fashioning.



Situating Madrasa Education for Girls

29

reforming madrasas and educating muslim women : relics of the colonial past

Colonial Encounter and Madrasa Education

The term ‘madrasa’ derives from the Arabic root darasa, which means ‘to study’. Literally, a madrasa implies a place of study, an educational institution or ‘a school’1 (Noor, Sikand, and Bruinessen 2008). From the early medieval period, when madrasas were first established in India, to Mughal times, which saw a massive expansion of madrasas owing to state patronage, madrasas enjoyed a prominent place in the educational landscape of India. In this period the term ‘madrasa’ was used to refer to a variety of institutions. Alam (2003) writes that these ranged from the small maktabs attached to mosques, which taught elementary education (especially the Quran), sustaining on charity, to larger institutions created and patronized by the ruling elite. The latter taught a combination of ‘religious sciences’ and ‘rational sciences’ such as philosophy and logic (Alam 2011) following the customary Dars-i Nizami,2 catering largely to the educational needs of elite sections. They not only trained the ulama but also produced the functionaries who managed the state apparatus as well as physicians, astronomers, and mathematicians (Alam 2003: 2123–4). Thus, in medieval India, madrasas functioned as schools. They did not represent exclusively religious or dini institutions singularly associated with Islamic learning or even institutions that exclusively catered to the educational needs of Muslims given that many Hindu students studied in madrasas. The constructions of madrasas as Islamic institutions of religious learning are linked with the subcontinent’s colonial encounter, which introduced the vocabulary of secular versus religious, public versus 1  In Arabic-speaking parts of the world, the term applies to all schools, including both those that teach only Islamic subjects as well as regular schools imparting a secularized syllabus. 2  Dars-i-Nizami was a systematic syllabus developed by Mulla Nizamuddin under the patronage of Mughal emperor Aurangzeb in the seventeenth century. The syllabus included the study of rational sciences (ma’aqulat), Arabic and Persian languages, especially grammar (sarf and nahaw), Islamic law (fiqh), and logic (mantaq).

30

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

private, and modern versus traditional into the educational landscape of the Indian subcontinent (Qadir 2013; Zaman 1999). An examination of the historical trajectory of the colonial education policy in India reveals a complex project driven by shifting administrative, socio-economic, and religious motives (Basu 1982), with a ‘conscious othering of the natives’ (Kumar 2010) constituting its ideological core. Madrasas, as a key part of the indigenous school system in pre-colonial India, were deeply implicated in this process. Colonial policies in the nineteenth century were instrumental in fostering a negative perception of madrasa education and concomitantly fostering the growth of a new kind of madrasa such as at Deoband founded in 1867 and Darul Uloom Nadwatul Ulama in the 1890s. The policy of non-interference in education, which characterized the early years of the rule of the East India Company,3 soon gave way to systematic efforts to understand, regulate, and reform the existing system of education in accordance with colonial interests. In 1813, for the first time the British Parliament included in the East India Company’s charter a clause to allocate a certain sum for the ‘education of natives’. Surveys and reports to understand and suggest improvements in the pre-existing education system were commissioned. For example, the Adam’s Reports on the state of indigenous education in India document in great detail a vast network of indigenous schools such as madrasas, maktabs, tols, and pathshalas (Nurullah and Naik 1951). The 1820s saw the famed Anglican versus Orientalists debate on whether the company should encourage western or oriental learning and what should be the medium of instruction. Macaulay’s Minute of 1835 resolved the debate in favour of English as the medium of instruction on ‘grounds of utility and inherent merit of the knowledge it would give access to’ (Basu 1982: 5). These educational aims were inextricably linked with the economic aims of producing ‘clerks who could be employed cheaply’, evangelical concerns of spreading the civilizing mission, and ideological aims of creating a class of Indians who would 3  The early years were marked by a policy of non-interference in education with patronage extended to select institutions in continuation with prevalent customary patterns. For example, in 1781, Warren Hastings established the Calcutta Madrasa, which initially followed the Dars-i Nizami, a syllabus taught in most other madrasas of the subcontinent (Zaman 1999: 300).



Situating Madrasa Education for Girls

31

act as interpreters between the government and natives (Basu 1982: 7). English supplanted Persian as the language of the Courts in 1837, and after 1844 Western education increasingly became a requirement for securing government employment. The ‘downward filtration’ approach adopted with the underlying understanding that education would eventually percolate from the elite to the masses (Nurullah and Naik 1951: 113) meant a continuing neglect of mass education leading to decay of the existing indigenous systems of education. In 1854, Wood’s Dispatch stressed the educational responsibility of the state, refuting the earlier downward filtration approach. Further, it forbade religious instruction in government schools, enshrining the principle of religious neutrality, and re-affirmed the emphasis on Western education. It crystallized the binary of ‘English/modern/true/secular–Indian/traditional/false/ religious’ in education (Qadir 2012: 130). The year 1857 saw the end of Company rule and marked the beginning of the rule of the British Crown, with education continuing to serve as a colonial appendage. With respect to madrasas, the colonial measures discussed above construed categories that not only sustained through the period of British rule but continue to inform policy measures of modernization and reform of madrasa education even in independent India. Zaman (1999) describes in great detail how the unprecedented colonial categorization of ‘religious’ education and ‘useful’ education as mutually exclusive forms of learning shaped the ‘negative perception of madrasa education’ and subsequent moves to reform it. Zaman (1999) demonstrates how colonial administrators conceived of religion as a personal experience, confined to the private sphere, and as an entity subordinate to the state. This understanding became the premise for categorizations such as religious and un-religious, public and private, made for administrative purposes in all spheres including education. Given this understanding, the ‘policy of religious neutrality’ was adopted in government schools, which excluded all formal instruction in religion from the school curriculum (Zaman 1999). Under this classification, madrasa education began to be placed under the religious category. Zaman (1999) describes how ‘useful instruction’ constituted another intersecting category. The influence of English Utilitarians introduced the notion of utility and practical use as an important characteristic of ideal education. The colonial definition of useful learning promoted specific forms of

32

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

Western education, such as knowledge of Western sciences4 (Gupta 2009). As Zaman (1999) writes, such understandings left little scope to include madrasa education. Even though madrasas did subscribe to the notions of usefulness, their understanding inspired by Islamic tradition, which conceptualized usefulness in terms of knowledge of salvation and inculcation of moral virtues, was scarcely considered useful in the colonial understanding. Thus, the colonial encounter successfully constructed binaries wherein ‘modern was necessarily anti-Muslim/anti-Hindu and European and traditional was necessarily Muslim/Hindu and Indian’ (Qadir 2012: 129). In the 1870s, a new trend became discernible in the colonial educational policy, an emphasis on bringing the Muslims into the fold of Western education. Seth (2007) describes how the myth of the ‘backward but proud Muslim’ was manufactured by painting a picture of Muslims as opposed to western education. Citing W.W. Hunter’s 1871 publication, The Indian Musalmans, Seth (2007) discusses how the image of Muslims as erstwhile rulers reluctant to accept new realities was constructed by painting a picture of their disaffection with government-sponsored Western education. The general explanation cited was that this opposition emanated from the Muslim perception of Western education as opposed to Islamic religious traditions. These explanations came to be readily accepted by the colonial government, finding mention in government reports, for instance, the Hornell Committee Report, 1914, as responsible for Muslim backwardness (Seth 2007). Seth argues that statistics were employed from this particular perspective, and rather than highlighting Muslim backwardness, they actually were a means of ‘making it into a fact’, bringing into being a new way of conceiving the ‘Muslim’ (2007: 124). Madrasa education was closely identified in colonial discourse as part of the problem of the ‘backward Muslim’ and hence madrasas were denounced as ‘centers of backwardness fostering only religious traditionalism’ (Gupta 2009). This construction of madrasas is best represented in the Hartog Committee, 1929 (Nurullah and Naik 1951: 719–23), which discussed the disadvantages of ‘separate’ and ‘special’ institutions for Muslims, such as madrasas, maktabs, and Quran 4  For example, one of the criteria for allocating the money necessitated by the Charter Act of 1813 was the promotion of sciences.



Situating Madrasa Education for Girls

33

schools. Terming them as inefficient, inferior to regular schools, lacking in quality, and offering little by way of future opportunities, the committee discussed these institutions as being responsible for handicapping Muslim students. In light of this understanding of madrasas as backward religious educational institutions irrelevant to the needs of a modernizing society, educational reform in colonial India meant taking education out of the religious sphere and making it useful. However, here it is important to note that a great degree of ambivalence characterized the operationalization of the reform programme (Zaman 1999). This translated into the British introducing reforms in madrasas that they established or took over or administered, by combining ‘useful learning’ with the study of pre-existing Islamic sciences in varying extents. Drawing from the example of Bengal, Zaman (1999) remarks that on the ground a vast spectrum of reformed, semi-reformed, and unreformed government madrasas along with those that the government did not support or recognize existed side-by-side, posing a challenge to government committees periodically formed to reform them. Madrasas, ‘embedded as they were in specific social arrangements’ (Hefner and Zaman 2007: 4), transformed with changes in the wider society in which they were located. Having lost out on coveted government jobs and in the face of colonial hostility, Muslim religious clergy responded by distancing themselves from the state and protecting the image of madrasas as religious educational institutions. They responded to the colonial challenge by establishing several ‘new madrasas’ (Nair 2009), especially in North India. These new madrasas emphasized their ‘usefulness’ in terms of religious education and attempted to preserve traditional Islamic learning (dini talim) by isolating it from the ‘un-Islamic western knowledge and sciences’. This is often regarded as the beginning of the great divide between what is referred to as ‘dini talim’ and worldly or ‘duniyavi’ learning on the other, the two viewed as fundamentally opposed to the other (Sikand 2005). Further, with the withdrawal of state patronage and abolition of the system of religious revenue (waqf) for Muslim religious schools in India due to their part in the revolt of 1857, the madrasas turned to the Muslim community for support and funds. Many of the newly founded madrasas actively rejected state patronage, arguing that it would make them vulnerable to interference. In this regard, the estab-

34

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

lishment of Darul Uloom at Deoband,5 Uttar Pradesh, in 1867 marks an important watershed. Set up solely on the basis of public donations, Deoband established itself as an institution meant exclusively for religious education. Zaman rightly terms Deoband as the ‘most prominent instance in the Indian subcontinent of inviting people to conform to true Islam of authoritative religious texts as defined by an urban madrasa based religious elite’ (1999: 304). In the hostile environment fostered by colonialism, the Deoband founders turned away from their traditional reliance on elite Muslims and sought to create a clientele among ordinary Muslims. The idea of catering to the masses was unprecedented in the history of madrasas in India. According to Alam (2006), this development marked an important ‘first’, as Deoband  and the contemporary religious movements, for the first time, provided the lower class Indian Muslim with a sense of belonging to a corporate Muslim identity (2006: 179). The teaching practices of Deoband also marked a significant departure from the past. Unlike its predecessors, Deoband adopted the formal organizational structure that characterized Western educational institutions such as set curriculum, academic year, separate classes for different levels, annual examinations, and a network of affiliated madrasas (Metcalf 2000). However, Deoband’s rigid emphasis on traditional Islamic learning led to the emergence of other schools, which advocated a greater balance between traditional Islamic learning and modern disciplines, such as the Madrasatul Uloom Musalmanan-e-Hind or Mohammedan AngloOriental College (which later became Aligarh Muslim University) in 1875, and Nadwatul Ulama in the 1890s. In light of the developments detailed above, ‘new’ Muslim religious scholarly movements—the Deobandis, Barelwis, the Aligarh movements, the Nadwatul Ulama— consider themselves intrinsically reform-oriented since they owe their genesis to Muslim reform movements post the upheaval of 1857 (Hartung 2006). This emergence of ‘new’ madrasas in colonial India, which were qualitatively different from earlier madrasas in structure, vision, and function, illustrates the change that marks the history of madrasa education (Alam 2011; Hartung 2006) as opposed to their 5 The Darul Uloom Deoband is one of the most prestigious Islamic universities in the subcontinent. It is located in the district of Saharanpur, 147 km north of New Delhi, India. 



Situating Madrasa Education for Girls

35

image as medieval traditional institutions divorced from modernity. An understanding of the above-mentioned developments illustrates how current debates on madrasa reform and modernization are relics of the colonial encounter. Muslim Social Reform and Women’s Education in NineteenthCentury Colonial India

An integral part of the colonial construction of India as ‘uncivilised’ was the attention on the ‘oppression’ of Indian women (Ray 2012). For the colonial rulers this civilizational critique served as a means to justify British rule in India. In this regard, the reform debates on women’s education spurred by this colonial narrative are of great interest to my work. An examination of the reform debates amongst Muslim social reformers (mostly male) reveals how attempts to construct a reformed community to preserve the culture and identity of Indian Muslims as well as incorporate the material advantages of the West (Chatterjee 1993; Rajakumar 2009) led to an increasing interest in the question of women’s education. Robinson (1997) demonstrates how women’s role was recast to include the extra responsibility of being the ‘central transmitters of Islamic values, the symbols of Muslim identity, the guardians of millions of domestic Islamic shrines’. With the twin motive of resisting the colonial regime and carving out an identity distinct from the Hindu majority, the Muslim social reformers focused on the ‘Muslim home’ as the sociopolitical space to preserve the cultural authenticity of Muslims and its central figure, the ‘Muslim housewife’ (Rajakumar 2009). Household manuals such as social reformer Ashraf Ali Thanawi’s Bihisti Zewar (Heavenly Ornaments, first published in 1905)6 and novels such 6  Bihishti Zewar written by Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanawi is a household manual to train girls and women in the practice of piety. In South Asia, it is a popular custom to present this volume to a new bride (Metcalf 1990). Metcalf writes (1990: 2) that the basic principle of the Bahishti Zewar is that women must be instructed if they are to act properly. In his book, Thanawi defines a range of bodily practices and social behaviour appropriate for women as well as the methods for their inculcation. Winkelmann writes (2005:11) that Thanawi’s Bihishti Zewar is a part of the curriculum of most Deoband Girls’ Madrasas.

36

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

as Nazir Ahmad’s Mirat ul Urus (The Bride’s Mirror, 1869)7 among many others discussed the ‘proper behaviour’ of women, creating the image of an idealized Muslim woman (Metcalf 1990; Minault 2009). The male reformers projected women’s education as the most urgent need of the community to educate women in this proper behaviour, to resist the challenge of Western culture, protect and promote Islamic authenticity, and ensure that women become ideal mothers to groom ideal Muslim families. The backward, superstitious, illiterate Muslim woman who was a repository of un-Islamic beliefs was represented as a major hurdle to the community. Women thus became the symbols of what Devji (1991) terms as the ‘orthodox privacy’, silent figures maintaining the Muslim conscience in domestic spaces. A similar argument has been made by Partha Chatterjee (1993) with respect to the nationalists’ treatment of the ‘women’s question’ in colonial India. He contends that nationalists created a divide between an outer world of men and a domestic sphere for women to construct the latter as a ‘domain of sovereignty’. The outer world of men cultivated the material techniques of the Western civilization while the domestic world of women and family preserved the spiritual core of national culture. The women were ‘not to lose their essentially spiritual virtues’ and not ‘become westernised’ (Chatterjee 1993: 126). Formal education was to help them acquire certain refinements to become good wives to their husbands. They could study, travel outside of their homes, but needed to maintain the spiritual signs of femininity in their dressing, eating habits, comportment, and religiosity (1993: 130). The manner in which girls’ madrasas in India conceptualize and operationalize the 7  Mirat-ul-Urus is an extremely popular Urdu novel written by Nazir Ahmad in 1869. In 1870 it won the prize offered by the government to books judged suitable for educational use, especially suitable for women (Naim 1984). Minault (2009) writes that it was one of the novels that reflected the increasing concern amongst sharif (of noble birth) men about the question of women’s education. It presents a tale of two sisters, one ill-tempered and uneducated, who emerges as a failure, and the other a stark contrast. The younger, educated sister is the repository of everything perfect. Owing to her modest virtues and education she helps advance her husband’s career while balancing her household duties and family responsibilities. Metcalf (1990) terms Mirat-ul-Urus as a ‘story that seems in many ways a fictional account of the girl the Bihishti Zewar was meant to produce’.



Situating Madrasa Education for Girls

37

ideal of educated Muslim women carries imprints of this nineteenthcentury image of Muslim womanhood constructed by the Muslim reformers in response to British colonization. Paying attention to the historical roots of madrasas and the construction of ideals of Islamic womanhood in nineteenth-century India, as outlined in this section, helps us situate contemporary madrasas in India in the larger historical context. It allows an understanding of how neither the contentious relationship between ­madrasas and modernity nor certain notions of Islamic womanhood, is by any means new, but builds upon an older colonial legacy. In the next section, I discuss studies that relate to madrasa education, Muslim women’s education, and girls’ madrasas. girls ’ madrasas in india

Presenting my research at a graduate conference I opened with an image of female students bending over a red hardbound book with Arabic lettering, only their hands visible. I asked the audience—If the photograph had captured the faces of students studying in a madrasa in India, what would we see? I got a range of responses mostly conveying the stereotypical imagery of Muslim appearance—beard, skull cap, kurta pyjama, and so on—but what was most interesting was that all responses imagined the madrasa student as male. This perspective of madrasas as primarily male institutions is not only characteristic of popular discourse but also commonly found in academic scholarship. An overview of academic work on madrasas and education of Muslim women highlights few studies that bring together these two themes in the Indian context. An exploration of scholarship on Muslim women reveals limited focus on the education of Muslim women. Much of the literature on Muslim women has focused on issues that relate to religious identity, such as studies on veiling and purdah (Jacobson 1978; Jeffery 1979; Mandelbaum 1988; Vreede-de Stuers 1968) and debates on personal law, especially in the wake of the controversial ‘Shah Bano case’ (see, for example, Chhachhi 1991; Hasan 1994, 1998; Kishwar 1998; Patel 2009). In recent times, there have been attempts to shift the focus from religious identity markers to larger socio-economic issues that marginalize Muslim women (Hameed 2000; Hasan and Menon 2004;

38

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

Lateef 1990; Soman and Niaz 2014). In the domain of education this has led to studies that explore the multiple factors that impact the educational attainment of Muslim women in India (Hasan 2005; Hasan and Menon 2004, 2005; Nayar 2011; Nuna 2003). These studies attach little significance to girls’ madrasas. However, the lack of attention to Muslim women’s educational concerns in general and girls’ madrasas in particular is merely one of the limitations. A larger limitation is the approach to theorizing Indian Muslim women. There is a tendency to present Muslim women as a group that is collectively and/or uniformly oppressed (see Kirmani 2013), a trend that neatly fits in with the larger, politically driven gender theorizing on ‘Third World Women’ (Mohanty 1988). There are few studies based on ethnographic fieldwork that provide a nuanced understanding based on women’s voices about their own lives, explore the interaction of multiple identities, and situate women in their socio-economic and religious milieu. In this regard, Kirmani’s (2013) recent work on women’s narratives about everyday life in a predominantly Muslim neighbourhood in Delhi stands apart. Kirmani’s (2013) work questions the reification of Muslim women as a unified category by highlighting the shift in her respondents’ representations of themselves with change in social positioning and context. Also significant in this regard are recent works (Khan 2007; Metcalf 2000; Sikand 1999) that explore the relationship between the lived aspects of the rise of Islamic reform movements in present-day India with special reference to women. An overview of literature on madrasa education in India illustrates a growing body of work on contemporary madrasas (such as, Aleaz 2005; Ara 2006; Bandhopadhyay 2002; Engineer 2001; Hartung and Reifeld 2006; Jhingran 2005; Sikand 2005). Most of this research focuses on the socio-political and religious aspects of madrasas, especially linkages between madrasas and radical Islam. The global stereotyping of madrasas as breeding grounds for terrorism post the 9/11 attacks and the long-standing history of similar allegations by the Hindu Right within India have been largely responsible for this excessive scholarly attention to the religious and political functions of madrasas and neglect of their educational role. This is true of both sets of studies, those that seek to validate the links between madrasas and political extremism as well as those that offer a corrective to this monolithic view on madrasas (Hartung and Reifeld 2006; Malik



Situating Madrasa Education for Girls

39

2007). This overarching focus on the radicalization of madrasas and a methodological reliance on secondary sources has led to limited attention to madrasas as educational institutions, the everyday life inside them, and voices  and perspectives of madrasa students. The few notable exceptions with regard to madrasa education in India are recent sociological and anthropological studies by Alam (2011), Jeffery, Jeffery, and Jeffrey (2004, 2006, 2008), Winkelmann (2005), and Sikand (2005). My work complements this existing work on gender and lived realities of madrasa education. I return to the principal themes discussed in these studies a little later. My principal object here is to highlight the limited attention accorded in academic literature to everyday experiences of students in girls’ madrasas in India. In the following section, I sketch out what literature tells us about girls’ madrasa education in India. Given the relative lack of literature, understanding girls’ madrasas in India necessitates piecing together information from a variety of sources—such as policy documents, broader literature on Muslim education, and other relevant scholarly work on girls’ madrasas in the subcontinent and in Asia—more broadly. I begin by discussing the evolution of girls’ madrasas, the rising feminization of madrasa enrolments, factors shaping the demand for girls’ madrasas, and how scholars understand the role of madrasas in educating Muslim girls. Madrasa Education for Girls: A Recent Trend

As compared to men, education of Muslim women in segregated madrasas, which impart higher education and train women to become alimas or transmitters of religious knowledge, is a relatively recent phenomenon. The absence of a documented history of girls’ madrasas in the Indian subcontinent leads us to speculate their emergence by piecing together information from historical accounts on women’s education. Historically, madrasas functioned as institutions of higher learning, training male elites for their future role in government service and transmission of religious knowledge. Given that such professional opportunities were out of bounds for most women, madrasas primarily catered to men (Farooq 2013). Scholars such as Minault (1999), who have extensively worked on the history of Indian Muslim women in the colonial period, highlight the tradition

40

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

of home-based or zenana teaching for Muslim women belonging to elite families. This has also been recognized in colonial documents such as the Hunter Education Commission in 1882. This home-based teaching was conducted by ustani (female teachers) whose presence according to Minault (1999: 23–4) suggests the prevalence of a service class of literate females who were the daughters, wives, or widows of maulvis. In the late nineteenth century we witness, for the first time, an increasing demand for change, with Muslim social reformers advocating institutionalized education, including religious education for Muslim women in segregated institutions. The male Muslim social reformers of nineteenth-century India emphasized female education as the essential means for the regeneration of the Muslim community. Minault (2009: 201) discusses how this changing opinion in favour of girls’ education could be discerned from the resolutions supporting female education passed by the Muhammadan Educational Conference in the 1890s and its establishment of a women’s education section in 1896. We have already discussed the vision of the ideal educated Muslim women constructed by these reform movements. The reformers argued that education would make Muslim women better wives and mothers and better Muslims (Minault 1999). The emphasis on the religious aspects of women’s education by some reformers, such as Maulana Thanawi, included women, for the first time, ‘in the task of maintaining the purity of their religion’, roles that were conventionally masculine. This led to the notion of educating women in proper Islamic behaviour and imparting religious education. Thus, the first institutions that emerged from this reformist impulse sought to synthesize these two aims, that is, religious education and training women for domestic roles. Two of the most notable examples in this regard were Sheikh Abdullah’s Girls School, Aligarh, and Karamat Husain’s School, Lucknow, both of which were purdah institutions. However, as highlighted by Minault (2009: 195), there was a ‘tenuous relationship’ between the aims of the reformers, how these aims were expressed to garner public support, and how educational institutions were structured to fulfil these aims. Minault (2009) describes how the Aligarh Zenana Madrasa, opened in 1906, was portrayed by its founder Sheikh Abdullah as ‘contributing to cultural continuity’ in order to gain social acceptance, participation, and patronage. The school perpetuated sharif values,



Situating Madrasa Education for Girls

41

institutionalized purdah, stressed family ties, and emphasized traditional familial roles for women. For example, its curriculum included Urdu reading and writing, basic arithmetic, needlework, and the Quran. Purdah was strictly followed in the school’s architecture and during the transportation of girls in palanquins. However, Minualt (2009) argues that indirectly this education facilitated the growth of women’s writings, increased public discussion on purdah, and led to the growing acceptance of certain kinds of social and professional involvements for women. By making the project of women’s education (especially religious education) central to the preservation of Muslim community, the nineteenth-century debates and educational institutions created a legitimacy for women’s religious education outside the boundaries of the home and popularized certain educational arrangements—for instance, purdah institutions. The aims and educational strategies of contemporary girls’ madrasas in India can be traced back to these developments in the late nineteenth century. Rising Salience of Madrasa Education for Girls

In India the last two decades have witnessed an increasing salience of madrasa education for girls. Owing to the absence of a comprehensive all-India survey on madrasas in general and girls’ madrasas in particular, it is difficult to estimate the numerical presence of girls’ madrasas and/or quantify this claim. However, we can make this inference by examining the statistics on increasing feminization of madrasa enrolments documented by recent government reports. The Sachar Committee (GoI 2006d) findings indicate that girls comprise about 45.9 per cent of the students enrolled in madrasas. Enrolment analysis of recent data collected by the District Information System for Education (Parliament Library and Reference, Research, Documentation and Information Service, 2013) across states from 8,189 madrasas illustrates that of the 24.75 lakh students enrolled in madrasas, a little over half are girls.8 A two-decade-old all-India 8 District Information System for Education (DISE) recently started collecting data from madrasas, which was analysed by NUEPA (Parliament Library and Reference, Research, Documentation and Information Service

42

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

survey carried out by the Hamdard Education Society in 1996 estimated that exclusive madrasas for girls comprise 8–10 per cent of the total madrasas in India (Qamaruddin 1996). Recent research that explores madrasa education employing predominantly quantitative methodologies also highlights the trend of feminization of madrasa enrolments (Gupta 2009; Sikand 2008a9). Nilanjana Gupta (2009), in her study on madrasas in three districts of West Bengal, emphasizes that girls significantly outnumber boys at lower levels; however, owing to a high dropout rate, the proportion of girls at higher levels is much lower than boys. The President of the Madhya Pradesh Board in 2013 made a media announcement that ‘60 percent of students in madrasas across MP are girls’ (Firstpost 2013). The evaluation report (2013) of the government-sponsored Scheme to provide Quality Education in Madrasas (SPQEM), which surveyed 500 madrasas across eight states, also reveals the increasing participation of girls in madrasa education. Contexts and Choices: Why Opt for Madrasa Education?

Academic literature explains the rising popularity of madrasa education for girls by highlighting a range of factors, such as material conditions, influence of Islamic values, marriage prospects, customary practices such as veiling, and gendered beliefs that girls do not require regular schooling, as they are unlikely to enter the job market. While earlier literature attributed the choice of madrasa education to the conservative value system of Muslims (Ansari 1989; Ruhela 1998), recent scholarship (Engineer 2001; Jha and Jhingran 2005; 2013). Data collected in 2011–12 from 5,797 recognized madrasas and 2,392 unrecognized madrasas shows that 24.75 lakh students are enrolled in madrasas, comprising 9.7 per cent of Muslim students. Of these 24.75 lakh students enrolled in madrasas, 12.10 lakh are boys and 12.64 lakh are girls. In 68 districts, over 25 per cent of all Muslim children are enrolled in madrasas (Parliament Library and Reference, Research, Documentation and Information Service 2013). 9  A report on a UNICEF-funded project (Sikand 2008a), which surveyed 48 madrasas, and six government schools in three districts of Uttar Pradesh, documented the role of madrasas in promoting education of poor Muslim girls.



Situating Madrasa Education for Girls

43

Sikand 2005) views it as an outcome of economic ­deprivation.10 Engineer (2001) contends that the popularity of madrasa education reflects the ‘class character’ of Muslims wherein madrasas present obvious economic benefits such as no fees, free boarding, and lodging. In addition to the advantage of affordability (Sikand 2005), madrasas also offer the benefit of being flexible communityinstitutions providing religious education, which makes them a better ‘schooling option’ vis-à-vis government schools (Jha and Jhingran 2005). Several studies have highlighted that the popularity of madrasas corresponds largely with the absence of or inadequate presence of institutions of formal education, especially in minority concentrated areas (Akhtar and Narula 2010; Jeffery, Jeffery, and Jeffrey 2005). This is compounded by instances of discrimination in government and non-Muslim schools (Sikand 2005; Trivedi 2013), lack of Urdu schooling options (Ahmad 2002; Chatterjee 2005; Faruqi 2006) and the hinduization of curriculum in schools (Benei 2008). In the case of girls, the above-mentioned factors interact with gender norms pertaining to marriage and security to confine the education choices to madrasas (see, for example, Jeffery, Jeffery, and Jeffrey 2004). Nilanjana Gupta (2009) demonstrates how the high enrolment figures of Muslim girls in junior classes of madrasas suggest that parents prefer to send boys to affordable mainstream schools. Further, madrasa education is perceived as more ‘appropriate’ (Winkelmann 2005) for Muslim girls since it teaches them the basics of Islamic practice, prepares them for their future role as wives and mothers (Sikand 2005; Winkelmann 2005) without risking ‘gossips to cast slurs on their family’s honour’ (Jeffery, Jeffery, and Jeffrey 2004). Here it is important to emphasize that similar gendered beliefs are exhibited in educational choices across religious communities in India (PROBE 1999), but in the case of Muslim women this is exacerbated. Hasan and Menon (2004) term it as the ‘triple disadvantage’ faced by Muslim women as members of a minority community, as women, and most of all, as poor women with gender deprivation coalescing with class inequalities and pervasive patriarchies (Hasan 2009). 10 Madrasas are seen as affordable educational options even for nonMuslims (Nahar 2006; Rehman 2013; Singh 2012).

44

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

Work on boys’ madrasas highlights the significance of identity concerns as a strong motivating factor for madrasa education. In this regard, scholars have highlighted the role of madrasas in the preservation of ‘Islamic identity’ (Alam 2003; Saiyed and Talib 1985); preaching and promoting a denominational understanding of Islam or maslaki identity (Alam 2011); the relevance of Urdu education, increasingly getting limited to madrasas in India, to Muslim identity (Ahmad 2002; Chatterjee 2005; Faruqi 2006), and the manner in which the social location of those that patronize the institutions coincides with the marginalized sections within the Muslim community and the multiple ways in which madrasas offer the possibility of social mobility (Alam 2011; Jeffrey 2008). However, most of the above-­mentioned studies, including the ones on boys’ madrasas, seldom focus on the experiential process of students involved in madrasa education and the nexus between madrasa education and broader social and cultural change. Inside Girls’ Madrasas

As highlighted earlier, there are a limited number of studies on the everyday life inside girls’ madrasas. The few sociological and anthropological studies that do explore this theme employ qualitative methodologies to examine the relationship between madrasa education and broader patterns of social change (Jeffery, Jeffery, and Jeffrey 2004, 2006; Sikand 2005; Winkelmann 2005). An examination of this work reveals the tendency to place madrasa education in overarching binaries of reproduction and empowerment. Scholarship (Jeffery, Jeffery, and Jeffrey 2004, 2006; Sikand 2005; Winkelmann 2005) that emphasizes reproduction highlights the role of girls’ madrasas in creating ‘pious, demure and component homemakers’ (Metcalf 2007). Winkelmann’s (2005) ethnography of a girls’ madrasa in Delhi is illustrative in this regard. Focusing on what she terms as the ‘informal curriculum’, Winkelmann describes how notions of culture and morality are ‘transmitted, practised, and reproduced through a non-formal teaching regime, that is, through rules, discipline, bodily control, and behavioural expectations’ (Winkelmann 2008: 111). She demonstrates how the informal curriculum in girls’ madrasas emphasizes conservative notions of Islamic etiquette, propriety, modesty, gender



Situating Madrasa Education for Girls

45

segregation, limits interaction of the girls with the outside world, and seeks to regulate every aspect of the girls’ lives. Winkelmann argues that these practices demonstrate the role played by girls’ madrasas in developing what she terms as ‘Islamic Womanhood’. Other authors who have worked on girls’ madrasas in India express similar views. Jeffery, Jeffery, and Jeffrey (2004, 2006) argue that the main aim of madrasas is to foster a ‘domesticated femininity’, training girls to be good mothers and wives, not employment and economic independence. Sikand (2005) terms it as inculcating ‘Islamic domesticity’. Authors like Alam (2011) who have worked on boys’ madrasas in India highlight parallel practices inherent in the formal and informal curriculum, to emphasize the role of madrasa education in creating ‘docile subjects’ (Alam 2011). This is eventually seen as reproducing the marginality of Muslims (Alam 2011; Jeffery, Jeffery, and Jeffrey 2004, 2006), especially amongst women who employ religious doctrines to ‘rationalise the subordination they experience’ (Begum and Kabir 2012). At the other end of the spectrum lies scholarship that emphasizes the role of madrasa education in the empowerment of women in certain culturally specific contexts, such as Bano’s (2009) work on girls’ madrasas in Pakistan; Begum and Kabir’s (2012) work in Bangladesh, and Matsumoto and Shimbo’s (2011) work on the nuxue (women’s madrasa) in China. Bano argues that female madrasas promote an ‘alternate conception of women’s empowerment’ by equipping girls to maximize their social, economic, and personal well-being and ‘negotiate increased space for themselves within existing societal structures’ (Bano 2009: 5). She argues that in the particular context of Pakistan, madrasa education offers girls a means of ‘social, economic and psychological empowerment’, such as the opportunity for small-town girls to travel to madrasas in cities, the opportunity to be recognized and respected within their local community as religious experts, the possibility of employment as madrasa teachers, and conviction in Islamic beliefs, which allows them to psychologically deal with day-to-day challenges that have no material solutions (Bano 2009: 17–18). This often proves ‘more empowering for women in their daily lives as compared to exposing them to the western conceptions of gender equality which are unattainable in the given socio-economic constraints’ (Bano 2009: 5). Here it is important to emphasize that

46

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

the works of Bano (2009) and Begum and Kabir (2012) explore the dynamics of madrasa education in national contexts where Muslims constitute the majority community and madrasas are often actively promoted by the state. An exploration of the role of girls’ madrasas in countries where Muslims constitute a minority reveals similar motifs of empowerment. For example, Matsumoto and Shimbo’s (2011) work on the nuxue (women’s madrasa) in China details the multiple ways in which women’s madrasas are empowering women belonging to the Hui minority. The authors detail the manner in which, on the one hand, the Hui women on account of the promotion of secular schooling by the community and Communist state have improved their literacy and employability; on the other hand, the nuxue provides an opportunity for women to study Islam, learn Arabic, and understand their ethnic identity as Hui Muslims after completing their secular education. Further, after graduating from the nuxue most Muslim girls generally find employment as teachers. Thus, the nuxue offers a safety net and doubles up as a vocational training school. The authors argue that education in a nuxue also empowers the Hui women by providing them with a ‘novel gender view, which stress on good wife and good mother and denies the official masculine gender equality which only creates excessive competition’ (Matsumoto and Shimbo 2011: 101). The Islamic faith and piety makes the Hui women feel empowered in their role as ‘good educators of the next generation’ and also contributes to their self-esteem and self-affirmation. The main inadequacy of both these arguments—that madrasas foster Islamic domestic femininity or empower women in specific contexts—is the tendency to reify Islam, modern education, and women’s empowerment into certain constructs and present a rather unidirectional account of madrasas. The bracketing of madrasa education in overarching storylines of reproduction or empowerment obscures the everyday experiences of students studying in madrasas and obfuscates the tensions and paradoxes that characterize everyday life. For instance, studies that emphasize the role of madrasa education in creating ‘docile subjects’ (Alam 2011; Winkelmann 2005) tend to assume students’ embodiment of madrasa norms of dressing, bodily mannerisms, comportment, and speech and behaviour as reflective of the entirety of student life in the madrasa. While studies that portray present-day madrasa education as empowering tend to



Situating Madrasa Education for Girls

47

overstate the context-specific nature of women’s resistance emphasizing the subversion of norms. There is little attention to the complex manner in which girls negotiate the multiple constraints posed by parents, madrasa gatekeepers, institutional rules, or broader social structures in order to fashion their own definitions of becoming educated Muslim women. Some of the above-mentioned studies do allude to the tensions and paradoxes that emanate as madrasas open up new possibilities for students and offer opportunities to alter traditional gender norms within communities. For example, Winkelmann (2005) highlights that while daily life in a girls’ madrasa aims at moulding the girls in accordance with Islam, the space provided by madrasa education also offers a channel to ‘invert conventional gender hierarchies’ and creates a limited range of possibilities for Muslim girls to take up professional work, though the overall context of male dominance remains. In a similar vein, Sikand, in his article, ‘Educating Muslim Girls: The Role of Girls’ Madrasas in India’, opines that in the process of acquainting the girls with their rights madrasas create pathways for ‘unintentional modernisation’, which can have crucial implications for traditional understandings of gender relations. Patricia Jeffery, Roger Jeffery, and Craig Jeffrey (2008) present their argument about madrasas fostering ‘domesticated femininity’ with a similar qualifier, calling for a need to reflect upon finer nuances such as the diversity of views amongst ulama on girls’ education and the window of opportunity that these institutions provide to some women to take up certain professions such as teaching. Herein lies the paradox of girls’ madrasas: Their rising popularity as institutions of education is intrinsically linked with parents’ and the community’s concerns to create ‘pious, demure and component homemakers’ (Metcalf 2007) and yet these institutions are also, potentially, sites of opportunity and empowerment. However, other than alluding to this paradox, none of the above-mentioned studies delves deeper to analyse the nuances of this ambiguity. Neither has there been an attempt to link students’ experiences in madrasas with processes that emerge from an interaction between the individual, family, and community such as broader gender norms and educational choices. The analytical framework offered by these studies continues to emphasize grand narratives of domesticated femininity or alternative empowerment. In this regard,

48

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

some of the recent ethnographic work in contemporary India on gender, education, and self-formation offer some clues. This is discussed in the next section. gender , education , and self in contemporary india : ethnographic approaches

Some of the recent ethnographic work on gender, education, and self-formation highlight the complex linkages between education and processes of self-fashioning. Describing ‘the significance of education as a tension between “being” and “ought to be”’, Ciotti’s (2006) ethnographic work on Manupur Chamars (Dalits) discusses the complex manner in which formal education is redefining the process of ‘being a Chamar’ in Uttar Pradesh. Focusing on out-of-the-classroom ethnographic material, Ciotti talks about how discourses around education reveal a deep and ongoing symbolic trade between an essentialized, derogatory, inherited Chamar identity and the people’s attempts to shed their original selves through education and ‘become better’. The engagement with education is a result of an ongoing negotiation between multiple social cultural forces at the level of the individual, family, and community. In her research on educational experiences of Christian and Hindu Adivasis (tribals) in rural Chhattisgarh, Froerer (2011) describes how Hindus tend to send their children to school only till they complete primary education. Beyond that, education is considered ‘pointless’ as jobs are scarce. This is markedly different from the Oraon Christians in the same area, who tend to send their children to school for as long as possible. Froerer argues that this difference is owing to a combination of historical and socio-cultural factors, such as the historical migration patterns of Oraons; lack of land ownership amongst the Oraons, which necessitates seeking work elsewhere; cultural factors like absence of expectations to abandon school and marry. Froerer contends that the Catholic Church acts as a critical source of social capital in mediating Oraon Christians’ subsequent engagement with social mobility. She draws this comparison to highlight that the engagement of Christians with education is greatly influenced by their socio-economic, historical context vis-à-vis the Hindus.



Situating Madrasa Education for Girls

49

This engagement with education, in addition to being shaped by socio-economic and historical contexts of communities, is also highly gendered. For example, Still’s (2011) study based in Nampally in rural Andhra Pradesh discusses the manner in which education is perceived as a ‘particularly risky business’ for young Dalit women. On one hand, education has the potential to enhance a girl’s value as a bride and opens up the possibility of the girls securing a respectable, employed groom within their own caste. On the other hand, it is believed that the direct and indirect costs of ‘over educating’ daughters are high, as prolonged education increases the risk of pre-marital affairs, love-marriage, pregnancies, and elopements. On the basis of ethnographic insights, Still argues that for Dalits in Nampally female education is a route to a getting a good match rather than a route to employment or equality. Thus, how much education should be provided, and when and where it should take place, become extremely significant concerns for Dalit families vis-à-vis their daughters. In a similar vein, Lukose’s (2009) ethnographic study of college students in Kerala highlights ‘how young women are creating space for themselves to be “modern” middle-class women in dress, comportment, and romantic attachments, but they still honour “traditional” gendered cultural expectations’ (Foley 2010: 222). Lukose argues that despite men and women availing the same education in the same colleges, there is an underlying anxiety arising from differential expectations of men and women regarding their own and the others’ education. Lukose talks about Prasad, a lower caste male aspiring towards middle-class masculinity, who supported ‘women’s education but felt they should not be allowed to “get ahead” of men’ (2009: 193). She also draws the portrait of Suman, a woman made to feel inadequate about being a mother by the ‘English educated, middle class teachers’ of her daughter as she was not a graduate and could not discipline or teach the child (2009: 197). Lukose argues that the ‘space of education is structured by a set of caste, class, gender specific aspirations’ (2009: 198), wherein education for women is advocated and practised because it is seen as an important component of the construct of the ‘feminine and demure modern woman’. The place for this demure, educated woman is that of a ‘companion to the modern respectable male student’ (2009: 194) and one ‘who can produce wellschooled obedient children’ (2009: 198). The horizon of the educated

50

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

woman is that of a ‘compassionate wife and mother’ (2009: 194), a fitting companion to her husband and fit to educate and raise children. Another important aspect that emerges is that schools and educational institutions act as sites for implementing larger projects of imagined communities. Benei’s (2008) ethnographic account offers an insight into educational strategies followed by schools in Maharashtra to inculcate a sense of Hindu nationalist identity in such a manner that their devotion to Maharashtra and India becomes ‘visceral’ or beyond question. This is achieved through various school practices such as textbooks, performative acts like singing the national anthem every day, school celebrations, dance, rituals, and so forth. Benei employs the concept of ‘sensorium’ or how the senses and bodily practices work on children to produce an experience of the nation within their bodies (Kumar 2010). For example, Benei (2008) describes how students in Classes One and Two may not understand all the songs that they regularly collectively recite in school, but their engagement with Hindu nationalism through multiple sensory media causes them to ‘feel’ the nation within their own bodies. Thus, the school becomes a site for learning Hindu nationalism, where, from a young age, children are made to engage with the nation through imagery, language, music, stories, rituals—an engagement which echoes throughout life. Each of these fine-grained accounts highlights education as a ‘negotiated’ process, inextricably linked with the construction of selves, informing and/or challenging normative gendered understandings, implicated in larger political projects that concretize imagined communities like the nation. As Levinson and Holland (1996) argue, close attention to the contradictions and paradoxes that characterize the complex relationship between educational processes and self-formation demonstrates how ‘the educated person is culturally produced in definite sites, the educated person also culturally produces cultural forms’ (1996: 14). These tensions highlight how educational institutions created to produce identities consonant with local cultural notions of the ‘educated person’ often have unintended consequences, leading to the formation of practices and identities that could potentially even challenge these very notions. In this light, the manner in which students perceive the value of their education, the means by which the education they receive curtails them, how they negotiate these constraints and their reasons for complying with them, become



Situating Madrasa Education for Girls

51

important points of exploration. I return to these issues later in my research findings. However, despite the fact that the anthropological work discussed above explores the manner in which educational experiences of men and women—be it young men and women in Kerala colleges (Lukose 2009), Dalits in Manupur (Ciotti 2006), lower-caste women in Nampally (Still 2011), or children in Kolhapur (Benei 2008)—are redefining the construction of gender and caste identities in a changing India, some questions are left unanswered. Though each of these studies alludes to tensions emanating from varying expectations that education brings in its wake, especially for women, none of them really delves into the manner in which this tension between educational institutions, family, and the women themselves plays out in their lives. Thus, while such work serves the important function of reorienting our attention to the tensions, paradoxes, and ambiguities inherent in educational processes, they offer little by way of analytical tools to theorize these tensions. In the following section, I review work that has influenced the theoretical concepts—community, piety, and aspiration—employed by my research. islam , community , and gendered piety

Islamic Piety and Ummah

The issue of gender and education is closely implicated in the rise of Islamic piety movements across the world. Rinaldo (2010) describes piety movements as distinct from other social movements and religious organizations in their focus on pious practices (for example, public forms such as veiling, participation in religious study, and so forth) in addition to theological conservatism (Rinaldo 2010: 584). The imaginary of ummah—the global community of Muslims—is a critical overall objective that informs and unites Islamic piety movements across the globe. A complex nexus of factors such as geopolitical concerns and political events (Talib 2014), globalization (Mandaville 2011), transnational interconnections, economic uncertainty arising from neo-liberalism, the increasing spread of the modernity project (Osella and Soares 2010), and social change have fostered this

52

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

­increasing ‘ummah consciousness’ (Riaz 2006). The imagined ummah posits a futuristic alternative to the uncertainties and anxieties produced by the above-mentioned factors. Piety movements propagate an increasing adherence to religious piety to ‘concretise’ (Schmidt 2005) ummah into an attainable reality. Ummah is objectified by piety movements into a community code of pious practices including physical structures, institutional routines, rules, and body practices. Given that changing gender roles (owing to the increasing participation of women in education, employment, and the larger public sphere) constitute one of the many anxieties that piety movements seek to address, gender norms lie at the heart of the ummah that piety movements seek to concretize into a moral regime. Thus, any understanding of women’s participation in piety projects necessitates an exploration of structural factors that propel such involvement and the gendered ideals they set out to achieve. In this book (Chapter 4), I attempt to situate girls’ madrasa education by highlighting larger factors that are not confined to religion alone, such as the socio-economic and political marginalization of Muslims in India, communalization of social space and the discernible rise of Islamic reform movements that seek to foster a new religiosity. In Chapter 5, I return to this discussion on the ummah to argue that girls’ madrasas are one of the many sites mediating the achievement of the ideational ummah. In what follows, I proceed to examine the recent scholarship on self-fashioning among Muslim women in Islamic piety movements. Islam, Gender, and Pious Self-Formation

Women’s increasing participation in Islamic piety projects across the world has inspired much work on gender and piety (see, Rinaldo 2010). Recent scholarship that examines women’s engagement with Islamic piety has moved beyond the deterministic registers of subordination (Kandiyoti 1991, 1996; Wikan 1991) and resistance (AbuLughod 1986; Boddy 1989) to argue that agentive capacity is entailed in pious submission (Deeb 2006; Frisk 2009; Mahmood 2005). These anthropological studies argue that Islamic piety represents a mode of self-fashioning (Mahmood 2005) whereby women actively adopt embodied Islamic practices and acquire religious knowledge to develop pious dispositions (Deeb 2006; Mahmood 2005).



Situating Madrasa Education for Girls

53

Mahmood’s (2005) seminal work on women in the Egyptian piety movement is particularly significant in this regard. Drawing on Foucault’s later work on ethical formation and Asad (1993, 2003), Mahmood analyses the modes of self-fashioning among Muslim women in the mosque movement. She argues that Muslim women’s cultivation of a shy, modest, feminine, pious self is an expression of their agency. This embodied agency entailed in pious submission, according to Mahmood, challenges the liberal-secular assumptions inherent in the politically prescriptive Western feminist project. She argues that the presumption of ‘universality of desire for freedom’ which underpins the feminist project confines its understanding of women’s agency to resistance or ‘acts that challenge social norms and not those that uphold them’. Mahmood counters this narrow conception of ‘autotomised agency’ to argue that ‘agentival capacity is entailed in not only those acts that resist norms but the multiple ways in which one inhabits norms’ (2005: 15). Mahmood’s work thus expands the understanding of agency beyond the binaries of subordination and resistance to include outward practices, rituals, and acts of worship performed by people as a means of transforming themselves and their relationship with God to fashion a pious self. In this regard, she argues that outward bodily acts (including rituals, liturgies, and worship) are not simply an expression of inward belief but rather belief is a product of outward practices (2012: xv). She contends that embodied religious practices reflect agency since performative bodily behaviour is a means for realizing Islamic virtues that are internal to the practice of fashioning a pious self (2012: xvi). Mahmood’s research, in her own words, offers another way to ‘analyse agency in terms of the different modalities it takes and the grammar of concepts in which its particular affect, meaning and form resides’ (2005: 188). With regard to my work, I return to Mahmood’s (2005) work in Chapter 6 to analyse the madrasa students’ understanding, espousal, and embodiment of piety practices prescribed by madrasas towards becoming a kamil momina. However, I argue that Mahmood’s work is only partially helpful for my research. It does not allow an understanding of the complexities of the larger socio-economic and political landscape in which pious selves are cultivated (Schielke 2009a), the differences in orientations among participants which may vary owing to social location (Osella and Soares 2010), and the complexities of the everyday practice of

54

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

piety. Mahmood’s totalizing emphasis on the role of piety creates the impression that it ‘defines the entirety of the women’s lives’ (Van der Veer 2008: 812). Further, she paints a picture of ‘non-conflicted coherent moral selves’ (Bangstad 2011: 32), which seem to remain static over time. Owing to her emphasis on ‘norms as inhabited’, Mahmood focuses on her participants’ articulated responses, conveying their intent and efforts to become pious. However, she does not juxtapose these articulated responses (what women say) with actual practice (what women do). This, as Schielke (2009a) writes, creates an illusion of coherence obscuring the complexity of lived experiences of piety. Recent anthropological scholarship (Deeb and Harb 2013; Osella and Soares 2010; Schielke 2009a, 2009b; Schielke and Debevec 2012) has highlighted the contradictions and ambiguity inherent in the lived practice of Islamic piety and the importance of locating piety in ‘complex social fields’ (Deeb and Harb 2013). Schielke’s (2009a, 2009b) ethnographic work on Muslim youth in Egypt highlights the ambivalence, contesting motivations, and contradictions that characterize the everyday experiences of young men trying to lead pious, moral, disciplined lives. In a similar vein, Deeb and Harb (2013) illustrate how pious Shi’i Lebanese youth do not represent moral subjects defined on the basis of cultivation of virtues of Islamic piety, but moral subjects that are constantly redefined as per multiple ‘moral rubrics’— such as social, political-sectarian, and religious—which are in flux (2013: 17–19). Thus, these young people lead complex lives, negotiating competing sets of morals and sometimes even reinterpreting morals as they piece together ways to have fun with a clear conscience. Osella and Soares (2010) argue that one of biggest drawbacks of overfocusing on the ‘micro-politics’ of pious self-fashioning is the neglect of the macro-politics in which piety movements and their participants are situated. They contend that contemporary ‘ways of being Muslims’ can involve reflections about ‘politics, morality, family, consumption, employment, media, entertainment, and so forth’ (2010: 12). Thus, pious self-fashioning is only one part of the new sociality emerging amongst Muslims (2010: 11). In the coming chapters, I return to the themes found in the above-mentioned literature on the contradictions and incoherence that characterizes everyday piety. I bring together De Certeau’s work (1988) on everyday life, and the attention to ambiguities of pious practice highlighted by the above-mentioned research.



Situating Madrasa Education for Girls

55

I make daily practices of lived religion (McGuire 2008; Schielke and Debevec 2012) my starting point to illustrate the complexity, ambiguity, and fluidity of the everyday piety of madrasa students. aspirations and futures

The work on gender and Islam discussed earlier emphasizes how religious piety is not a constraint experienced by women (Mahmood 2005) and neither is it the singular defining aspect of Muslim women’s lives (Osella and Soares 2010; Schielke 2009a). An examination of the wider consequences of women’s increasing participation in religious piety projects on gender relations reveals an interesting shift in recent literature. Whilst earlier scholarship viewed women’s engagement with these movements as facilitating the assertion of patriarchal control and disempowering (Moghadam 1994; Yuval-Davis, Anthias, and Campling 1989), recent literature has focused on the empowering aspects of such participation. Among the key insights of this recent research have been demonstrating the role of piety movements in facilitating a public role of women (Deeb 2006), contesting liberal norms of society and personhood (Gole 2002; Mahmood 2005) and fostering alternative definitions of modernity (Brenner 1996; Gole 1996). Recent literature also advances critical interpretations of religious texts to further gender equality within the Islamic framework (Ahmed 1992; Badran 2005; Mernissi 1992; Mir Hosseini 2006; Rinaldo 2014). The achievements of this recent literature in highlighting the agentive aspects of women’s participation in piety movements are no doubt significant; nonetheless, the application of a binary lens of empowerment versus disempowerment has serious drawbacks. It does not allow an exploration of the complexity struggles, flux, and contradictions (Abu-Lughod 1993; Osella and Soares 2010; Schielke and Debevec 2012) involved in attempts to reconcile the tension between religiosity as prescribed by piety movements and access to the public sphere and other agentive aspects facilitated by piety movements. Further, neither piety nor gender are static concepts. Osella and Soares (2010) point out how people move in and out of formal and informal religious groups, shift allegiances, grow bored, or lose interest; life commitments like domestic and work responsibilities lead them to reconsider their pious duties (2010: 11). In focusing on

56

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

how the paradox between the enabling and constraining aspects of pious practice prescribed in the madrasa plays out in the girls’ lives, my research highlights how time, space, and visions of the future constitute an important dimension of the everchanging processes of self-fashioning. In the course of navigating through life, the girls’ efforts to fashion themselves into pious subjects keep shifting owing to the interplay between changing individual lives and transformations in the larger landscape marked by secularizing spheres, political and economic uncertainty, and so on. Therefore, rather than thinking in terms of outcomes such as empowerment versus disempowerment, paying attention to how people engage with their own futures, and the consequent change in pious practices emerging from a movement to new spaces (such as home to work, mosque to places of leisure, and so on) and the temporal specificity of these changes, allows a more nuanced understanding of the individual and collective aspects of the relationship between piety and gender. In my work, I demonstrate how young madrasa graduates engage with their own futures and the implications of this on wider gender relations within the community. I find Appadurai’s (2013) concept of ‘capacity to aspire’ a helpful lens to engage with the messy landscape of future aspirations of madrasa students once they leave the confines of the madrasa. His work draws attention to the relationship between socio-cultural realities, imaginings of the future, and the creation of selves—the possibilities and limitations of future-oriented aspirations emerging in a culturally defined social life and altering the boundaries of the same world. Appadurai (2013) argues that aspirations are social and relational, and are forged in the ‘thick of social life’, drawing on ‘local ideas and beliefs about marriage, work, leisure, respectability, virtue’ (2013: 187), and so on. Given this understanding of aspirations, he conceptualizes the ‘capacity to aspire’ as a ‘navigational capacity’ nurtured by the possibility of real-world conjectures and refutations, which provides a ‘map of a journey into the future’ (2013: 189). However, as he argues, this capacity to aspire is often more limited for those with inadequate resources. Appadurai’s conceptualization is extremely helpful in understanding the official and unanticipated roles of settings like madrasas in fostering aspirations, as well as the factors that constrain and limit the navigational capacity of Muslim girls, owing to a range of intersecting realities arising from their



Situating Madrasa Education for Girls

57

g­ender,  minority status, socio-economic status, religious location, and so on. However, Appadurai’s argument about aspirations and the capacity to aspire—that is, the importance of looking at the knowledge and exposure people have to formulate aspirations and the resources that aid or constrain aspirations, as well as how changes in the capacity to aspire alter the constraining circumstances—proves unhelpful when one tries to understand the daily practices constitutive of this larger narrative. In this regard, De Certeau’s (1988) work on everyday practices allows an understanding of the ways in which persons engage with and enact the capacity to aspire. Bringing together Appadurai’s (2013) capacity to aspire with De Certeau’s (1988) understanding of everyday practices allows us to theorize aspirations as a continuous, daily project rather than a logically coherent vision of the future. Aspirations emerge as entities that are constantly being negotiated as girls try to find their way through life, balancing opportunities and constraints, shaped by their socio-cultural and gender location, a negotiation that enables the creation of new selves. Viewing madrasa students’ everyday practices as both driving and being driven by Appadurai’s capacity to aspire allows us to view girls’ aspirations not as a fixated set of possibilities in the distant future but a daily project. This everyday negotiation and reconfiguration of aspirations, in turn, enables the creation of new selves. The ability of aspirations—­ especially educational aspirations—to become valued achievements and alter the threshold of what is normatively regarded as desirable, fosters change, transforming both religion and gender norms. I return to discuss this in greater detail in Chapter 7. This chapter provides an overview of the wider academic literature in which this study situates itself. In the next chapter, I detail three ethnographic portraits that emerge from my research to introduce the reader to the life stories of my participants.

chapter three

Journeys of Madrasa Students Understanding ­Portraits

through

Ethnographic

This chapter introduces the lives of young women in girls’ madrasas by employing ethnographic portraits. I use the term ‘ethnographic portraits’ (Mills and Borker, unpublished) to describe innovative ways of ethnographic writing and analysis based on humanistic vignettes that capture the immediacy of lived experiences and highlight the relationship between these experiences and larger structural forces. I present three ethnographic portraits in this chapter. These portraits are based on my year-long engagement in the field and have been pieced together from field notes of interactions and observations, interviews and self-portraits,1 written by students and teachers in the madrasa. 1  As mentioned in the Introduction, an exercise that I followed often in the madrasa with teachers and some of the students of Classes Four and Five was asking them to write a portrait of themselves and their education. I have extensively drawn and quoted from some of these self-portraits.

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood. Hem Borker, Oxford University Press (2018). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199484225.003.0003



Journeys of Madrasa Students

59

Each of the portraits embody, manifest and, to some degree, comment on the different faces of women’s engagement with girls’ madrasas. I have chosen to employ ethnographic portraits, positioning them as a prelude owing to certain key attributes that this genre of writing and analysis bring to my research. A uniquely personalized style of writing, ethnographic portraits allow an insight into the research process—my interactions with young women in madrasas, the questions, the answers, the silences, the incomplete sentences, observations, and analysis. In this way, the following portraits are reflexive accounts that draw attention to the relationship between the observer and the observed. They reflect my research journey from a p ­ articipant observer in the field to a researcher writing and making sense of her fieldwork. Each of these portraits highlight motifs that define the everyday life of madrasa students—relationships, transitions, competing choices, constraints, aspirations, successes, and failures—and situates them in the wider socio-economic and religious landscape. Weaving these motifs into an analytical framework that captures the nuances and diversity of experiences in girls’ madrasas led me to focus on the unfolding of girls’ journeys from home to the madrasa and beyond. In this regard, the central themes that emerged from the portraits laid the foundation for my engagement with theoretical concepts such as imagined communities, piety, and aspirations. Thus, ethnographic portraits are both a methodological tool as well as a crucial part of the analytical process and research outcome of how, as an ethnographer, I generated meaning from experiences. On account of the analytical insights embodied in ethnographic portraits, they offer a unique vantage point to understand my work. When I initially embarked on writing, I had intended to write vignettes based on young women’s lives as illustrative interludes, to be interspersed throughout the findings and analysis chapters. But the process of analysis and writing led me to experiment and realize that ethnographic portraits open up possibilities that go beyond the conventional application of written portraits as a means of ‘putting flesh on the bones’ (Banerjee 2008) on categories such as Muslim, Indian Muslim, Muslim woman, madrasa student, and/or acting as a case in point to illustrate a larger argument. In my research, portraits emerge as a means to reflect, analyse, and tell the lives of young

60

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

women as it unfolded, a journey I both observed and participated in owing to the relationship I shared with my research participants. By ­allowing me to capture the fluidity of the lives of young Muslim women in m ­ adrasas—their past lives, inner lives, working lives, imagined lives, future lives—these portraits developed as analytical accounts in my research. On the one hand, the experiences of madrasa students described in the portraits that follow offer a view of the immediacy of everyday life, conveying an image of the ‘here and now’. On the other hand, each of the portraits alludes and draws attention to the larger socio-economic processes that shape these experiences. This view, or what Mills and Borker (unpublished) term as the ‘double vision’ of individual lives against a socio-religious and educational landscape that is changing, makes these portraits invaluable to my research, as a space to demonstrate the complex relationship between madrasa education, Islamic gendered ideals, and everyday experiences. In attending to the long-term possibilities of actions, contesting dilemmas, and actions having unanticipated consequences, ethnographic portraits in my work offer a unique insight into the ambiguities and contradictions that define the everyday pious practice of madrasa students. Distinct from case studies that seek to typify and represent, these ethnographic portraits seek to problematize the ways in which lives of girls in madrasas have been bracketed into categories such women’s empowerment (Bano 2009; Matsumoto and Shimbo 2011) or domestic femininity (Jeffery, Jeffery, and Jeffrey 2004). By drawing attention to the everyday minutiae of life, portraits paint a complicated present replete with ironies and paradoxes, which raise critical questions about madrasas emerging as important actors in (re)producing the imaginary ideal Muslim woman, the educational journey of young Muslim women seeking to become religious scholars in girls’ madrasas and changing aspirations of madrasa graduates. This chapter is divided into four sections. The first three sections present three ethnographic portraits—of a student in the madrasa, a teacher who has finished her alima degree and is now teaching in the madrasa, and a madrasa graduate pursing higher education at a university. In the last section, I bring together the insights gained from the portraits to raise certain critical questions about



Journeys of Madrasa Students

61

continuity and change captured in the girls’ educational journeys and the varying tensions emanating from the divergence between the ideational construct of an ideal Muslim woman as inculcated in madrasas and its actual practice. I argue that exploring these tensions offers a unique vantage point to understand how the notion of the educated Muslim woman is acquiring new forms and meanings in India. zainab : the madrasa student

I first noticed Zainab when she walked into one of the English classes I was conducting with a group of teachers. The reason I noticed her was that she literally walked in, without knocking or seeking permission, an extremely rare occurrence in the madrasa where the students’ conduct is highly reverential to the teachers. The dupatta on Zainab’s head was loosely tied, quite unlike the other girls’ perfectly tied headscarves, and definitely unlike someone coming to talk to teachers in their room. Even at that time, I remember thinking that it rather unconventional because wearing the dupatta like a headscarf (in a way such that not a single strand of hair shows) is a dress code in the madrasa. This dress code is strictly enforced as a means of training the girls to follow the practice of purdah outside the madrasa. In fact, girls are taught that a proper dress code is one of the most important markers that communicates the modesty and chastity of an alima to an outsider. Later I came to know that Zainab was the younger sister of Afifa, a teacher in the madrasa. Over the next few weeks she would regularly hang around my classes with the teachers, coming into the room on one pretext or the other. Zainab intrigued me; there was something about her that set her apart from the rest of the girls. Yet, at that point I was still finding my feet in the madrasa and did not think that approaching Zainab or any other student individually was a good idea. One day when I reached slightly earlier and sat waiting for the teachers in the library, Zainab walked in, greeted me with a quiet ‘assalam alaikum’ and introduced herself. That’s the first time we actually spoke, after almost two months of knowing who the other was. I told her I recognized her and knew her name and that she was

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

62

Afifa’s younger sister. Zainab sat down beside me and looked straight into my eyes while talking. Even then I remember thinking it unusual because she did not ask me if she could sit, unlike all the other times in the madrasa where I would have to request the students to sit and they would just stand with a lowered gaze, as in the madrasa it was considered a mark of respect to stand while the ustad (teacher) was talking. If and when they would sit, it was always at a lower position or slightly further away if we were all on the floor. Telling myself this was not the time to think of all this, I turned my entire attention to what Zainab was saying. She was talking so quietly that even though she was right next to me I had to lean towards her to listen. ‘I want to ask you lots of questions’. ‘Ok’, I said, expecting a whole bunch of questions about my work in the madrasa. And then Zainab surprised me when she said, ‘about further studies and about what to do if I want to become a doctor’. I nodded, caught a little off guard, and before I could say anything a group of teachers entered the library. They looked questioningly at Zainab, who said that she happened to be in the library and was keeping me company while I waited for them. One of the teachers stiffly thanked Zainab and told her she could leave. Over the next few months Zainab and I had several ‘stolen’ conversations wherein I got to know her better. She was 17 years old, studying in year four in the madrasa. She had four sisters and three brothers. Her eldest sister, Afifa, had completed the alima course from Jamiatul Mominat a year earlier and was now teaching dom (year two) in the same madrasa. Zainab was two years younger to Afifa. She had two younger sisters (Class 6 and Class 7) both of whom were studying in a co-educational school along with two of their brothers (Class 4 and Class 2). The youngest brother was just five years old and had recently been admitted to nursery. Zainab’s father had migrated to Delhi as a child, along with the rest of his family from the neighbouring Mewat region. The family belonged to the Chaudhury zat (caste)—and I remember Zainab telling me this rather proudly—though they had long abandoned their ancestral linkages with the land. When they shifted to Delhi, her grandfather opened a small karkhana (workshop) on the outskirts of Delhi where automobiles were repaired. Her father and chachas2 had 2 

Chacha is an uncle by virtue of being one’s father’s younger brother.



Journeys of Madrasa Students

63

expanded the business and each of the brothers now had a shop of his own. Zainab’s own impression was that her father, despite having studied only up to Class four, had done the best amongst the brothers, transforming his small automobile repair workshop into a profitable second-hand car resale business. However, in several subsequent conversations, Zainab talked about a steep downturn in the family finances after her father’s return from Haj.3 In Zainab’s timeline, soon after his return, he became an active member of the Tablighi Jamaat4 and started ignoring his business, saying that the ‘family had enough to get by’.5 Her father’s return from Haj and his becoming an active ‘Jamaati’6 repeatedly came up as a major milestone in Zainab’s conversations about her family. According to her, that was when their house changed from an ordinary ‘modern’ house to a dindaar ghar.7 In many ways, Zainab’s father’s engagement with the Tablighi Jamaat created for him a space that brought up the need to educate his daughters in dini talim,8 in an institutional setting. In one of our interactions, Zainab speculated about the reasons behind the educational choices that her father made for his daughters. As she narrated: 3  One

of the tenets of Islam is the Haj, the pilgrimage to Mecca, which should be undertaken whenever possible at least once in a lifetime. 4  The Tablighi Jamaat aims at the reinvigoration of Islam through individual reform and renewal. Today it represents a transnational movement. The expanding network of the Jamaat owes much to the dedicated missionary work of its members and followers. The Tablighis call their work dawah, which means invitation (to Islam) (Masud 2000). 5  Tablighi Jamaat as an ideology actively preaches against excessive materialism and greed for material acquisitions (Sikand 1999), which are considered a negative virtue reflecting this-worldliness. 6  Used in this context to refer to the association with the Tablighi Jamaat. 7  Dindaar ghar literally translates into pious house. It is generally used to refer to a house which follows some of the basic tenets of Islamic life such as offering namaz five times a day, the difference between halal and haram (lawful and unlawful), purdah, and so forth. 8  Dini talim means religious knowledge. The madrasa is often seen as a place that provides both dini and duniyavi talim (worldly knowledge), or a place that provides dini talim as opposed to mainstream schools that provide just duniyavi talim.

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

64

Abbu9 has very progressive thoughts on girls’ education but after joining the Jamaat he felt that duniyavi talim needs to be accompanied by dini talim. All of us had been admitted to St. Peter’s School, which is the most expensive private school in our area, but the school is only till Class 8. That is why Afifa joined the government school for girls to do her Class 9. But Abbu became very active in the Jamaat and they started saying that now Afifa knew quite a lot about regular studies so it was better to put her in the madrasa. That’s when Afifa came here. Then his friends started saying that Zainab is getting older, it doesn’t look nice that she goes to a school in a skirt … it is wrong for her to show her legs. I was very angry when Abbu told me I had to leave school. I argued with him a lot so he agreed to let me complete the year. But then the school is till Class 8 only. So they got me admitted here.

Zainab told me several times how she initially despised the madrasa and for the first three years she would argue with her father every time she went back and stubbornly tell him she wanted to return to school. Her father did not agree and each time Zainab was reprimanded and sent back with the advice that she needed to emulate Afifa, who had taken to madrasa life so well. Recalling that time, Zainab said she would often cry and out of sheer obstinacy pay no attention in class for the first two years. Sometime in her third year Afifa promised Zainab that if she were to pay attention in the madrasa she would try and convince their father about Zainab joining a regular school. In fact, in Zainab’s narrative, Afifa seemed like a guardian who helped her remember her dreams and played an active role in negotiating on Zainab’s behalf with their father. Afifa managed to convince their father to allow Zainab to take her school exams for class nine through Open School. According to Zainab, everyone at home (other than Afifa) was sure she would never clear them because there were two months left before the exams and she had no one to help her. Zainab described this as the big turning point in her relationship with the madrasa. She talked about how girls in the madrasa who had done their schooling till Class Ten volunteered to help her and it was because of their help that she cleared the exam, much to the surprise of her father. In many ways, the support that Zainab received from her peer group in the madrasa provided her a bridge between her past and aspired future. 9 

Abbu is the term used to refer to one’s father.



Journeys of Madrasa Students

65

A year later, Zainab sat for her Class Ten board exams through Open School but didn’t manage to pass. ‘I sat for the 10th exam but I failed. I knew so little. It is difficult to pass these exams three years after leaving school with no one to guide’, she said. ‘What happened then?’ I asked Zainab. I filled the form again six months later and cleared it. When I passed the class 10 board exams on my own and everyone came to our house with sweets I think my father felt proud in his heart of hearts. He told me maybe the madrasa was not right for me. But I told him, I am in my fourth year and now I will fulfil his wish and graduate as an alima. I asked him to let me study … to let me join school and do my 11th and 12th as a regular student. I was sure he would say no but he said he would think about it.

‘So you’ve decided to stay in the madrasa on your own now?’ I asked. Zainab carefully reasoned, I think studying here (in the madrasa) was in my qismat (destiny). Throughout the first three years I hated it. I thought it was like a jail…. But if you get to know this place it gives you lots of sukoon.10 I see the girls here, they are good at heart. They had no reason to help me in my school exams—I hardly knew them—but they did. When I failed no one made fun of me—in fact, they all prayed for my success…. Now that I have started paying attention in class, the studies here are very good. It is not like school but it teaches you a lot ... all things which are essential for a musalman ... all things essential for a woman to know … about akhirat.

I think the words that Zainab wrote in her self-portrait capture how being in the madrasa has changed the way she thinks: You asked me many months back what changes have happened after coming here [the madrasa]. I think the biggest change that’s happened to me is I have learnt the value of sabr (patience). I fought with everyone to study and I kept fighting. Four years I have been fighting. Now finally my father has agreed to send me to school again. But I don’t feel 10 

Sukoon means mental peace; it is used to refer to an idyllic state of being at complete peace with oneself.

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

66

as good about going to school now as I did then. I will of course go. I am very happy I am going. I will finish 12th and become a doctor. But I also realize that this success if it happens or doesn’t will end here. In akhirat what will help me is the education received here. It was all Allah’s will, he wanted me to wait so that I realize the value of both. —Extract from a self-portrait written by Zainab in Hindi.

On several other occasions, Zainab talked about the value of acceptance. Giving the example of her elder sister she said: Afifa was admitted here just like me, but she never argued with my father about it. She taught in the madrasa and now she is married and her ­husband wants her to study in college with him so my father will have to get her admitted somehow.

However, this voicing of support for madrasa education and the values of patience and acceptance was also accompanied by a sense of disappointment with the manner in which the madrasa constrained its students. At a later point Zainab told me, I still obviously don’t like this place like Afifa and the others who all want to do talim.11 In the madrasa, the teachers and everyone think that after graduating from here girls should just do religious preaching or dawah.12 I don’t think so. But now I don’t go around telling everyone. I know so many of my father’s Jamaati friends, who come to our house, are totally immersed in the dini line13 but they are lawyers and doctors. Here everyone thinks an alima can just be an alima … Women can be alima and other things too ... I want to be an alima who is an MBBS doctor.

Over time, as Zainab and I got to know each other better, I stopped asking her questions because there weren’t many things left to ask. We would occasionally catch up about what was happening in each 11 

Used in the sense of continuing teaching of Islamic precepts. Dawah means religious invitation to Islam. 13  Dini line is popularly used to refer to the religious domain such as religious teaching, running a madrasa, and so forth. ‘Line’ is often colloquially used to denote the broad occupational domain a person is associated with, such as ‘medical line’, ‘education line’, and so forth. 12 



Journeys of Madrasa Students

67

other’s lives. She would give me regular updates—what was happening at home and how her father was exploring schools to send her to; she would voice her anxieties, like if she heard from somewhere that being a madrasa student disqualified her from taking a certain exam; did I think she could become a doctor, and so forth. At times she would just pop out of nowhere when I was conducting interviews in the madrasa and start explaining things to girls I was interviewing, ‘Apa is asking you …’, and I would chide her for it. Every few days she would ask me, ‘Has anyone told you yet that they want to become a doctor?’ I would always say ‘no’. And each time, Zainab would repeat the same sentence, ‘Apa, just watch, I will become the first alima of this madrasa who is a doctor,’ and I would say ‘Inshaallah’.14 rukaiya : the madrasa teacher

Rukaiya was the first person I was introduced to when I entered the madrasa. The Principal, while doing introductions, described Rukaiya as the mainstay of the madrasa by virtue of being, not just the seniormost teacher, but also one of most learned alima. Though slightly older looking than most of the other girls I saw around, I was surprised that at 26 years of age Rukaiya was the senior-most teacher. Rukaiya was the universal apa of the madrasa, from the students, teachers to the principal, everyone younger or older called her ‘Rukaiya Apa’. You could always tell Rukaiya Apa apart. It had something to do with the way she carried herself—always upright, not a strand of hair visible from the dupatta that covered her head, her full-sleeved loose kurta always un-creased. After every hour or so you would find her crossing the corridors, her footsteps quick but quiet, her eyes keenly inspecting the classes. Her stern expression made her look older than her years and lent her a no-nonsense air, yet she was the one person everyone turned to in sickness and despair as she would always lend a listening ear. With the young girls who had just joined the madrasa, she would be strict in order to ensure that they follow the rules pertaining to dress, conduct, and attending classes; yet, like she said, ‘I know they miss their families, so I depute some of the older girls to look after them, get 14 

Inshaallah means ‘if god wills’.

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

68

them goodies from outside like chips and Frooti,15 play with them and generally just have someone around to share’. On rare occasions one would catch glimpses of her lighter side, when her stern mask would fall and you could see that she was just like another young women in her mid-twenties. For instance, during the shayri (poetry) competition, when she came up with repartees that were in stark contrast to her quiet, demure self, or the way she would sometimes poke fun while copying other teachers or get very emotional and break down in tears when the panjum was graduating, or her loud excited sloganeering while leading a protest march organized by the madrasa against the blasphemous content of a movie. Being from a family whose men had practised traditional Unani16 medicine for generations, Rukaiya Apa was known for her nuskhe (prescriptions) in the madrasa. In fact, some of her peers jokingly likened her to a human X-Ray machine that could screen for any illness. In Jamiatul Mominat, falling ill was one of the permissible occasions that allowed students to call home or exit the building, escorted by a senior student, to a nearby doctor. Rukaiya Apa was responsible for assessing the validity of such requests from unwell students and deciding whether the concerned student required medical attention or not. On several occasions, when I would be sitting in her room I would watch the same ritual being followed—a girl would come with a letter stating her illness and request exemption, Rukaiya Apa would call her inside the room, feel her forehead, check her pulse, ask her what was wrong and decide on the course of action. After seeing this several times I finally asked Rukaiya how she managed to tell whether or not the girl was ill, and she told me that more often than not, it was a matter of assessing whether or not the child was feigning illness. Rukaiya Apa firmly held that women’s education was incomplete without their learning basic household work such as cooking, stitching, and embroidery. She was adept at all these, being the teacher responsible for teaching cooking to the chahrum and stitching and embroidery to the girls. She was also a great advocate of girls learning and reciting naats and doing taqrir. With the classes she taught, she devoted one class a week to these activities. 15  16 

Frooti is a popular packaged mango drink in India. A traditional system of medicine practised by Muslims in India.



Journeys of Madrasa Students

69

Rukaiya was a very quiet person and engaging her in conversation was quite a challenge. In the initial stages of my fieldwork, she was deputed by the Principal to oversee my activities. She and I would often be sitting in the same room and there would be complete silence. Initially, it was an awkward, uneasy silence and I had an uncanny feeling that she did not really approve of my presence. Whenever I would talk to her she would politely answer all my questions, she maintained I was a welcome guest, yet the moment the questions ended she would just get up with a start, saying that she should be getting back to work. It was almost impossible to have a regular conversation with her—I could ask her questions which she would obediently answer, I could ask her for help in terms of introducing me to other teachers and students and she would readily facilitate it, I could ask her for permissions like interviewing students or reading stories and she never refused—yet I could never manage to have a normal conversation with her. In fact, even when I started taking English lessons with the teachers that were held in her room (as it was amongst the largest), Rukaiya Apa did not participate, saying she did not want to learn English. She would sit quietly in a corner reading her books and preparing for lessons. This continued for over three months, until on one of the days I reached a little before time and Rukaiya Apa was eating her lunch in the room all alone. Generally her roommate, another teacher, would be with her and they would share food from the same plate. I peeped in after knocking at the door, and seeing Rukaiya Apa eating, I immediately said I would wait in the library. But Rukaiya Apa asked me to come in and insisted that I share her food. She got up and started looking for another plate, spoon, and glass. She couldn’t find any and seemed visibly distressed about it, and then she agitatedly called out to the girls so that one of them could bring extra plates. I told her I was fine and I would take a bite out of her plate since it was all vegetarian. ‘But there is no spoon, how will you eat?’ said Rukaiya Apa, getting increasingly distraught. I told her I really liked eating rice with my hands and that’s the way I always ate at home. She continued to eye me sceptically as though unsure if I was serious—or if I even knew how to eat with my hands—till I took the first bite from her plate. Apa and I ate the dal and rice together from her plate. We did not really speak during the meal. Just as I was finishing up and told her I was full, she sternly looked at me saying that there was a hadith that said

70

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

one should never leave food on the plate and it should be wiped clean. I felt happier than ever to be reprimanded in this fashion. All these months I had witnessed Rukaiya Apa’s everyday instructions to teachers and students alike, intermeshed with examples from the Quran and Hadis—to my mind that was the way she normally spoke. Yet with me she had always adopted a more distant and formal approach, until that day. From then on it wasn’t all formal and distant. After a few weeks, Rukaiya Apa joined the English classes by bringing a sheet of paper in which she had written a small paragraph introducing herself in English and asked me if I would help her correct her pronunciation. Once Rukaiya Apa started attending the class, all the teachers who resided in the madrasa followed suit and I felt I had truly gained acceptance within the institution. Over time I got to know Rukaiya Apa better and she became my ready reckoner for all that I couldn’t understand in the madrasa. Rukaiya Apa, ironically, was one amongst three teachers in the entire madrasa faculty who were not alumni of the same madrasa. She had directly joined as a teacher a few years after it was set up in Okhla. When I met her, she had been teaching for close to eight years. Rukaiya belonged to Ajrara, Meerut in Uttar Pradesh. Her father was a hakim (physician in traditional medicine) and her mother was a housewife. Their family was well known in the area—I often heard other teachers and girls from Ajrara referring to them as a prominent, learned family and a dindaar (religious) household. Rukaiya had five siblings. Two of her elder sisters were married while her younger brother and sister were studying in a school back home. Rukaiya had finished her primary education till Class Five in Ayesha-tul-Bannat, a girls’ madrasa in Ajrara where, according to her, along with the Quran and Urdu, regular school subjects like English, maths, science, and social science were taught. While recounting her early schooling, Rukaiya proudly told me that she had passed class five with ‘position’. Once Rukaiya finished primary schooling, her father consulted the area’s maulvi about what should be done regarding her further education, as there was no girls’ school in the area (‘Bacchi ka aage class ka kya intizaam kiya jaye kyunki hamare Ajrare mein koi ladkiyon ka school nahi tha’). With a note of regret Rukaiya told me that a year got wasted in the process. Finally, it was decided that she



Journeys of Madrasa Students

71

would be sent to a school that was quite far from her house, where she studied from Class Six to Class Eight. Seeing her performance and her love for studies, Rukaiya’s father readily agreed that his daughter should study more. According to Rukaiya, on the basis of consultations with the Maulvi Saheb, her father was making full plans to send her to a ‘big madrasa’ in Lucknow, when the family came to know about Madrasa Ahsanul Bannat in Moradabad, which was closer to her native place. Her father got her admitted there. Rukaiya spent four years in the madrasa and for her that time was a major turning point in her life. Talking about the transformation in her thinking after joining Madrasa Ahsanul Bannat, she said: At that time, I just knew that we were Muslim, that we must offer namaz, that we would either get a place in heaven or else will go to hell, how many times one should offer namaz, how many units the prayer comprises of … but with Allah’s grace, after going to the madrasa, I got to know so much more. I learned about the boundaries prescribed by religion, what it means to be obedient towards one’s parents, what being without a purdah means … Within a year I saw a beautiful transformation in myself. There was no limit to my parents’ happiness. Now I got to know what are the prescriptions in Islam and to run one’s life ­according to Islam means that both in this life and in the afterlife, we will be rescued. —Extract from a self-portrait written by Rukaiya in Urdu.

After Moradabad, Rukaiya Apa studied at the renowned Madrasa Jamia Niswan in Lucknow to finish her almiat (alima studies). There she also took a course in tibbi/ilaj (medicine). It was in Lucknow that she realized that there were job openings for students like her. Many of the ex-students were working as teachers in the madrasa and even the administrative office was manned exclusively by the alumni of the institution. Rukaiya recalled how her friends and teachers really encouraged her to apply for an opening in Jamiatul Mominat, Delhi. I asked Rukaiya how her family reacted when she was offered a teaching post in Delhi. Rukaiya explained: My father could not believe that I was serious about going to Delhi. When I told him I have been selected he was taken aback. But he is a

72

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

progressive man … still he was scared to send me. That’s why he consulted with many people. Sending me away for studies itself had been a very big step.

She went on, Maulvi saheb and many others told my father that it is a few lucky people who get such an opportunity to serve religion. I also really requested my father that this was my dream ... In this manner I came here with my will (apni marzi) to do my religious duty (dini khidmat ko anjaam dene ke liye). I had the blessings of the almighty that he accepted me to teach (Mere rab ka fazal tha mere upar mere parwardigar ne mujhe padhane ke liye kabool kiya).

In 2008, after teaching for three years, Rukaiya left the madrasa and went back home to help out for her elder sister’s wedding. She meant to return after two months but ended up staying home for close to two years, as her parents did not let her return. Rukaiya explained: Once my elder sister got married my parents stopped me [from going], saying I looked very sick, I had grown very thin and I should stay a little longer … so I decided to stay on for another few months. Yet, they did not let me return. When I really insisted they said that once my second sister’s marriage was fixed they would quickly find a match for me, so there was no point thinking I could go back. As Allah would have it, it took a long time for my second sister to get married. After many requests I was allowed to return to the madrasa in 2010.

Rukaiya’s second sister got married while I was doing fieldwork in the madrasa and on several occasions Rukaiya told me that her parents were insisting she come back. I asked her why she was so reluctant to return, and she explained: Now I have developed greater love for the life in the madrasa, I don’t feel like staying at home. I feel that if I have been able to acquire this knowledge with the blessings of Allah then I must spread it among others. If I stay at home then I will forget all that I have learnt. This learning is such that even after death Allah rewards those who have spent time in such learning. That’s why there always emerges a way to continue this learn-



Journeys of Madrasa Students

73

ing. Right now I have requested my parents to let me stay in the madrasa. My parents say, you should come home, improve your health, you have become very weak. I pray to Allah each day that he should make my parents agree to my staying on at the madrasa. I hope he accepts my prayers.

Whenever Rukaiya Apa and I would discuss the future she always talked about how she wanted to do din ki khidmat (serve her faith) and teach others what she had been privileged enough to learn. She once mentioned that she wasn’t sure if her future husband would allow her to teach the way her father had. I told her I was sure he would heed to her request. But Rukaiya just shook her head; she said that more than her utmost desire to teach was the overriding desire to become an ‘asal khatun’17 who serves her parents, her husband and like ‘Hazrat Fatima, raise children like Hasan and Hussain’ (Hazrat Fatima bint Muhammad salla allahu alayhi wa-ala alihi wa-sallam ki tarah Hasan, Hussain jaisi aulad ki parwarish kar sakun). fatima : the madrasa graduate

In February 2013, my search for university students who had previously studied in a madrasa led me—probably for the hundredth time—to the offices of the faculty of Urdu, Arabic, and Islamic Studies, which had the maximum strength of madrasa graduates. I had chosen to conduct interviews in Jamia Millia Islamia, a university located in Delhi, as it was amongst the first universities, way back in the 1970s, to ‘recognize’ madrasa education (as equivalent to intermediate level), thereby allowing students from select madrasas to compete for admission into higher education courses at the University. Disappointed at having located seven such students and not managing to interview even one, I was quite desperate. That afternoon one of the lady teachers told me that one of her third-year students studying Arabic, who was from a madrasa background, had made a rare appearance for the morning class and if I was lucky I could catch her before the evening class. That is how I met 22-year-old Fatima for the first time, standing rather tall in a busy corridor, just her eyes visible 17  Asal Khatun literally translates into ‘a real lady’; the term has connotations of the behaviour of women belonging to nobility.

74

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

through the black niqab. I hurriedly tried to explain what I was doing, feeling like an overeager amateur salesperson trying to sell something. Fatima just looked at me with a steady gaze, calmly simplified my rather longish five-minute explanation describing my research into two sentences and said yes for the interview. Her only request was, could we have the interview in the garden or someplace a little distant from the Department, as she did not want the boys in her class to see. ‘I am the only girl in this class’, she explained, ‘and everything I do is scrutinized or maybe it is all in my mind. That is why I come here half an hour before class so that I can walk into an empty classroom and sit where I want, otherwise it is like walking with 40 eyes following you.’ Fatima and I settled ourselves on the very last bench in the garden after she had assured herself that no one was looking. Each time Fatima would look back I would follow her gaze. Seeing her visibly ill at ease, I couldn’t help but ask, ‘Do your male classmates follow you or bother you?’ She replied quietly and I could sense she might even be smiling below her niqab: No no, don’t get me wrong, most of them are very sharif (decent), it is not like they trouble me or anything; it is just that I feel I am very conspicuous ... even with all this [pointing to her niqab]. It is so strange I always thought people do not notice you in a niqab but now I think behind all this black one feels they don’t see. It is like closing your eyes and thinking no one is looking.

She went on: It is not easy being the only girl in a class with all boys; one stands out. In my first year there was another girl but she left to get married and that is when I stopped attending classes. I just came to take exams. I don’t know how I passed. Then in the last term of the second year my teacher called home to tell me this time I won’t be allowed to sit for the examination, as my attendance was short. I fought with everyone and joined this course; I could not just leave, so that’s when I mustered the courage to ask my father. One whole term my brother dropped and picked me up every single day. I passed my second year too. Now I am in my last year and I am trying to attend classes regularly. Abbu [my father] said I could attend the classes as he trusts me.



Journeys of Madrasa Students

75

To highlight the importance of this hard-earned trust, Fatima explained: Being here is a big thing for me. With God’s grace (Alhamduillah) I am the first girl to ever go to college in my whole khandan [extended f­ amily]. I am the youngest amongst six brothers and sisters. All my brothers did their graduation here [in the same university] but girls in our family do not study. My mother is illiterate; she never went to school. My two elder sisters studied in the same madrasa as me, one has gotten married while the other is waiting to get married. I am my father’s favourite just like Hazrat Fatima, my namesake, was our Prophet’s favourite. I begged my father to let me study and finally after a year he relented. And that’s how I am here.

Fatima’s father is from Bijnor, a town in Western UP. He is an Ansari (a lower caste amongst Muslims). His whole family had been in the timber business for decades and he was the only one to complete his schooling. He shifted to Delhi in the 1990s, soon after Fatima was born, looking for better job opportunities, and eventually established his own small timber business in Delhi. Fatima had studied in an Urdu-medium school till Class five. After she finished primary schooling her parents admitted her in Jamia Niswan where both her elder sisters had studied before her. I asked her, how come all the girls in the family had studied in the same madrasa, especially since she had earlier mentioned that her brothers had gone to an expensive private school? To which she replied: There are many restrictions (pabandi) on girls in our family. We are the first generation of girls to actually go to any place to study. My father thought we should study a ‘little’ but he preferred the madrasa to admitting us in school. I don’t know exactly why he did it because I never ask him these sort of things—no one in our house does. But I think it is because we had just shifted to Delhi and there were five children who needed to go to school—I was a small baby so I wasn’t included.... We did not have the money we have today. My father did not know a lot of people here and no one was there to give advice (koi salah mashwara karne ke liye nahi tha) on which school is safe for girls. I think that’s why he just admitted my sisters to the nearest madrasa.

76

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

Talking about her childhood, Fatima described her educational journey: I loved studies as a child. I went to the masjid to study the Quran and the Maulvi there told my father, she is very sharp (inka zehan bahut achha hai). When I was small I would keep looking through my brothers’ books and try to read, I would write on walls, which made my mother very angry ... Later I went to a girls’ Urdu-medium school but I don’t remember much of that. Then I went to Jamia Niswan.

The moment any mention of Jamia Niswan would come up, Fatima made it a point to qualify that it was a ‘school with a madrasa sounding name’, only Arabic and Islamic studies were taught, otherwise the institution followed the regular school syllabus as prescribed by the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE). I asked Fatima why she stressed that Jamia Niswan was not a madrasa so many times. She reasoned, ‘I know you are talking to madrasa graduates and in some ways I am one because I studied the Alima course, but I wanted you to know that Jamia Niswan does not have a typical madrasa type mahaul (ambience)’. Very proudly, Fatima explained how her institution was not a ‘typical’ madrasa—she talked about the manner in which the institution really stressed extra-curricular activities—every week there were competitions between girls in debating, ghazal singing, naat recitation, shayri, essay writing. Annually, these were organized on a bigger scale. ‘That’s why I am not like the rest of the madrasa girls’, she said with pride. ‘I can read and write a little bit of English and I know a bit about the world.’ So did she think there was any difference between her and regular schoolgirls, I asked. The environment (mahaul) in schools is totally different from madrasas, schools don’t offer dini talim or religious education, they don’t stress on purdah, they don’t tell you what the difference between right and wrong, between haram and halal ... the only way in which school girls are better is that they have more worldly exposure.

Comparing herself with her classmates from regular schools, she went on:



Journeys of Madrasa Students

77

All of last year when my brother would drop and pick me up—even though we stay 15 minutes away—I would see other girls coming from their homes after travelling for hours. Schoolgirls are not hesitant; they don’t get scared easily. I go to the metro station and feel very intimidated as I don’t know anything about where to buy the token, how to look up the route map, where to go.

However, Fatima was quick to add that though this worldly knowledge made the ‘other’ girls appear smarter, they did not know about the ‘right way of life as per religion’. Fatima gave me numerous examples of how religious education helps women know their masla masal (issues and problems), differentiate right from wrong, moral from immoral. For her, what she liked about being an alima ladki was that her education as an alima gave her the knowledge to act in a way that was right and moral, where she would not have to be ashamed in her afterlife, and she could discern with authority what had been said in the scriptures from banai hui batein (made up things). For Fatima, the only shortcoming with most girls’ madrasas was that they really didn’t expect much from their students: ‘They just feel the girls should get married into a dindaar ghar (religious house). That’s why girls from madrasas … bas dini ho kar hi reh jaati hain (they just remain engrossed in religion). There is a need for a middle path.’ Fatima went on to describe how Jamia Niswan, which was not like the stereotypical girls’ madrasa, subscribed to the middle path. She gave the example of her class 10 board exams and how Jamia Niswan had supported her. Students are actively encouraged to appear for the Class Ten exams through Open School. The dates of the internal exam are set in a manner that they do not clash with the dates of the Open School exam. Students are given a two-month vacation—one month for preparation and one month to take the exam. I passed the Class Ten exams with distinction just because of the efforts of the institution.

Fatima also told me about how the principal of the school had really motivated her father to allow her to study and had helped her in the university application process.

78

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

Fatima asked me ‘Aap bataiye (you tell me), everyone says admission forms are on the internet or go to the office and collect them ... how can girls like me who don’t know the ABC of computers and who cannot get out of the house do these things?’ I nodded my assent and Fatima went on passionately: ‘I feel girls from our type of backgrounds need a lot of help to avail the opportunities out there’. Talking about her class in the university, Fatima discussed her daily dilemmas: The first year I hardly understood a word. Our teacher grew up in Saudi Arabia and she speaks Arabic like the Arabs. Most of the boys in class are also very fluent in Arabic because even though they are from a madrasa background, boys’ madrasas are far, far ahead of the girls’ ones in academic rigour. The teachers obviously teach as per the general level of the class. They cannot possibly focus on the girls, especially when there are just one or two girls in the class. I know they [the teachers] try to be nice, for example, they always tell me to sit in front, but that doesn’t really help, does it? I always feel hesitant, I just cannot say an answer aloud as I keep thinking kahin main galat na bol doon (what if I say something wrong). Often when the teacher tells us the answer I feel disappointed and that I should have spoken up ... Now in my third year I have started to speak a little.

Talking about her struggle with English, Fatima explained that one of her compulsory papers was in English and that it was one language she felt she knew better than the boys in class. But she also wanted to become fluent in spoken English, ‘like the school girls’. I asked her what were the other dilemmas she faced, and Fatima became very quiet. She looked at me and I knew instinctively that she’d prefer that I didn’t take down notes. Very quietly she said, ‘It is the boys in class’. ‘What do you mean?’ I asked, thinking the worst, especially recalling her insistence on conducting the interview as far away from her classmates. ‘Nothing, nothing’, she said, It is just that they say things I don’t like. When I enter the class they start giggling loudly, they drop the books and pass tongue in cheek remarks like ‘wow, zabardast, masha allah’. The other day one of them had the audacity to say, ‘Kya piece hai’ (What a piece). I really lost my temper



Journeys of Madrasa Students

79

and told the person off—just because I come to study doesn’t give him the right to disrespect me.

Visibly agitated, Fatima went on to explain how such jokes could cost her studies: My family is very strict. They find the idea of boys and girls studying together very dangerous. They feel scared—what if I cross the line. That’s why I have cultivated the image of a very strict person. In class my image is that of being very khamosh (quiet) and reserved. I am okay with that because for me it is most important that I do not give my family a reason to feel bad. Everything travels from here to home, though I don’t know how. That’s why when I come here, I just keep my head down, attend class and go back. I feel, ‘jis bharose ke sath mere gharwalon ne mujhe bheja hai bas wo bana rahe’ (the trust with which my parents have sent me here should remain intact).

‘So do you have any friends who are boys?’ I asked. And the moment I asked the question I regretted it. One thing that working in the madrasa had taught me was that there were very strict boundaries for interaction between boys and girls and the interaction of girls with ghair mahram (non-family) men was strictly prohibited. I couldn’t believe I had just asked her that. I was just about to apologize and ask Fatima to forget the question, when Fatima totally surprised me. ‘I do’, she said. ‘Just one person’. ‘Okay’, I said, not knowing what else to say. ‘He is very decent and we got talking only because he was related to that other girl who was in my class in the first year. So when she left he was the only person I knew and he really helped me in my second year when I had hardly attended any class’, she justified. Then abruptly, without a pause, Fatima said, ‘It’s time for my class now’. I took the cue, knowing the interview was over. As we walked across the garden to the department, Fatima suddenly said, ‘You know that friend—he likes me and wants to marry me’. ‘Wow, do you like him too?’ I asked. ‘Yes, I do, but I told him we can never even be friends’. I kept quiet and Fatima looked at me and said with finality, ‘If anything were to happen—even marriage, which is the best-case scenario—the small window that has opened for girls’

80

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

education in the family will close, God knows for how long (jo chhota sa zariya bana hai wo bhi band ho jayega)’. ethnographic portraits : towards developing an under standing of everyday lives in madrasas

As ethnographic narratives, the portraits of Zainab, Rukaiya, and Fatima tell their own stories, communicating a sense of the ‘here and now’, as it unfolded for the writer in the field. I employ these portraits to illuminate a current moment at which girls’ madrasas stand, a crucial crosssection of continuity and change. By attending to everyday negotiations in madrasas, the portraits illustrate a paradoxical picture of the subtle, imperceptible changes creeping in, in the name of strong reaffirmation of tradition. Each of the portraits presents diverse forms of negotiation through which change tends to take place. Very consciously the stories draw attention to the process, as it is unfolding and the various actors and relationships involved, rather than focusing on what the outcome is. This raises critical questions about how key transitions in these girls’ lives are being influenced by larger forces that seem to be playing out in the backdrop, such as the changing age of marriage, increasing universalization of primary education, communalization of social space, and training of women as bearers and communicators of sacred knowledge. The portraits highlight an educational landscape that is fast changing. The strong campaign around the right to education (which, since then, has become a fundamental right) and emphasis on universalization of primary education has led to an increasing demand for girls’ schooling cutting across barriers of religion, caste, class, and spatial location. But the character and forms of this demand are far from uniform. This rise in demand is taking place in post-liberalization India where the vacuum created by poorly resourced, low-quality government schools is being filled by an assortment of private educational players ranging from low-fee charging private schools to institutions run by organizations with a strong religious agenda (Chopra and Jeffrey 2005; Corbridge, Harriss, and Jeffrey 2013). The educational choices of parents, especially those opting for girls’ madrasas, have to be viewed against this larger educational landscape where there is increasing acceptance and greater demand for girls’ schooling but there is a lack of affordable schooling options providing quality



Journeys of Madrasa Students

81

e­ ducation. This, coupled with moral and cultural concerns around modern schooling alienating children from Muslim culture, prevalence of a morally corrupting atmosphere, co-education and inappropriate uniforms, make madrasas a popular choice. Reading the above-mentioned parental concerns as simply illustrative of Muslim social conservatism would be an oversimplification of a reality wherein parents are opting to educate their daughters after weighing the potential dangers and risks posed by education. Still’s study (2011) captures the anxiety associated with female education when she describes how female education is perceived as a ‘particularly risky business’ for young Dalit women in rural Andhra Pradesh. There is a constant fear of ‘over education’ as prolonged education increases the risk of pre-marital affairs, love marriage, pregnancies, and elopement. The very fact that girls like Zainab, Rukaiya, and Fatima are first-generation learners in their families, particularly the first to avail education in institutional settings outside the agency of family and boundaries of home, illustrates an active choice made by the parents in favour of formal schooling for girls. But the question that arises is how and why are madrasas, generally associated with religious education and training of boys, emerging as a viable educational option in the search for schooling for girls? Intersecting with the changing educational landscape in India is the rising communalization of social space. This feeds the heightened sense of insecurity amongst Muslims, leading to greater reliance on community networks for everyday services ranging from housing, education to employment. Schooling emerges as a crucial site where one of the most tangible everyday manifestations of this is the increasing need to provide dini talim or religious education to girls in institutional settings like madrasas. Previously, the privilege of training as alims was largely confined to men as they were seen as the bearers and communicators of sacred knowledge. Women were always entitled to religious education but this learning was limited to the boundaries of the family and the home. The metaphor of the mother’s womb constituting the child’s first madrasa captures the traditional understanding of imparting religious education to women. However, today we see a shift towards the formal training of women towards becoming alimas or the bearers and communicators of sacred knowledge. Girls’ madrasas represent the institutional face of this process. They objectify

82

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

the moral imagination of an ideal Muslim woman into an educational regime. What are the institutional and the educational practices the madrasa employs to further its intentions of making students ideal Muslim women? While madrasas clearly involve a move away from home-based training in dini talim, the ideational construct and imaginary is an extension of the family and the home, with the madrasa representing the norms, control, and disciplining which are the prerogative of the family vis-à-vis the girls. The emphasis on security arrangements, restrictions on mobility, rigid control over the access that girls enjoy to the world reflected in each of the portraits illustrates how girls’ madrasas present themselves as secure institutions. There is a strong emphasis on everyday discipline and leading a pious life by not just learning to read the Quran and other religious texts but internalizing and exhibiting this knowledge in daily practice or amal. This is revealed in the range of tangible rules and regulations described in the portraits. The portraits also illustrate the proposition that there is a blurring of boundaries between the religious and the secular, the traditional and the modern in madrasa curriculum with madrasas striving to combine dini talim (religious education) and duniyavi talim (worldly education). This is captured by Fatima’s portrait who describes her alma mater as a ‘madrasa only in name’, given its focus on regular school syllabus. In this regard, the portraits also draw attention to the linkages and movement between madrasas and other educational spaces. Some girls like Zainab have availed education in regular schools/secular education and shifted to madrasas; others such as Rukaiya have studied solely in madrasas, while girls like Fatima have shifted from madrasa education to mainstream higher education. How are girls’ lives being shaped in these institutions? The lives of the young women depicted in the portraits paint a complex picture of everyday desires, contesting dilemmas, enduring social constraints, and how girls find ingenious ways to pursue their educational aspirations. The portraits provide a glimpse of the imperceptible disjunction between the madrasa strictures and their everyday practice, highlighting the fluidity of the girls’ pious practices. They also illustrate how the changing aspirations of the girls shape and reshape their understanding and embodiment of what it means to be ideal Muslim women.



Journeys of Madrasa Students

83

Zainab’s portrait brings to life a student who aspires to become an alima and a doctor. She is a reluctant madrasa student who grows to appreciate the value of madrasa education without giving up on her more worldly dreams. Her portrait tells the story of a madrasa student trying to reconcile her personal aspirations with the expectations of her family and madrasa norms. Pulled out from her earlier school and admitted into the madrasa owing to her father’s changed notions about the ‘right education for girls’, Zainab uses her almiat (course that makes an alima) as leverage with her father to fulfil her own dream of returning to a regular school. On the other hand, Rukaiya’s portrait depicts a young teacher who has been associated with different girls’ madrasas for nearly two decades. As a student she subscribes to the model of an ideal pupil upheld by the madrasa. Rukaiya’s efforts are rewarded. She is offered a teaching post upon graduating from the madrasa, a vocation that her father allows her to pursue, making her the first alima and first working woman in the family. Her lifelong aim of serving the religion by spreading the message she has learnt permeates her entire life. However, her growing fondness for continuing teaching in a city far away from her natal home creates an uneasy situation. Fatima’s portrait details the life of a madrasa graduate who has achieved a long-held ambition, admission into a university. Despite achieving this significant feat given her conservative family and madrasa background, she finds herself ill at ease in a co-educational and academically competitive setting, and tries to make herself as invisible as possible. The portrait communicates the weight of family history, and the moral expectations that now rest on her. Her university life involves balancing the desire to pursue her academic ambitions and bearing the responsibility of being the first girl in her family ‘permitted’ the privilege of availing university education albeit on strict pre-conditions. Each of these portraits communicate the diverging experiences of young women who are trying to balance the desire to prove themselves and at the same time subscribe to the ideals of the ideal Muslim women taught in the madrasa. The portraits illustrate how the very practices institutionalized in the madrasa with the intention of producing a certain kind of ideal Muslim woman often have paradoxical consequences. Madrasa education brings in its wake opportunities for further education and employment in certain professions such as teaching or religious

84

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

vocations. However, these opportunities are often circumscribed by the same social constraints that led the girls to madrasas in the first place. This is best illustrated in the portrait of Fatima, who achieves her aspired admission into university—undoubtedly a significant feat given her conservative family and madrasa background—but after three years in the university finds herself ill at ease in a co-educational, academically competitive setting. Her university life is a story of balancing the desire to prove her merit through academic performance with bearing the responsibility of being the first girl in her family ‘permitted’ to avail the opportunity of higher education, a privilege afforded on strict pre-conditions. Rukaiya’s portrait highlights a similar dynamic of enduring constraints, this time internalized. She believes that serving religion necessitates an active prioritization of the roles of wife, mother, and daughter. These portraits problematize the overarching storylines of Islamic domesticity (Sikand 2005) and alternative empowerment (Bano 2009) that have been conventionally applied to girls’ madrasas. Drawing on either of the above linear frameworks would involve presenting Fatima, Zainab, and Rukaiya as success stories of madrasas contributing to ‘empowerment’ or fostering ‘Islamic domesticity’. However, the portraits present a more complex picture. They allude to tensions emanating from varying opportunities and expectations that madrasa education brings in its wake, especially for women, and the manner in which the friction between educational institutions, family, and women plays out in the women’s lives. By presenting a complex story of the growing relevance of madrasa education in producing pious Muslim women, changing notions of what being a madrasa-educated alima means, women employing their status of being ‘madrasa graduates’ to avail further education and employment, and enduring social constraints, these portraits raise critical questions. I employ each of the critical questions raised by the above-­mentioned portraits as lamp posts to structure my ethnographic monograph. What is the role of madrasa education in operationalizing the imagination of moral Islamic community, especially the part played by women in this community? What are the conducive and constraining factors that influence the demand for a certain kind of education for Muslim girls? How does the paradoxical relationship between the madrasa’s prescribed educational programme and its actual practice reveal itself



Journeys of Madrasa Students

85

in everyday life? How are future trajectories of girls’ lives influenced by the interplay of education with context-specific social determinants? In what manner do the future paths being pursued by the girls conform to or distance themselves from the initial moral imagination? How is this interplay shaping the form, meaning, and imaginaries that the idea of the ‘educated Muslim woman’ is acquiring? The following chapters seek to further explore and address these questions based on the ethnographic field research I conducted in a girls’ madrasa in Delhi. With a view to understanding the experiences of madrasa students in all their complexity, I focus on three key junctures in the girls’ lives. The first juncture is their transition from their homes in villages and small towns across India to Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat (Chapter 5); the second juncture is their lives inside the madrasa (Chapter 6); and the third explores life after graduating from the madrasa (Chapter 7). Drawing from the critical questions raised by the portraits, I engage with notions of imagined communities, piety, and aspirations.

chapter four

In-between Spaces Locating Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat

September 2014: According to press reports (PTI 2014b; Srivastava 2014b), Bharatiya Janata Party MP Sakshi Maharaj alleges that madrasas across the country are imparting ‘education of terror’. Addressing a public meeting, Maharaj claims madrasas are involved in ‘anti-national activities’, educating the youth to become ‘terrorists’ and ‘jihadis’. Connecting madrasas with the ongoing ‘love-jihad’ controversy, he states that madrasas are instrumental in encouraging young Muslim men to spread ‘love jihad’ by using cash rewards: ‘Rs 11 lakh for an affair with a Sikh girl, Rs 10 lakh for a Hindu girl.’ He demands ‘madrasas should follow the same curriculum as normal schools’. Sakshi Maharaj’s statement embroiling madrasas with terrorism is not new in India. Right-wing Hindu groups have long insinuated that madrasas are dens of terror—even before 9/11—and the global discourse on Islamic militancy and terrorism has entrenched such associations as everyday knowledge. Sakshi Maharaj added Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood. Hem Borker, Oxford University Press (2018). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199484225.003.0004



In-between Spaces

87

the dimension of ‘love jihad’1 to the list of allegations and proposed madrasa reforms as a solution. Widely reported in the press, the statements of Sakshi Maharaj created a furore. What followed was the oft-repeated story of political deliberations—the Right-wing Hindu leaders alleged terrorism, religious fanaticism, appeasement; and the representatives of Muslims, supported by the so-called secular and Left parties termed the allegations as a political ploy to communalize, and supported madrasa education by flagging rights of minorities. Repeatedly embroiled in such debates, Indian madrasas remain a hornet’s nest. They are the only educational institutions in India invoked as symbolic icons for representing a whole gamut of issues ranging from terrorism, forced conversion, Muslim identity, minority rights to modernization and reform. Drawing on the work of Starett (1998) in Egypt, Alam (2011a) argues that this dubious distinction stems from the range of ‘functional’2 roles madrasas serve for different actors in the Indian context. He elaborates the functional roles and the concerned actors as follows: the programme of madrasa reforms serves the modernizing aims of the state; the opposition to madrasa reforms by Muslim religious clerics positions them as ‘custodians of Islam’; the ‘vilification of madrasas’ by Hindu Right-wing actors serves to highlight the many problems inherent in the Muslim minority, the support of madrasa reform a pivotal aim of the ‘liberal’ Muslims and others (2011a: 212). Extending Alam’s point if one widens the frame to include global players such as international media and geo-strategic debates on Islamic militancy post 9/11, madrasas are deeply implicated as 1 

‘Love jihad’ is a controversial term popularized by the Hindu Right to make claims that Muslim youth entice non-Muslim girls with romantic posturing, persuade the girls to marry them, and ‘force’ them to convert. 2  Alam (2011) borrows the term ‘functional’ from the work of Starett (1998) on Egypt. In describing the various processes through which Islamic tradition is altered to serve as a useful political instrument, Starett (1998) describes functionalization as one of the processes. He defines it as a ‘process of translation in which objects from one discourse come to serve the strategic or utilitarian ends of another discourse (1998: 9). He explains this in the Egyptian context wherein religious traditions, customs, beliefs, institutions, and values are consciously put to work for various types of social and political projects.

88

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

a ‘geopolitical frontier in the clash of civilizations rhetoric’ (Moosa 2015). This has earned madrasas the infamous distinction of being a political flashpoint and overshadowed their centuries-old role as education providers. Focusing on their role as educational institutions, my work examines the everyday life in madrasas focusing on the beliefs and practices of madrasa students, teachers, and parents. However, the everyday lives of students in madrasas cannot be seen in isolation from the larger debates that frame Muslim communities in India. I focus on three interlinked processes—Muslim marginalization, communalization of social space, and the rise of Islamic reform movements. I argue that the rising salience of girls’ madrasas needs to be contextualized within this wider canvas. Having painted the larger canvas with a very broad brush in the earlier sections, in the last section, I focus on Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat where I conducted my fieldwork. madrasas in india

Though literally the word ‘madrasa’ would translate into ‘place to study’ or school, in contemporary India madrasas are generally understood in a more restricted sense—as religious schools providing Islamic education. Both in historical tradition and contemporary practice, madrasas in India serve the ‘crucial function of training Muslim religious specialists or ulama, besides imparting basic Islamic education to Muslim children who need not necessarily continue their training to become professional religious experts’ (Noor, Sikand, and Bruinessen 2008: 9). As institutions that sustain, preserve, and promote Islamic traditions, madrasas in India are an important instrument of forging identity and maintaining piety (Metcalf 2007). Even within the Indian context, the term ‘madrasa’ does not refer to a homogeneous set of institutions. There are variations amongst madrasas depending on their geographical location, Islamic school of thought, maslak, the sect3 they subscribe to, curricula, and so on. In 3  Each of the sects, such as Barelwi, Deobandi, Jamaat-e-Islami-Hind, Ahl-e-Hadith, has its own madrasas to educate students in what they believe to be the correct interpretation of Islam, touting others as deviants (Alam 2012).



In-between Spaces

89

terms of the level of education, schools imparting Islamic education are divided into three categories, namely, maktab, madrasa, and jamia (SPQEM Evaluation Report 2013). Maktabs are primary level institutions, generally attached to a mosque, and cater to small children, providing them with skills to read and recite the Quran and perform basic Islamic rituals. Madrasas, on the other hand, generally signify schools that impart education up to a level equivalent to the senior secondary level in mainstream schools. Students of madrasas who study up to this level get the degree of an alim/alima. Jamia are institutions of learning that impart higher education. Students who pursue their higher education in these institutions are awarded degrees such as fazil (graduate degree) and kamil (postgraduate degree). However, it is important to note that this broad division between primary, secondary, and higher education varies across states and so do the names of degrees. For example, in Uttar Pradesh the madrasas are subdivided into tahtania (primary), fauqania (upper primary), and alia (senior secondary or intermediate). In West Bengal, the state-recognized madrasas are divided into junior high (Classes 1–5), high madrasa (Classes 6–10), and senior madrasa (Gupta 2009). Though there is little uniformity in terms of curriculum or number of years at every level, increasingly most madrasas are including the general system of education. A recent NCERT educational survey highlighted that four out of six madrasas follow the general system of education (NCERT 2005a). At present, there are several thousand madrasas spread all across India. The various estimates peg the number of madrasas from 4,000 (Kaur 1990) to 1,25,000 (Badiuzzaman 2002, as cited in Sikand 2005a: 313). In 1995, the Human Resources Development Ministry estimated the number of madrasas in India at 12,000 (Ahmad 2010). The most quoted figure is that of the Union Home Minister, Government of India in 2002, according to which the number of madrasas stood close to 32,000 (Sikand 2005). The recent details ­furnished by the Ministry of Human Resource Development (National Consultative Committee SPQEM 2013) allude to a larger number of madrasas—as under the government-sponsored ‘Scheme to Provide Quality Education in Madrasas’ (SPQEM) 32,053 m ­ adrasas in 16 states had received support until November 2013—and the target for the next Five-Year Plan was to support 52,525 madrasas. However as scholars like Ahmad (2010) caution, statistics on madrasas, especially the three-fold

90

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

increase in madrasas from 1995 to 2002 illustrated by government statistics, should be taken with a ‘grain of salt’ given the politicization of madrasa statistics. The reason for such speculation and wide ranging disparity over the actual number of madrasas is largely owing to the fact that a ‘madrasa’ in India can range from being a small study group comprising a few children to one that is highly institutionalized. Further, till date there has been no comprehensive survey of madrasas in India (Alam 2013b; Riaz 2008). It is particularly difficult to enumerate the unrecognized or azad (independent) madrasas that are not established or aided by the state. Here it is important to pause to elaborate the difference between recognized and unrecognized madrasas. On the basis of their relationship with the state, madrasas are either recognized or remain unrecognized. A recognized madrasa works within the government system in contrast to unrecognized madrasas, which remain outside the government fold. Recognized madrasas are those that have been either established under the aegis of the state or receive some form of funding from the government. The financial support from the state ranges from grants-in-aid to infrastructural support to provision of teachers’ salaries. In several states, the recognized status implies that these madrasa are registered under the state madrasa board. At present, state madrasa boards are operational in seven states, namely Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Assam, and Rajasthan. Most of the madrasas affiliated to state madrasa boards follow a curriculum similar to state schools along with certain additional texts on Islamic religion and history (Alam 2013b). The degrees of these affiliated madrasas are recognized at par with other educational boards that operate in regular schools such as the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) (Alam 2013b). In fact the ‘modernization’ of curriculum to mirror the curricula of the state is a general prerequisite for granting recognised status to the madrasa. The second kinds of madrasas are unrecognized madrasas. These are referred to by different names in different states, for example, in West Bengal such madrasas are termed as khareji madrasas (Gupta 2009), while in northern India, especially UP and Bihar, they are termed as azad madrasas. These madrasas receive no aid, financial support, or formal recognition from the government and may or may not have



In-between Spaces

91

introduced mainstream subjects in their curriculum. As mentioned before most statistics on madrasas in India do not factor in these ‘unregistered’ madrasas. The Sachar Committee Report (Government of India 2006d) emphasized that a small proportion of Muslim children (4 per cent) attend madrasas. However, the Sachar Committee data on madrasas came solely from madrasas operating under various state madrasa boards and did not factor in madrasas operating outside their purview, which are estimated to be significantly more (Alam 2011). At best, the Sachar Committee figure is an approximation, not based on any census, and hides important regional variations, such as attendance of madrasas is five times higher in north India as compared to the south (Gayer 2012). Further, in many areas a large number of non-Muslim students study in madrasas, occasionally even outnumbering Muslims (Nahar 2006; Rahman 2013; Singh, 2012). The Sachar Committee (Government of India 2006d) estimate also hides significant gender differentials. It indicates that girls comprise about 45.9 per cent of the students enrolled in madrasas. Since then, several micro-studies have highlighted the trend of increasing number of girls enrolling in madrasas (Akhtar and Narula 2010; Gupta 2009), sometimes even outnumbering boys (Gupta 2009). In the next sections, I magnify the lens of my enquiry to cover larger trends that have a bearing on present-day madrasas in general and girls’ madrasas in particular. I chart the broader socio-political landscape by discussing how Muslim communities are framed in the larger narratives of the nation. I particularly focus on three trends— marginalization of Muslims in India, growth of the Right-wing Hindu movement, and the rise of a particular form of Islamic reformism amongst Muslims and its impact on Muslim women. zooming out : the socio - political landscape of muslim communities in india

Muslim Marginalization

The Muslims in India—immensely diverse in terms of language, religious orientation, and social class (Hansen 2007)—are amongst India’s

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

92

most marginalized communities. The degree of this deprivation was highlighted almost a decade ago by the Report of the Prime Minister’s High Level Committee on Social, Economic, and Educational Status of the Muslim Community of India, popularly known as the Sachar Committee Report (Government of India 2006d). Though not a new revelation, what set the Sachar Committee Report apart was its use of data from state institutions (Hasan and Hasan 2013) to demonstrate the decline of Muslims on most social and economic development indices. Highlighting the deep deprivation of Muslim communities, the report argued that the Muslim community was barely distinguishable from other historically marginalized social groups (Dalits and Adivasis) in terms of educational and economic marginalization. The report emphasized that the problems faced by Muslims are a combination of those faced by the poor, by all minorities and exclusively by Muslims (Basant 2012). Since then, several government appointed committees have highlighted the continuing marginalization of the Muslim communities, notably the Report of the National Commission for Religious and Linguistic Minorities, popularly known as the Justice Ranganath Misra Commission Report (Government of India 2007b) and the recent report of the Post Sachar Evaluation Committee (Government of India 2014). Muslims are amongst the most impoverished communities in India with a depleting asset base, below average work participation, and a lack of stable and secure employment (Fazal 2013). The Sachar Committee Report 2006,4 estimated Muslims as closely following the SCs and STs in reporting incidence of poverty in the year 2004–5. The Kundu Committee Report (Government of India 2014) has highlighted that poverty levels among Muslims in rural areas continued to remain higher than the national average, both during 2004–5 and 2011–12. In urban areas, Muslim Other Backward Classes (OBCs) remain particularly poor5 (Government of India 2014). Further, 4 

The Committee used the official National Planning Commission methodology, that is, poverty ratio with 365 days reference period to estimate the incidence of poverty. 5 According to the Kundu Committee Report (Government of India 2014) the incidence of poverty among OBC Muslims was almost twice as high as that of general population in 2004–5 and in 2011–12.



In-between Spaces

93

a disproportionately high proportion of Muslims across rural and urban areas lack most of the basic services such as drinking water,6 drainage, sanitation, and housing7 (Government of India 2014). An analysis of the nature of employment across different types of work shows that a disproportionately large number of Muslims tends to be concentrated in lower paying jobs, mostly in the unorganized sector. The source of income for most Muslim households is selfemployment in non-agricultural occupations, mainly artisanal work followed by agricultural work. In 2011–12, the percentage of rural households living on self-employment among Muslims was 49 per cent, while in urban areas it was 50 per cent (Government of India 2014). This is also evident from the lower share of Muslim households living on earnings from regular wage employment. Muslims constitute a mere 6 per cent of all government job employees, the lowest share of all communities and social groups. The situation is compounded by the high rate of unemployment in the community. As high as 18 per cent of the educated urban Muslim youth report unemployment (Government of India 2014), raising concerns about how education does not necessarily translate into formal employment for Muslims in India (Government of India 2006d). The economic marginalization of Muslims is inextricably related with the relative deprivation of Muslims in the field of education. In terms of the rate of progress, the improvement in educational status of Muslims has been the slowest as compared with other socio-religious categories. A time trend of literacy levels amongst different ­communities clearly indicates that the educational gap between Muslims and other communities has sharply increased, especially after the 1980s (Government of India 2006d). The literacy rate among Muslims is the lowest as compared to other communities (Government of India 2007b). The Muslim community has a high percentage of children (15 per cent) 6 

For example, the lowest figures for households having water within their dwelling are reported by Muslim households—40.5 per cent in 2008–9, and 41.3 per cent in 2012 (Government of India 2014: 48). 7  An overview of the housing conditions (such as drainage, latrines, garbage collection, and so on), especially in urban areas for different religious groups, indicates that Muslim households live in much poorer conditions than other religious groups (Government of India 2014: 49–51).

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

94

who have never attended school8 (Government of India 2014) and the lowest mean years of schooling (Government of India 2006d). This is manifested in the community’s low rates of education attainment and high dropouts beginning at a young age of 10 years, as compared to other socio-religious communities (Government of India 2014). The rate of drop-outs increases with the increase in the level of education resulting in the low presence of Muslims at higher levels of education as compared to other socio-religious communities (Government of India 2014). Educational indicators also reveal persistent gender disparity. Crude literacy figures indicate that Muslim women (50.1 per cent, 2001 Census) closely follow the national average (53.7 per cent female literacy) but lag behind Muslim men by a margin of 17.5 per cent. Muslim girls, both in urban and rural areas, have a very high proportion of those who have never attended school or any educational institution. They also have the least numbers for those enrolled in primary or above levels. In fact, a particularly disturbing fact highlighted by the recent Kundu Committee Report is that Muslim children, especially girls, record one of the largest number of ‘no-where children’ that is, children who are neither attending any educational institution nor are part of the labour force (Government of India 2014: 30–1). The socio-economic and educational marginalization of Muslims documented above is compounded by the exclusion of Muslims from the state apparatus of power, namely the judiciary, police, and civil service,9 and under-representation amongst elected representatives (Gayer and Jaffrelot 2012). The Sachar Committee Report attributed the development deficit experienced by the Muslims to the interplay of identity, equity, and security (Government of India 2006d). Based on extensive interactions with members of the community, the Sachar Committee Report (Government of India 2006d) acknowledged that identity 8  In

fact, the percentage of children who have never attended school in the 6–14 age group among OBC Muslims is higher than in all socio-religious categories in 2004–5 and 2011–12 (Government of India 2014). 9 In 2002, Muslims represented only 6.26 per cent of the 479 High Court  judges of India, 2.95 per cent of the 5,018 Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officers, and 4.025 per cent of the 3,236 Indian Police Service (IPS) officers (Hashmi, Mander, and Puniyani 2007: 65–7).



In-between Spaces

95

and security concerns impact Muslims in complex ways, alluding to social discrimination but maintained a conspicuous silence on the communal question. The development deficit among Muslims cannot be isolated from the larger political climate of India marked by a palpable strengthening of communal forces and rising incidence of systemic discrimination and neglect of Muslims by the State. Communalization of Social Space

The intensification of communal politics over the past two decades in India has led to an unprecedented communalization of social space. This is best demonstrated by the consolidation of the socio-political hold of Right-wing ‘Hindutva’ forces across India. Built on the premise of a monolithic, non-stratified Hindu entity, the Hindutva movement seeks to unite the lower castes and tribals into the Hindu fold by constructing the minority communities, especially Muslims, as the ‘Others’ (Hansen 1999; Jaffrelot 1996). This is manifested in the prejudices and stereotypes targeting Muslims10 propagated and sustained by the Right-wing Hindu forces, especially the Sangh Parivar,11 which fan the fear of the ‘abstract generalized Muslim’ (Hansen 1999). 10 Stereotypical

caricatures of Muslims as alien invaders and aggressors, ultra-virile men and over-fertile women threatening to outnumber the Hindus, meat-eaters with innately violent tendencies, extremists with extra-territorial loyalties, religious fanatics, appeased minority, and so on, are spread by propaganda campaigns of the Hindu Right (Basu et al. 1993; Hansen 1999). 11 Sangh Parivar refers to the ‘family’ of affiliated Hindu nationalist organizations. Instituted in 1925, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) constitutes its foundational organization. Earlier considered a body for cultural work and character building (Basu et al. 1993: 24), it expanded into a wide-ranging network for all kinds of socio-political matters (Basu et al. 1993: 33–50; Jaffrelot 1996). Its political wing, earlier the Jana Sangh, later the BJP, was founded in 1951. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad or World Hindu Council (VHP), the international wing of the Sangh Parivar, dedicated to cultural work, and their youth wing, Bajrang Dal, were established in 1964. It has many affiliated organizations with specific purposes such as the Trade Union, women’s organizations such as Durga Vahini, and educational organizations such as Vidya Bharti.

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

96

The Muslim in India today, as Robinson (2005: 23) writes, ‘is an anonymous and frightening figure, categorised as the other, taunted as Pakistani if not vilified as a terrorist’. The most visible manifestation of the rise of Right-wing Hindu forces in India is the increasing violence against minorities, especially Muslims and Christians, with the 1990s emerging as a kind of watershed marking the ‘routinisation’ of Hindu nationalist violence in India (Jaffrelot and Maheshwari 2011: 45). The last two decades have seen communal violence become more ‘intense and frenzied’ (Khan 2007)—from the riots that rocked the country post the Babri Masjid demolition (1992–3) to the Gujarat pogrom of 2002. The recent statistics furnished by the Ministry of Home Affairs recorded 725 incidents of communal violence in the first 10 months of 2013— significantly more than the entire three-year period of 2010–12. The communal flare-up in Trilokpuri in east Delhi in November 2014, almost a year after the communal riots in western Uttar Pradesh, and the rising incidence of violent attacks and forced conversions of Muslims and Christians as part of the ghar wapsi campaign12 by Hindu nationalist groups best illustrate the palpable escalation in communal tension. The impact of the increasing communalization of social space can be seen in the identity-based social discrimination and social exclusion (including processes which culminate in self-exclusion)13 12 Ghar

wapsi signifying ‘return home’, is the name of the campaign launched by Hindu Right-wing organizations to ‘reconvert’ religious minorities, especially Muslims and Christians back into the fold of Hinduism. The phrase ghar wapsi is deployed to mark the happy and voluntary return of these ‘converts’. However, minority rights organizations allege that these reconversions are not voluntary, pointing to inducements such as Below Poverty Line (BPL) cards and so on. Hindu Right-wing organizations have long supported such re-conversions but the present form of the ghar wapsi campaign has taken shape since the formation of the BJP government at the centre. Mass reconversions of Muslims and Christians in Agra and in the states of Gujarat and Kerala were widely reported in the press in the last quarter of 2014. 13  For example, Nasir’s (2014) work on the Muslim experience of public health care services in Delhi highlights how historical memory translates into perceptions of disadvantage that then gradually initiate a process of selfexclusion, reinforcing a spiral of disadvantage.



In-between Spaces

97

of Muslims pervasive in education, housing, employment,14 and developmental schemes.15 This reinforces the sense of insecurity and perceptions of disadvantage amongst Muslims.16 One of the most significant manifestations of this is the increasing ghettoization of Muslims in India, with Muslims often seeking ‘safety in numbers’ (Kaur 2005). Drawing from case studies of cities across India, Gayer and Jaffrelot (2012) term the making of ‘Muslim enclaves’ in cities as ‘primarily the outcome of organized violence (mostly communal) and only secondarily of economic marginalization or discrimination in the housing market’ (2012: 325). The feeling of insecurity amongst Muslims is reinforced by the discriminatory attitude of the police and bureaucracy during instances of communal violence and repeated victimization of Muslims in anti-terrorist measures.17 Here it is important to note that in the last decade, especially post 2002, there has been a discernible shift to promote an altogether peaceful and modern version of Hindutva, thinly disguised as an agenda for national development (Mander 2009: 138). This is best reflected 14 

Thorat and Attewell (2007) highlight discrimination in the corporate sector in India against Muslims and Dalits. They show that Muslims (with an odds ratio of 0.35, compared to an otherwise equivalent high caste applicant), along with Dalits, are least likely to have a positive application outcome when posited against an otherwise equally qualified person with a high caste Hindu name. 15 For example, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), a government flagship scheme for poverty alleviation which provides a cushion for the unemployed, hardly seem to cater to the Muslim community, with Muslim households constituting only 2.3 per cent of those that got work under the scheme. 16 The Sachar Committee Report (Government of India 2006d) also highlighted the heightened feeling of insecurity among Muslims, especially in communally sensitive states. 17 The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom India Country Report (USCIRF 2013) states that following the July and September 2011 terrorist attacks in Mumbai and New Delhi, respectively, there have been reports of increased police harassment and detention of Muslims on unfounded allegations of terrorist activities and membership in terrorist groups. Another study by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (Sen 2012) found that 96 per cent of Muslims in jails in the state of Maharashtra are not linked to criminal gangs or terrorists.

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

98

in the development debates during elections where the Muslim is presented as the biggest obstacle to the development of the modern Hindu nation. As Rauf writes, ‘the poor socio-economic condition of Muslims, frequently used images of their poor and unsafe ghettos and their alleged violent tendencies consolidate the binary, creating a choice between good and bad governance’; between a ‘development-led governance that marginalises the threat of Muslims and a governance that exposes one to such a danger’ (2011: 73). The projection of BJP’s recent electoral victory at the national level with an unprecedented majority as a victory of Narendra Modi’s politics of ‘development with non-appeasement’ illustrates the increasing legitimacy enjoyed by this model that peddles soft Hindutva in the name of development. Everyday Manifestations of Islamic Reform and Women

An accompanying development within Muslim communities in India is an increasing visibility of what Osella and Osella (2008a) term as ‘projects of Islamic reform’. In my use of the term ‘Islamic reform’ I borrow from Osella and Osella (2008a) who employ reformism to refer to ‘projects whose specific focus is the bringing into line of religious beliefs and practices with the core foundations of Islam, by avoiding and purging out innovation, accretion and the intrusion of “local custom”’ (2008a: 247–8). Perhaps, the most visible manifestations of such projects in contemporary times are the wide range of programmes sponsored by movements such as Tablighi Jamaat, Jamaat-e-Islami Hind18, Ahl-e-Hadith19, which are garnering a ­growing following amongst Muslims in India. The alleged association 18 The

Jamaat-e-Islami-Hind is the Indian offshoot of the Jamaat-eIslami, founded by Abu Ala Maududi in 1941 with the aim of spreading Islamic values in the subcontinent. In India, the organization has stayed away from electoral politics. Its literature emphasizes the role of the organization in dawah and social and charitable work among Muslims. 19  Ahl-e-Hadith or People of the Hadith refers to group of followers who interpret Islam according to its fundamental texts, the Quran and Hadith (sayings of the Prophet) and do not identify as followers of the four historic law schools. They stress individual religious responsibility rather than on putting one’s trust on the learning of the ulama. They were strongly opposed to the Sufism of the shrines and the customs of the sharia (Rodrigues 2011).



In-between Spaces

99

of some of these movements with political Islam and Islamic fundamentalism, both within India and abroad, has led to much debate on the nature and ideology of these movements in recent times. However, my work does not engage with the veracity of these debates. Another tendency is to equate the puritan logic of Islamic reformism with the ‘bad Muslim’ inherently inimical to the Sufi-inspired good Muslim who practices syncretic traditions of popular Islam in South Asia (Osella and Osella 2008a: 250). This is often because different strains of reformism are ‘lumped together into one reified category which is then inaccurately shorthanded as Wah’habism’ (Osella and Osella 2008a: 251). Recent scholarship has emphasized the importance of a nuanced examination of such movements of Islamic reform, recognition that these processes are not new but deeply embedded in the history and culture of Muslim communities in India and attention to the discursive nature of Islamic reform rather than equating them and vilifying these movements as Islamic counterparts of the Hindu Right wing (See Osella and Osella 2008a). I highlight this reformist impulse amongst members of Muslim communities in India to illustrate the everyday manifestations of the ‘new religiosity’ (Khan 2007) being fostered and promoted by these movements. The preservation and articulation of a distinct religious and cultural Muslim identity unites each of these movements which otherwise greatly differ in terms of ideology and activities. Each of these movements stresses on the overt articulation of a puritan Islamic identity. The visible forms assumed by such articulations range from everyday activities such as sporting the veil and long beards, condemnation of syncretic traditions like Sufism, to an ‘expanded role of sharia jamaats in solving domestic disputes and addressing community grievances’ (Khan 2007: 1530). The growing influence of these movements can be seen in their increasing visibility in providing basic services such as health and education in Muslim mohallas. Similarly, they are often at the forefront of organizing relief work and community service in the aftermath of natural disasters like floods and famines or episodes of communal violence. The Muslim woman occupies a central place in the imagination, practices, and rhetoric of Islamic reform in India. Control over women’s bodies, their conduct, and deportment is sought to be exercised by the so-called leaders of such Islamic reform projects through ­varying practices ranging from prescriptions on dress codes such as the veil;

100

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

restrictions on mobility; policing of educational work and leisure activities to handing out of fatwas. Scholars point to the intrinsic link between the marginalization of the Muslim community as a whole and the growing communalization of politics and social space and the exercise of restrictions on women. Chhachhi (1991) argues that in India, the communalization of the socio-political space has resulted in a process wherein the traditional exercise of patriarchal authority that rested with particular men—the father, the husband, and other male kin—gets transferred to community control. Fundamentalism, she writes, provides the ideological justification for bringing women under the authority and control of men. Khan (2007) illustrates how the restrictions imposed on Muslim women by their own community are inextricably related to the exclusion of the Muslim community as a whole. She writes about how ‘marginalisation and recurrent pogromatic communal violence—including sexual assaults on their women—has led the Muslims to feel physically and psychologically vulnerable and continually at risk as a community’ (Khan 2007: 1531). This has translated into lesser chances for women to venture out of community boundaries and increasing surveillance and policing of their movement and behaviour by the families and communities. Khan illustrates how homogeneous community-dominated neighbourhoods, while creating the perception of greater physical safety and security, also allow for increased community policing of all residents, especially women. She cites the example of ghettoized localities in Mumbai to argue how women find their claim to public space even more restricted through stringently imposed curfew timings, dress codes, policing of educational work and leisure activities, and so on. The Sachar Committee acknowledged this in its report when it talked of the impact of the ‘community identity being under siege’ on Muslim women. It discussed how this leads women to ‘on their own volition, or owing to community pressure adopt visible markers of community identity on their person and in their behaviour’ (Government of India 2006d: 13). This discussion highlights the complex relationship between the communalization of the socio-political space, the marginalization of Muslim communities, the growing influence of Islamic reformist movements, and how it impacts the everyday lives of Muslim women, especially their engagement with public spaces



In-between Spaces

101

like education. Girls’ madrasas have to be viewed in light of this larger landscape. For a number of reasons, education levels of girls across region, caste, and community are increasing in India. In this regard, perhaps, the two most notable developments have been the gradual increase in both schooling levels and marriage age of girls. More Muslim girls are now availing education than in earlier years. However, the education of girls continues to remain an option fraught with risk and anxiety. Discussing how the gender-based fear of the public is magnified in the case of Muslim women, the Sachar Committee Report (Government of India 2006d) noted that this fear translates into constant scrutiny and control over women’s ‘lives, morality, and movement in public spaces’ (Government of India 2006d: 13), with ‘safe spaces (both in terms of physical protection and in terms of protection of identity)’ becoming confined to those that lie within the boundaries of the home and the community (Government of India 2006d: 13). In this regard, madrasas are often viewed as educational institutions for girls that operate within the boundaries of community given that they encourage practices such as segregation of girls, practice of purdah, and limiting the participation of girls in life outside the community. The above account illustrates the manner in which the complex relationship between communalization of social spaces, social exclusion of Muslims, and the ‘new religiosity’ being fostered by the rising salience of Islamic reform projects in India impacts the everyday engagement of women with spaces like education. The next section focuses on my research in Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat. I begin by describing the location of the madrasa in Jamia Nagar. The setting is not relevant in the conventional ethnographic sense of constituting the native home of the students of Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat as it is a residential madrasa with students coming from all parts of India. However, its location is important, because like most madrasas in India, Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat is located in a ‘Muslim enclave’. In this regard, the setting is particularly important in two ways. First, the madrasa may be regarded as one of the many markers that make Jamia Nagar what Gayer and Jaffrelot (2012) term as ‘Muslim enclave’. Second, had it not been for the larger Muslim setting, Jamiatul Mominat is unlikely to have enjoyed the reputation of being secure for Muslim girls or safe enough to motivate parents to

102

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

enter their daughters into residential arrangements with a madrasa located in a city far away from their native homes. madrasa jamiatul mominat

Site and Surroundings

The eighteenth-century legendary poet Mir Taqi Mir described the lanes of Delhi as paintings from a painter’s album.20 Driving through the lanes of Jamia Nagar brings alive myriad images, sounds, and smells of the distinct Muslim culture in India. Jamia Nagar, a Muslimdominated neighbourhood in southeast Delhi, lies just behind Jamia Millia Islamia21 and many attribute the genesis of the locality to its shared vicinity with the Jamia campus. With 90 per cent of its residents Muslims, Jamia Nagar is one of the largest concentrations of Muslim population in Delhi,22 with officially a population of around 1.2 lakh (Registrar of India 2001), though unofficially the numbers are pegged at 3.75 lakh. Nestled between the river Yamuna on the east and Mathura Road23 on the west, the permeable boundaries of Jamia Nagar include a collection of 10-odd colonies such as Zakir Nagar, Batla House, Okhla Vihar, Shaheen Bagh, and so forth. The area is often referred to as a ‘Muslim ilaqa’ (area) by its residents and/or ‘ghetto’ by outsiders, though the term ‘Muslim neighbourhood’, borrowing from Gayer and Jaffrelot (2012), is more appropriate. A m ­ ajority of the residents of Jamia Nagar are migrants, generally from the neighbouring states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, though one is likely to find people belonging to most Indian states in the area (Abidi 2009; Kirmani 2009). Many of the residents who belong to the older 20 ‘Koochey

nahin dilli ke, auraaq-e-musawwir hain, Jo shakl nazar aayi, tasveer nazar aayi’ (These are not mere by-lanes in Delhi, these are an artist’s canvas/Every sight I see looks like a painting.) 21  Jamia Millia Islamia, originally established in 1920 became a Central University by an act of the Indian Parliament in 1988 and was recently declared as a Muslim minority educational institution in 2011. 22  Jamia Nagar is amongst the largest concentrations of Muslim population along with Seelampur and Old Delhi (Gayer 2012). 23  Mathura Road is a road in Delhi which forms part of the NH2 or the Delhi–Howrah Highway.



In-between Spaces

103

generation, whose families moved to the area when the campus of Jamia Millia Islamia shifted to what was then a nondescript village in the southern outskirts of Delhi, lament the growth story of Jamia Nagar. I still remember how Dr Syed, the oldest resident I knew at 88 years, whose family had shifted here soon after Independence described Jamia Nagar24 to me: This was a completely open area lined with trees, now all I see is buildings and more buildings. No planning, no infrastructure just an influx of more and more people. Now there is no place left for the building to go other than upwards. Earlier it was a hub of the educated elite, now it is a colony of shopkeepers and property dealers. It has become like all the other Muslim colonies—narrow lanes that keep getting narrower, mosques that keep getting bigger, bazaars all of them wanting to be the new Chandni Chowk. The two things you find at every turn are eateries and schools.

Not to be dismissed as the rantings of an old man, Dr Syed’s words in many ways capture the transformation that Jamia Nagar has witnessed. Today, it is widely regarded as an area that houses middle- and lower-middle class Muslims, mostly small business holders and traders though scattered amidst them are a diverse group of rich professionals and businessmen who chose to stay here owing primarily to the security Jamia Nagar affords as a Muslim neighbourhood (Gayer 2012; Kirmani 2008). On the fringes of Jamia Nagar are slum dwellings that are home to a growing number of poor migrant labourers. Large parts of the area continue to bear signs of its erstwhile ‘unauthorized’ status, even though most localities are now authorized. The area is marked by a perennial shortage of water, power cuts, a dysfunctional sewage system, and insufficient health, educational, and recreation facilities (Abidi 2009). The route to Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat requires navigating the narrow lanes of Jamia Nagar. Each lane is bustling with shops and eateries holed in walls; carts of fruit, vegetable, and meat vendors lining narrow lanes; and rickshaws, cars, mini-buses, and people jostling for 24  This draws from a personal conversation held in 2008 with one of the residents of Jamia Nagar who had been residing there since the late 1940s.

104

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

every inch of space. Police check-posts and yellow barricades mark each turn, stemming the chaotic flow of vehicles, people, and animals. The Muslim ethos of Jamia Nagar pervades every sight and smell. The whiffs emanating from the carcasses displayed in butcher shops, the biscuits piled in bakery shops, the frying of kebabs, samosas in snack shops, and enticingly heaped sweets in sweet shops engulf the air. Roadside makeshift shops sell a variety of wares ranging from a wide array of clothing choices identified with Muslims such as headscarves, veils, skullcaps, and so forth. Religious announcements echo from the nearby mosques in the form of sermons and the call to prayer (azaan). As a woman travelling to the madrasa, traversing these narrow lanes on a rickety cycle-rickshaw, the starkest difference between the journey to the madrasa in the mornings and the return journey in the evenings was perhaps the sudden disappearance of women from the scene in the evenings. The same lanes that would be full of groups of girls in school uniforms, women young, old and middle aged, some in headscarves, some fully veiled and some bare faced haggling with the vendors, laughing, and eating at the eateries, moving around in public transport would become exclusive male domains as the evening set in. Jamiatul Mominat overlooks the River Yamuna. Its white building stands tall on the main road famous for housing the headquarters of the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind.25 On the right-hand side, the madrasa shares its boundary walls with a Shia madrasa for boys. To its left is a narrow kutcha (dirt road) lane, which opens into the residential neighbourhood lined with small houses or flats that lies behind, eclipsed by the madrasa walls. Adjacent to the madrasa is a roadside furniture shop selling second-hand office furniture; its workers and customers can often be spotted next to the madrasa gate talking and loitering, along with cycle-rickshaws, auto-rickshaws, and fruit vendors each waiting for clients. Two sights greet a visitor trying to locate Jamiatul Mominat madrasa—one is ‘Institute for Girls’ written in bold letters in English and Urdu at the top of the building, and the other is the Indian flag flying on the terrace, flanked on all sides by domes, giving the building a distinct Islamic appearance. 25  Jamaat-e-Islami Hind is the Indian offshoot of the Jamaat-e-Islami. Its headquarters are located in Jamia Nagar.



In-between Spaces

105

The Madrasa I waited in the hallway, the reception area at the entrance of the madrasa. My eyes followed the movements of the short old man bent over his back, who had just seconds back been introduced to me as chacha26 by Maulana Talib, the founder of the madrasa. Maulana Talib had instructed chacha to take me to the girls’ madrasa to meet Sumaiya, his daughter, who was the principal. I was feeling rather relieved and pleased that finally after months of negotiation Maulana Talib had not just agreed to meet me but also given me permission to conduct my research in his madrasa. Buoyed by the thought that I had finally secured access I continued to follow chacha. As we reached the end of the hallway after ­passing the administrative offices lining both sides of the corridor, chacha took out a bunch of keys, unlocked a huge lock, and unfastened the bolt of a small wooden door. I couldn’t help wondering that maybe the old gentleman hadn’t heard the founder correctly and was opening some sort of a locked guest room instead of escorting me to the building of the girls’ madrasa. To my utter surprise the door did not open into a room but a huge empty hallway where I was greeted by a young girl who introduced herself as Rukaiya and asked me to follow her. I looked up to question chacha, caught a little off guard by the emptiness and quietness of a place supposed to house 500 girls. But he had quietly left and I could hear the door being locked from the other side. Feeling terribly uneasy I turned towards Rukaiya. She was steadily walking towards the end of the hall and suddenly I heard her climbing down stairs that were not even visible from the other end. I quickly scampered behind to keep pace. At the end of the stairs we were greeted by two ladies who let Rukaiya pass but asked me for my name, purpose of visit and if I was carrying anything like mobile phones, and so forth. On Rukaiya’s intervention, that I was the President’s guest, I was allowed to pass. We entered another long empty underground hall, akin to an unused parking lot, with Rukaiya striding ahead. By now I was very anxious. I had still not spotted even a single girl. I followed Rukaiya into a narrow alley passing cement tiles, uncovered drains and empty unfinished brick walls. At the end of the alley I 26  Chacha means uncle. It is also a mode of address for showing respect or instant non-kin bonding.

106

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

finally saw the madrasa, a multi-storeyed stark grey building. I opened the grey door, to be greeted by a picture of a place teaming with girls wearing salwar kameez27 in different colours, with their heads covered saying ‘assalam alaikum’, almost like a chant. —Notes from my first day in the field.

The white building complex of Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat houses the madrasa and a school for girls up to Class Eight. The madrasa is affiliated with the Tablighi Jamaat. It is akin to a boarding school comprising both day-scholars and students who stay in the madrasa. The day-scholars comprise only one-third of the students, with the majority of students and teachers staying within the madrasa complex. The madrasa caters to close to 700 girls aged between 12 and 21 years, primarily drawn from the states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jammu and Kashmir, Haryana, Punjab, and Delhi. Students are admitted to the five-year Alima course. In the first three years, the classes are divided into three sections but for the fourth and fifth years there is just one section. The madrasa structure is reminiscent of the gender segregation between separate zenana–mardana28 areas that one often finds in old houses, especially in rural north India, where the outer portions are designated as male spaces and the women conduct their activities in the inner recesses, concealed from the outside world. The madrasa that a visitor encounters in many ways represents the mardana. The iron gates at the entrance lead one to a huge marble corridor. One only comes to know it is an educational institution on reading the notice boards fixed all along the corridor which detail admission dates, criteria for admission, results, and announcements. It is hard to spot even a single girl or hear voices of children that one normally finds in schools. The quiet corridor is lined with rooms on both sides that house the administrative offices. On the 27  A common traditional dress worn in India which resembles a long loose-fitting tunic paired with long loose-fitting pants. It is worn with a long scarf (dupatta) which is used by the girls in the madrasa as a head scarf. 28  Zenana is the part of a household, which is reserved for the women, and girls of the house. Mardana is the men’s space, which in terms of the household includes all that’s not included in the Zenana.



In-between Spaces

107

right side is the President’s room, followed by the room of his son, who oversees the daily functioning of the madrasa. On the other side is the room of the male teacher who takes classes here by speaking on a mike so that he can be heard by the girls in classrooms inside. A little further down is the accounts office. All these offices are manned solely by men. In fact, it is this mardana of the girls’ madrasa which looks into the administration, finances, and syllabi of the madrasa. Early in the morning between 7:45 and 8:00 am and in the afternoon from 2:00 to 2:15 pm when the day-scholars arrive and leave respectively, is the only time one sees a group of burqa-clad girls in the madrasa compound. In this context, the madrasa structure and building can be seen as symbolizing the practice of purdah. Purdah, which literally translates into veil or curtain, refers to a wide range of practices in the South Asian context from gender segregation, seclusion to varying degrees of restrictions on women’s dress and mobility. In the case of Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat, the architecture and layout of the institution is structured to conceal any signs of the presence of girls. The girls’ madrasa is located in the inner recesses of the madrasa building. An iron gate locked from outside secures the staircase leading to the madrasa, guarded by a middle-aged widow who all the girls call khala.29 The jali (perforated stone or latticed screen) cut walls that line the staircase of the madrasa veil it from the outside world, lending the impression of a windowless structure to an onlooker standing outside. Yet, as one climbs up the marbled staircase illuminated from the light streaming in through the jali, one can feel the cool misty air from the Yamuna and see the river quietly flowing across the busy road. The madrasa comprises three floors; each with a long corridor lined by three rooms on either side which function as classrooms during school hours (8:00 am to 1:30 pm) and hostel rooms during the remaining part of the day. Each floor has a toilet and bathing area and at the end of the corridor there is a line of taps for the girls to do wuzu (ablutions). Each of the floors has a teacher’s room shared by three teachers. The first floor has a library, and the third floor a computer room. 29  Khala means aunt. It is also a mode of address for showing respect or instant non-kin bonding.

108

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

There is also a small non-cemented iron flight of steps on the third floor leading to the terrace which is out of bounds for the students at most times. It is very interesting to observe the sudden transformation of the madrasa from a school to a hostel. From 8:00 am to 2:00 pm the madrasa runs like a school. In the morning one generally finds pindrop silence in the corridors; the only little movement is that of the teachers rushing from one class to another. The classrooms have no tables or chairs and students sit forming a semi-rectangle formation on the floor on a flat mattress, facing the teacher who also sits on the floor, but on a small, elevated mattress. Wearing identical uniforms— white salwar kameez and a white dupatta that covers the head, tied into a hijab—the girls generally sit on their haunches, their backs curved and eyes focused on the large bound books resting on short wooden tables. It’s almost rhythmic how the girls move ever so slightly forward and backward while repeating what the teacher is reading out. Not knowing any Arabic, I often had to wait for the teacher’s Urdu explanation to the girls to understand what had just been recited. Yet, each time I heard the Urdu explanation it didn’t seem quite as rhythmic as what had just passed, what to me seemed like chanting in unison, the kind that continues to resonate in the ears even after it’s over (Figures 4.1 and 4.2) The moment the clock strikes two, the day-scholars pack their bags and go home while the others go to the hall downstairs for lunch. When they come back upstairs, one can see an instant transformation. The corridors are buzzing with chatter as the girls stream in and out. The curtains that cover the lines of cement shelves built into the walls on three sides of the classrooms are opened with lightning speed and down come the rolled up mattresses, cushions, and other bedding material. Generally, 20 to 25 girls are lodged in a room. There are no beds; the mattresses form makeshift beds. When I first saw this transformed image of the room at around 4 pm one evening, I couldn’t believe it was the same room I had been seeing for days in the morning. During evenings, girls can be seen sitting comfortably on the mattresses in small groups, chatting, studying, sewing, and so forth. They change out of their uniforms into colourful salwar kameez, displaying wide variation in the practice of

In-between Spaces

109

Figure 4.1 During Classes. The girls are seated on the floor in the dozanu

style wearing white salwar kameez. Usually the girls only cover their heads but for the photograph they covered their faces, following principles of purdah.

Figure 4.2 Studying in classes.

110

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

purdah—from the dupatta loosely covering the head to the pinnedup hijab (Figure 4.3). The closed architecture of the place in many ways also reflects the concept of purdah—be it the door-within-door that you need to cross to reach the girls’ madrasa, the iron bars guarding its stairway, or the jali-cut walls along the stairway which appear like a wall on the outside (Figure 4.4). It is perhaps most starkly reflected in the treatment of windows in the madrasa. Though most of the rooms have windows, all of them have iron grills on the outside and plastic or paper sheets are used to line the frosted glass from the inside to prevent anyone—from the outside or inside—to have any view. The two relatively open spaces in the building are the terrace with its jali-cut walls and a huge open doorway, which has no doors but iron grills at the end of the corridor on the first floor. Both of these are zealously monitored to ensure that none of the

Figure 4.3 After classes. The girls change into colourful salwar kameez once classes are over. Here they can be seen sitting in a group by a grilled window. Some girls are practising embroidery while others are finishing their homework.

In-between Spaces

111

Figure 4.4 Iron grills on windows and the jali-cut windows by the

staircase.

girls are looking out of these areas, to maintain the spirit of purdah. In fact, this concept of the the madrasa building as a physical embodiment of the concept of purdah is something that I found common across the girls’ madrasas I visited, almost like a common template, even though the forms varied. In Rampur, Uttar Pradesh, it was high walls and a locked iron gate that greets visitors and only the regulars know that it’s the small side-door, which is the actual entry, followed by strict verification in an outer chamber, akin to a reception. Then there is a long pathway that leads up to the gate of the actual madrasa. In Moradabad, Uttar Pradesh, the madrasa was located on the highway. Defending it was a huge boundary wall, tall enough to make it impossible to view the inside. The backside that afforded a view of agricultural field outside had windows guarded with iron grills. In Dhanbad, Jharkhand, though there was only a kutcha30 boundary wall (the madrasa was still in the midst of construction), the Principal remarked that in many ways, the location itself ensured that the girls were ‘protected’, as the madrasa campus was in the middle of vast open land surrounded by fields and nobody lived there for miles. In some madrasas, the admission brochures list the ‘arrangements for security’, ‘regulations preventing interaction with outsiders’, and ‘restrictions on mobility’ under ‘facilities provided’. 30 Here kutcha refers to an un-cemented wall made of material such as un-burnt bricks, bamboos, mud, grass, reeds, thatch, loosely packed stones, and so forth.

112

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

This strong emphasis on closed structures with highly controlled accessibility and zealous surveillance in the spatial organization of girls’ madrasas is justified in the name of the protection of the girls and maintaining a mehfuz mahaul or secure ethos. The following chapters will elaborate on this notion of a mehfuz mahaul or secure ethos as a part of the discussions on how the madrasa envisions this as an important part of making the students aware of the need to cultivate a pious self and over a period of time disciplining the girls into this identity; and also, the manner in which girls understand this. However, at this point it is important to emphasize that these elaborate security arrangements arise from a tacit consensus between the parents and the madrasa wherein the madrasa as an institution assumes the role and responsibility of the girls’ guardian, virtually becoming an extension of the family. This consensus has to be situated in the larger frame discussed earlier wherein rising insecurity, owing to strengthening of communal forces, growing socio-economic marginalization, and the increasing influence of Islamic reform movements that stress on specific safety measures and control over women’s mobility, influences everyday educational choices. In the following section, I discuss the manner in which this larger reality interacts with a range of factors such as the socio-economic background of a family, the educational status of the parents, and geographical location of their native homes. Socio-Economic and Educational Background of the Girls in ­Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat

Many scholars who have worked on madrasa education in the South Asian context have elaborated upon the importance of the socio-­ economic location of the families of madrasa students. Several scholars have argued that madrasas are a popular choice for poor Muslims (Jeffery, Jeffery, and Jeffrey 2005; Jha and Jhingran 2005; Sikand 2005). However, there is an increasing realization that rather than the poor, today madrasas primarily attract students from lower middle-class backgrounds (Bano 2012; Winkelmann 2005). Bano’s (2012) work in Pakistan is revealing in this regard. In line with her overarching argument that madrasa education is exercised as a rational choice, she discusses the appeal of madrasas for the ‘lower and middle tiers of



In-between Spaces

113

the middle classes who record the highest presence in the madrasa system’ (2012: 102). She contends that unlike the poor who cannot afford to lose an earning hand to education and the rich who prefer private schools madrasas are an appealing choice for lower-middleincome families trying to ‘optimize the ideal and material rewards by committing one of the children to madrasa education’ (Bano 2012: 123). Madrasa education for one child isn’t a huge financial cost and it has its advantages, such as religious salvation and social respect for the family and economic self-sufficiency for the child (Bano 2012: 115). My findings also reveal that the students in Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat were largely drawn from lower-middle-income families. Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat charges a monthly fee of Rs 2,500 for students who reside in the madrasa and Rs 500 for day-scholars. In addition, all students have to pay an admission fee of Rs 5,000. If one were to take into account additional costs involved in travelling from native places to Delhi to pick up daughters three times in a year,31 and added fee components such as computer education and so on, one can safely infer that it would be difficult for poor families to afford education in Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat. However, it is important to note that the socio-economic location of the girls cannot be reduced to income and affordability of families alone and arises from the interplay of several factors such as caste, class, educational status, and participation in religious networks such as the Tablighi Jamaat. Given the wide disparity in the geographical locations and socialoccupational backgrounds of the girls’ families and the limited possibilities for interaction with the parents, it was extremely difficult for me to assess the background of the girls studying in Jamiatul Mominat. Most of my inferences about the girls’ backgrounds are based on the conclusions drawn from the 100 semi-structured interviews I conducted in the madrasa, which contained a section requiring the girls to detail their parents’ occupation and educational background and their own previous educational history prior to joining the madrasa. 31  Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat closes for vacations twice in a year. One is the winter break, which lasts around 10 days, and another break is for Eid. Further, at the end of the academic year, the madrasa closes for a few weeks. On all these three occasions, girls return home and madrasa rules necessitate that they be picked up by their parents from the premises of the madrasa.

114

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

A large proportion of the girls, particularly the day-scholars, were from Delhi, especially the three Muslim pockets of Delhi, namely Okhla, the area where the madrasa is located, Old Delhi, and Seelampur.32 This is followed by girls drawn from neighbouring states such as Uttar Pradesh (especially towns around Delhi like Moradabad, Hapur, Bijnor), Haryana, Rajasthan (especially the Mewat area), Punjab, and Bihar. I also heard from the teachers and the management that few girls came from as far as Assam in the North-East and Karnataka in the South. The madrasa caters predominantly to lower middle-class Muslim families wherein the father has a small business like being a cloth merchant, having a furniture shop, being a transporter, or being engaged in some service like property dealing in the cities. Another significant proportion of girls is drawn from lower working-class families wherein the father works as a driver, gardener, cloth dyer, carpenter, electrician, butcher, and so forth. Girls who are studying on a scholarship, which, as per the management, comprises nearly one-third of the girls, are drawn from poorer families or families where the girls have lost their father (thus making them yatim). A similar picture emerged from the girls’ responses to questions about their father’s occupation during the interviews. The single unifying factor in the responses of all the girls I interviewed was that the fathers were engaged in the informal sector of the economy in varying capacities—as an owner of a shop, property dealer, vendor or seller of different wares, driver, carpenter, and so on. None of the  occupations  listed by the girls formed part of the traditional caste-based occupations linked to an agricultural-rural past. The girls were drawn from families that are fairly representative of the larger socio-economic reality of Muslims in India, as Muslims are largely concentrated in the informal sector,33 32 

Muslims in Delhi are largely concentrated in religiously homogeneous enclaves of whom the largest ones in terms of a substantial Muslim population are Seelampur area, Okhla area, and Old Delhi area, which include Ballimaran, Matia Mahal (Gayer 2012). 33  The findings of the Sachar Committee Report (Government of India 2006d) highlighted that less than 8 per cent of Muslims are engaged in the formal sector compared to the national average of 21 per cent. An overwhelming 68 per cent of Muslims are part of the informal sector vis-à-vis the national average of 52 per cent.



In-between Spaces

115

mainly in self-employed a­ctivities (Government of India 2006d). Most of these are small, informal businesses and enterprises, which draw on occupations like weaving, carpentry, mechanics, or petty trade, and are small, low investment occupations, which lie outside of—if not excluded from—the new economy of India (Hansen 2007). When asked about the occupational status of the mothers, the almost unanimous response was that they were housewives, and the  girls often used the terms dehati (rural) and jahil (illiterate) to describe their mothers. During the interviews, 96 per cent responded that their mothers were housewives, whereas four per cent said their mothers were working—all were associated with the teaching profession. The girls were also asked to indicate the level of education of both their parents and their place of schooling. With respect to the mothers, half the girls indicated that their mothers had gone to school, though the level to which they studied greatly varied. Fourteen per cent girls described their mothers as jahil and 16 per cent said their mothers could only read the Quran. With respect to the fathers, twothirds of the girls indicated their fathers had gone to school; 20 per cent indicated that their fathers had pursued higher education, and eight per cent described their fathers as jahil. It is interesting to note that less than one-tenth of the girls’ parents had received education in a madrasa. Thus, most of the girls largely belonged to the first generation of girls to be sent to an institution to formally acquire religious education. One can speculate about the prospect of surplus income from the parents’ occupations making it possible for them to consider sending their daughters to acquire religious education. A similar inference is made by Imtiaz Ahmad (1980: 64–6) while examining the educational patterns of lower middle-class Muslims. He talks about how, with an increase in economic prosperity of lower middle-class Muslims, the possibility of sending children to school increases. He goes on to say that there is a strong possibility that children from these lower middle-class families in the first flush of economic prosperity are more likely to favour religious education in Islamic schools visà-vis regular schools. According to him, this may be on account of the fact that the time such families can allow their children to avail the luxury of education before they revert to traditional occupations is less. Further, he states that religious education may also be satisfying the need for education, as the social context in which the families

116

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

are seeking prestige and social enhancement is dominated by a predominance of religious values. Ahmad does not talk about any gender differentials in his ‘inferential analysis’. But we can speculate that the parents’  surplus income is the basis for sending their daughters to acquire education, and the choice of religious education in madrasas is motivated by similar concerns for social prestige along with gender norms, concerns regarding marriage, security, and being able to take up traditional gender roles of being a good wife and mother (rather than engagement in traditional occupations). Questions about caste in the interview schedule were deleted at the request of the madrasa Principal saying that ‘there is no such thing as caste among Muslims and Islam does not believe in casteism (jat-pat).’ However, during interactions with the girls, references to caste and community kept cropping up. For example, in one of the group discussions the conversation veered towards caste, and one of the girls said, ‘There is no caste (jat-pat) and higher-lower (unch-neech) in Islam’, to which everyone acceded but one of them said ‘We don’t have jat, we have zat’. I also heard several rebuttals and comments amongst teachers and students while they interacted amongst themselves, which made references to caste. A common innuendo made by the teachers was ‘aadmi ki zat nahi jaati’ (a person’s caste doesn’t leave him or her). In a different instance, an infuriated teacher told me, ‘many of these girls just call themselves “Khan” or “Choudhury” [landed uppercaste surnames] because there is no way to find out here about their families’, though she quickly retracted saying neither did it matter. In conversations with the students, many talked about caste prejudice; for example, one of the girls who belongs to the Qureshi (butcher) community said, ‘People feel we are hard-hearted and cruel but I have noticed we are the first to help’. While talking about their choice of future roles, girls often talked of caste roles—for example, one of the girls from Mewat said, ‘In our families women only work within the house; even work like tending to animals is done inside. The women who go out are lower castes (such as saqqa34).’ I heard several references to caste in discussions around marriage among the girls and 34  Saqqa or water carriers are a Muslim tribe or biradri found in North India. The name derives from the Arabic word ‘saqqa’ which means ‘one who gives to drink’. They are also known as Bhishti in India.



In-between Spaces

117

teachers. Given the manner in which all the above remarks were generally made in discussions between teachers and the girls and how caste came up in contexts where neither caste nor community were being specifically discussed, there seemed to be an underlying consciousness amongst the teachers and girls about caste and community. However, I was unable to deduce if this awareness had an impact on ties within the madrasa. Through my interactions in the madrasa, I could infer that often peer groups and friend circles among students and teachers replicated familial ties and kinship-based networks, but I wasn’t able to conclusively establish if these kinship networks had a caste basis or whether the madrasa predominantly comprised of low caste Muslims from poor backgrounds. Another interesting feature that came to light in the interactions with the girls was that many of them said that their households had a dini-mahaul, and when I explored this further, several girls and teachers talked about how the girls come from families where one or more of the family members were attached with the dini line35—a term regularly used in the madrasa to denote the religious domain, such as religious teaching, running a madrasa, being an imam in a local mosque, activities of the Tablighi Jamaat, and so forth. By virtue of being embedded in the Tablighi Jamaat network, many of the students were drawn from families who were part of this network parochially referred to as Jamaati/Jamaat. Girls often made statements like, ‘Our house has been enjoined with the Jamaat network’ (Hamara ghar pehle se Jamaati line se juda tha). In summary, very broadly, most of the girls came from Delhi and neighbouring towns in UP, Haryana, Rajasthan, and Bihar. They were largely from families belonging to the lower economic rungs, with the fathers primarily engaged in the informal sector of the economy and mothers confined to homes as housewives. The girls represented the first generation in their families to avail religious education in an institutionalized setting like the madrasa. Though there was an awareness of caste, it is difficult to deduce its impact on ties within the madrasa or whether the madrasa as a whole represents low-caste Muslims from 35  In popular parlance, ‘line’ is often used to denote the broad occupational domain a person is associated with, such as medical line, education line, and so forth.

118

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

poor backgrounds. A notable feature in terms of background was that a large number of girls were from families that were active in the Tablighi Jamaat. Educational Background of the Girls

In terms of the educational background of the girls themselves, most of them had been schooled in different educational settings prior to joining the madrasa (Figure 4.5). As per the rules of admission in the Alima course of Jamiatul Mominat, the student should have completed education at least up till Class Seven to be admitted to the madrasa and have basic knowledge of Urdu and the Quran. Many girls who had not previously studied in schools—for example, girls who were Hafiza (one who has memorized the entire Quran by heart) or a student seeking migration midway between an Alima course from another madrasa— were subjected to an entrance test. The girl had to be at least 12 years of age to seek admission into the madrasa. Drawing from the 100 ­semi-structured interviews conducted with the students, the girls were generally aged between 12 and 18 years (82 respondents), though there

Government School 32%

Private School 54% Madrasa 6% Maktab/Mosque 8%

Figure 4.5  Institutions in which girls studied prior to joining the madrasa. Source: Author.



In-between Spaces

119

were a few girls who were above 18 too. Majority of the girls had studied in schools prior to joining the madrasa (86 respondents). Of the girls who had previously studied in schools, nearly half had dropped out between Classes Five and Eight, after which they joined the madrasa. Another interesting fact that emerged was that a sizable number of girls completed their matriculation, or Class Ten (17 respondents), and higher secondary, or Class Twelve (12 respondents), before joining the madrasa (Figure 4.6). The reasons for the preponderance of girls dropping out of school and shifting to madrasas at these two points—between Classes Five and Eight or after finishing Classes Ten and Twelve—are closely tied up with gender norms pertaining to adolescence, adulthood, and marriage. Between Classes Five and Eight, as many of the parents and teachers said, ‘girls grow up’ (ladki badi ho jati hain), referring to the onset of puberty. Madrasas, with their emphasis on purdah and gender segregation, are seen as safe for pubescent girls. In the second scenario, once girls finish Class Ten and Class Twelve or are ‘school pass’, they are considered of marriageable age. Madrasas emerge as a feasible option to ensure that the daughters are meaningfully engaged once they have reached marriageable age. Madrasas are considered more appropriate than college education, which mostly involves co-educational settings and the dangerous possibility of ‘love affairs’. Further, higher education also poses the potential danger of ‘over-educating’ the girl, which

80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0%

47% 24%

Primary Schooling (1st to 5th Standard)

17%

Secondary Schooling (5th to 8th Standard)

Matriculation (Till 10th Standard)

12% Higher Secondary (Till 12th Standard)

Figure 4.6  The standard till which the girls had studied prior to joining the

madrasa.

Source: Author.

120

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

could hamper her marriage prospects. In a larger context where the unsaid rule is that the groom should be more educated than the girl, the low levels of educational attainment of Muslim men set a ceiling on the desirable levels of girls’ education (Hasan and Menon 2004), making completing school a significant threshold. In this scenario, madrasa education buttresses the profile of the marriageable girl in the arranged marriage market, adding religious education to her eligibility for marriage. Situating the girls in their socio-economic background and understanding their previous educational experiences emerges as a critical resource in my study to understand the range of push and pull factors that motivate the choice of madrasa education. Further, the continuity and movement of girls between so-called religious spaces such as madrasas and supposedly secular spaces like schools, indicated by the girls’ previous educational background, problematizes conventional assumptions regarding the insularity of madrasas, their singular association with the religious sphere and correlation with traditionalism. I delve into these themes in greater detail in the following chapters. In the next chapter, I focus on Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat to develop an understanding of the transition of girls from their native homes to the madrasa by exploring the relationship (both real and perceived) between educational choices pertaining to the girls and the family and community.

chapter five

Making of Kamil Momina Girls’ Madrasas and the Fashioning of Moral Community

26 January 2013: I sat in the audience waiting for the Republic Day celebrations to start. The celebrations coincided with the faraghat (graduation ceremony) of the panjum girls. The open basement had been converted into an auditorium, with a makeshift elevated stage separated using the opaque printed curtains that generally donned the hostel windows. The hallway was chock-a-block full, buzzing with the murmurs and palpable excitement of the 800-strong female audience sitting on the floor. The mothers, sisters, and aunts of students sat in the front rows, while behind them sat the students, their headscarves lending the impression of a sea of black followed by rows and rows of white. The event began with all the chaharum girls getting up and forming two parallel rows to create a pathway. As the ceremony began, the class of panjum, about 60 girls, walked down the madrasa stairs into the hallway in small sure steps, carrying their crisp-white, starched Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood. Hem Borker, Oxford University Press (2018). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199484225.003.0005

122

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

salwar-kameez, headscarves, and Indian tricolour ribbons pinned on their shoulder with great élan. Their steps were careful, and their heads bent as they walked in a straight line amidst loud cheers, their mothers clapping loudly (some very visibly teary-eyed) and their immediate juniors throwing colourful paper similar to confetti while the ceremonial verses chanted by the teachers resounded in the hall (Figure 5.1). Below the headscarves, bent heads, and tightly clasped hands, the panjum girls were communicating with naughty glances, chuckles, and smiles with their juniors standing on their either side, as they strode ahead. The junior chaharum girls were showering their seniors with confetti with great enjoyment and child-like enthusiasm, with occasional cheers for their favourite seniors (Figure 5.2). Totally engrossed in the ceremony, I almost jumped when the teacher sitting next to me bent and whispered about how the verses echoing in the hall were a means of reminding the girls who had completed their almiat of their responsibility to live up to the ideals taught in the madrasa, to become kamil momina and contribute to the glory of the ummah or the community of believers.

Figure 5.1 Ceremonial faraghat (graduation ceremony) of the panjum

(Class Five) girls. In customary fashion, the Class Four students honoured their seniors by creating an archway and showering them with confetti for their last walk through the madrasa as students.

Making of Kamil Momina

123

Figure 5.2 The fun and frolic following the formal ceremony where the girls let go of all restraint.

Against the backdrop of the changing socio-political and educational landscape of India discussed in the previous chapter, this chapter focuses on Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat. It develops an understanding of the transition of the girls from their native homes to the madrasa by exploring the relationship (real and perceived) between educational choices pertaining to the girls and imagined futures of the family and community. In the first section, I employ the notion of the ummah as an imagined community to argue that madrasas are one of the many sites striving to objectify the ideational ummah. The second and third sections discuss this normative understanding of the ideal Muslim woman from the viewpoint of the parents and the madrasa as an institution. The fourth section focuses on the educational regime in the madrasa. It discusses the normative practices enforced in the madrasa to educate girls into ideal women who would serve the cause of the moral ummah. UMMAH AND MADRASA EDUCATION

The Prophet laid equal stress on educating both boys and girls, but girls’ education was neglected for long. This was having a negative effect on the community (mashara). You can see the ganda (dirty) mahaul that gets created when women are not given the right education. Our madrasa was a pioneer in this regard—it was the first to take up the cause of girls’

124

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

education. It started in 1956 with just two students and was called ‘bachiyon ka madrasa’ (girls’ madrasa). In 1972, we introduced higher education by starting a four-year Alima course and two-year Fazila course. The sole purpose of our madrasa is to provide Islamic learning to girls and serve the ummah. In light of changing times we have useful subjects like computers, English, etc., to educate the girls to meet modern challenges but within Islamic norms. —Principal, Jamia-tus-Salehaat, Rampur

During the interviews, the madrasa staff and administrators came up with comparable narratives to explain the relevance of their institutions. Each began with an account of the dangerous changing times which brought in its wake a morally corrupt mahaul (ethos), the realization that more than the boys it was the ‘right’ education of girls that could prevent, contain, and reverse this moral crisis, and the unique education system devised by the particular madrasa to produce ideal Muslim women in secure settings. Each account outlined similar motifs of moral crisis denoted by terms like shirk, fitna, bidat, and so on, to argue that educational backwardness, especially lack of religious values among women, was responsible for the crisis and offered madrasa education as the remedy. Giving girls religious and moral education in madrasas was presented as khidmat (service to the community), a means to transform the existing crisis-ridden Muslim community into an ideal community or ummah. This narrative encapsulates how madrasas explain their educational relevance by invoking the imaginary of the ummah. Spokespersons and managers of madrasas present women’s education as a ground for forging the ummah and suggest madrasas as the most suitable institutions to impart the desirable form of education. For example, on my visit to Madrasa Jamia Niswan, a girls’ madrasa in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, the Principal articulated the following understanding of Muslim women’s education: Musalmanon mein (among Muslims) education is a religious duty for both women and men. But hamare mein (amongst us) girls’ education does not mean getting a school or college degree; an educated women is one who knows her din (religion) and duniya (world), follows purdah and gives the right tarbiyat (training/cultivation) to her children. A



Making of Kamil Momina

125

mother who has dini talim can impart it to her children. She strengthens the moral fibre of her whole family. If every Muslim mother and father were to perform their duty, together these moral families will make a powerful ummah. —Principal and Administrator of Madrasa Jamia Niswan Bhopal

This understanding of women’s education as a religious duty, which strengthens the moral fibre of the family and holds the promise of heralding a moral ummah (through the coalescing of such pious families) captures the educational vision of girls’ madrasas. Women’s education is articulated as a religious commitment that cannot be equated with school or college qualifications, but is a pious obligation reflected in women’s knowledge of din and duniya, comportment and children’s upbringing. All the girls’ madrasas I visited linked their raison d’être with imaginings of a moral Muslim community denoted by words like ummah, millat and mashara. These terms are frequently cited in the publicity material of madrasas too.1 The recurring use of the word ummah, especially in madrasas associated with the Tablighi Jamaat, such as Jamiatul Mominat, suggests a compelling imagination that explains and fuels the sustenance of madrasas. Scholars like Winkelmann, who have worked on madrasas intermeshed in the Tabligh network highlight how the idea of ‘returning ummah to its past glory’ is frequently employed by madrasas to mobilize participation in girls’ education (2005: 33–4). Scholars like Eickelman and Piscatori (1996) illustrate how this employment of the notion of the ummah is not a localized instance but a transnational phenomenon. They argue that as a transnational network, Tablighis, in rhetoric and membership, actively direct followers towards pan Islamic ummah (1996: 150). In this regard, Anderson’s (1991) work on nation-states as imagined communities allows us to understand the ideational nature of and unifying force exerted by the notion of the ummah as a worldwide community of Muslim believers. Anderson (1991) describes the following conditions as constituting the imaginary character of a nation: ‘It is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or 1  The

brochures of each of the madrasas I visited contain references to the ummah.

126

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion’ (1991: 6). The ummah represents a similar imaginary production where members will never know or even see most of the other members, yet they feel interconnectedness or, to use Anderson’s words, ‘a deep, horizontal comradeship’ (1991: 7) in an ideational space. Drawing from Anderson, Appadurai (1996) extends the concept of imagined community to ‘community of sentiments’, which emerges when groups of people begin to imagine and feel things together (1996: 8). This notion of a ‘community of sentiments’ captures the manner in which the ummah as an imagined community simultaneously assumes the significance of ‘a symbol of cohesion and a cohesive force’ (Nieuwenhuijze 1959: 15). This is because, on one hand, the continuous process of making individuals and groups of people aware of the religious commonalities that bind them into a community is critical to this imaginary production; and on the other, it is the idea of achieving the futuristic notion of ummah that makes the practice of religious traditions relevant. Here it is important to note that though imagined, the ummah is not a fictional mythical community, but a moral imagination deeply rooted in the theological and historical traditions of Islam. The term ‘ummah’ is used over 60 times in the Quran and appears frequently in the Hadith. The concept is embedded in the early history of Islam when ummah referred to the emerging Muslim community comprising both Arabs and non-Arabs. While the interpretation of ummah remains a much-contested issue (See Talib 2014), the concern in the present research is more ethnographic. My engagement with the concept of ummah stems from its use by various actors, such as madrasa authorities, teachers, parents, students, and the wider Tabligh network to which the madrasa subscribes. I employ the concept of ummah to probe the relationship between the ideational community that the term invokes and the reality of the field. I argue that girls’ madrasas are a site where a complex relationship is at work between what Nieuwenhuijze (1959) terms as the two notions of communities—the existing and the moral ideational one. My objective is to juxtapose how the ummah is referred to in the madrasa’s vision and educational practices and how this vision relates with the everyday experiences of students who study in the madrasa.



Making of Kamil Momina

127

I argue that the madrasa as a space is actively involved in the production of this imagined community by acting as a custodian in the ‘cultural reproduction and identity formation’ (Metcalf 2007: 104) of Muslims. Girls’ madrasas envisage and promote themselves as educational institutions constructing, strengthening, and serving the ummah by educating girls into becoming ideal pious Muslim women through religious education. The everyday educational practices in the madrasa are represented and legitimized to the parents in the name of building the ummah. The parents aspiring to be a part of the ummah subscribe to the madrasa’s vision by sending their daughters to the madrasa, thus consenting and reinforcing the role of madrasas as ummah-building educational institutions. Thus, madrasas are both a ‘model of and model for’ (Geertz 1973) the imaginary production of the ummah. On one hand, madrasas represent a certain understanding of Islam, objectifying in very concrete terms the set of beliefs and practices that define a ‘proper Muslim’ and how to become a good pious Muslim woman. On the other hand, they argue that the practices that define a proper Muslim need to be learnt and Islamic schooling in madrasas is an important requisite to learn these practices. In the following section, I focus on how madrasa education becomes both the medium and outcome in this imaginary production of the ideal Muslim woman who is central to the imagination of the ummah. I explore the apparent strong consensus amongst the important actors that represent madrasas in India (such as religious heads and madrasa authorities) and sections of the community (such as parents) that madrasa education makes ideal Muslim women. the ‘ right ’ school : understanding parents ’ reasons for sending daughters to a girls ’ madrasa

All the parents I spoke to unanimously stated that education is necessary for girls. There seemed to be no question in their minds about the need for girls to get educated. As one of the mothers said, ‘These days everyone’s daughters study’ (‘Aaj kal to sabki ladkiyan padhti likhti hain’), almost like it was absurd to even think that someone would choose not to educate their daughter. For parents the bigger question revolved around finding the ‘right’ school for their daughters.

128

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

Literature on girls’ madrasas, especially in the South Asian context, highlights some critical issues motivating the choice of madrasa education. Several scholars highlight the importance of economic factors by illustrating how madrasas are the often the only affordable option for poor Muslims (Jha and Jhingran 2005), with obvious economic benefits such as no fees, free boarding, and lodging (Engineer 2001). In a similar vein, some scholars present madrasas as viable alternatives in a context of declining or inadequate government schools, especially in rural areas (Jeffery, Jeffery, and Jeffrey 2005). A second set of studies focus on identity related factors (Ahmad 2002; Alam 2003; Saiyed and Talib 1985) arguing that parental concerns about fostering a distinct Muslim identity motivate the choice of madrasas. The problem with each of the above-mentioned ­arguments is that they tend to frame educational choices as religious madrasas versus the so-called mainstream secular schools. Scholars who have worked on madrasas in the subcontinent, such as Bano (2012), rightly argue that the choice of madrasa education is often an attempt to complement secular education with religious knowledge rather than substitute secular schooling. Although my fieldwork resonates with this third line of argument, it calls for a more critical approach by presenting the complexity of educational choices. In the parents’ understanding of girls’ madrasas as the ‘right’ kind of school for their daughters, the mixed curriculum which combines religious and secular subjects is just one amongst many intertwined reasons. The following section draws on interviews and discussions with parents of the girls studying in Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat to examine these reasons. For the parents in my field setting, education meant both dini and duniyavi talim. In fact, they often used the words madrasa and school interchangeably to refer to Jamiatul Mominat as the ‘right school’ that combined both kinds of knowledge—worldly and religious—to deliver a complete education. Similarly, the choice of shifting girls from regular schools to Jamiatul Mominat (as the admission policy of the madrasa requires the girls to have studied up to class 7) was explained citing similar reasons. As one of the mothers described it, ‘We wanted a school that teaches dini and duniyavi talim so we sent her here. We do not have berukhi (problem) with the other school but it did not have Islamiyat and a Muslim mahaul’.



Making of Kamil Momina

129

Parents expressed the importance of religious education in Jamiatul Mominat as a rather obvious, almost commonsensical choice. They invariably discussed the value of dini talim by making references to the religious sanction that such education enjoys in Islam. Some, like one of the fathers cited below, explained the logic of their decision by giving the analogy of a traveller and talked about how madrasa education prepared children for the destination (akhirat or afterlife) rather than the journey. This father likened the benefits of madrasa education to ‘building a bank balance’ where instead of money the girls were accumulating virtues, which they could cash in in their afterlife. The only bank balance that Muslims have to build is afterlife. In this life you will live till 60/70/80 years then you will die. The choice is similar to instances when a person has to decide how to travel. You have a certain amount of money; you can spend it in travelling comfortably by AC (air-conditioned compartment) train or travel by local (general compartment). If you travel by local, yes you will be discomfited for a few hours but that will allow you to save and be comfortable at your destination. This (madrasa) study is like travelling by local—yes, you will be discomfited by the hardship of living, a tough timetable, strict schedules and constant monitoring, but you only stand to gain more in your destination. —Father of Arshi and Shabnam

Similarly, Zainab’s mother compared the image of a regular student carrying a school bag on her/his back with a madrasa student hugging the Quran. She employed the comparison to contend that madrasa students stood at an advantage, as their education would continue to benefit them in the afterlife, whereas the uses of school education were confined to this world. The way children hang their bags on their back (peeche latka kar) and go to school … The knowledge they get there will also remain behind in this world (peeche choot jayegi), whereas the way we hug the Quran to our chest (seene se laga kar), that way the education gained in a madrasa will remain and help in our afterlife (madrase ki padai akhiraat main saath degi). —Mother of Zainab

130

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

While parents stressed on the importance of dini talim, they often qualified their responses by saying that the entire exercise was meaningful only if their daughters learnt to ‘practice Islam the right way’. The madrasa prescriptions were seen as epitomizing this right way. In this regard, the parents viewed madrasas as representing more than an aam (ordinary) school. It was a place of teaching like a school but one whose teaching and learning was placed on a higher moral ground as it was closely intertwined with ideas of piety and worship. One of the mothers told me proudly how she did not heed to her daughter’s request to write a letter asking for permission to send her home as she was unwell and losing hair. I told my daughter, ‘bal nahi to nahi’ (it is all right if you are losing hair); if tomorrow you lose your jaan (life) it is also all right as long as imaan (Islam) acquires a set place in your heart. —Mother of Ziya

This understanding of the madrasa as a pious place often put its practices beyond questioning. In fact, many parents saw the disciplining and hardship of madrasa life as a part of the education process, for both the parents and the children. The key lesson being that following one’s faith was not easy and it was only in the face of difficulty that an asli momin (true believer’s) mettle came through. Mothers proudly talked about how their girls complained about the food, the restrictions, the cold weather, and so on, but they did not pay heed to their daughters’ complaints for their benefit so that they could finish their education. For example: Mother of Abida: Last December Abida told me that she feels very cold at night and wants to come home. (There are no beds in the madrasa; girls sleep on a mattress on the floor with a blanket.) I spoke to the teacher once but she said that I could send another blanket. Then I came to meet the Principal, she told me all this is just the Shaitan (Devil) trying to distract Abida. When I thought about it, I realized it was true. The same thing happened with my sister-in-law’s daughter. She kept falling ill. Sometimes it was eye ache, sometimes fever, sometimes something else. The Shaitan was working to distract her. (Three other mothers sitting with two daughters nodded.) Hem: Then what did you do?



Making of Kamil Momina

131

Mother of Abida: She is sitting here; you ask her what I said. I told her this is the meagre cost you have to pay to become an alima. In heaven you will be respected, honoured, and you will bring honour to your entire family. This year was so cold but she did not complain even once.

Thus, the persuasive force of madrasa education was expressed in terms of Islamic notions of Allah ki raza (God’s acceptance), akhirat (afterlife), and sawab (religious merit). There was a heightened sense of pride by virtue of being part of a divine mission through their daughters, especially amongst the mothers. Though the parents did not cite this as a reason for sending their daughters to the madrasa, it was often expressed in discussions around changes in their households once their children started pursuing religious education. There was a clear sense that having a madrasa-educated daughter in the house brought social prestige to the family. One of the discussions I observed in the madrasa while a group of mothers was talking to teachers was revealing in this regard: Mother of Nida: Today I have come to hear Nida, this is her first taqrir (speech) in front of so many people. The teacher explained to the researcher: Doing all this here (madrasa) greatly enhances the ‘confidence’ of the girls, later when they do dawah (spreading faith) then you should see the ‘change’ in them. Mother of Abida: We have also benefitted so much. When Abida comes home, yahan ki batein batati hai (she tells everyone what she has learnt), Huzoor ne kya kya farmaya hai (what the Prophet has said). We are also trying to practice amal. Mother of Zainab: Zainab’s father has absolutely reduced TV viewing. He now watches it only for work. At (our son) Owaiz’s wedding he did not let us click one photograph. Mother of Aamna: Now, as a rule, we recite a dua the moment we leave the house or enter it, and at the time of meals.

This conversation went on, with each mother trying to outdo the other by sharing instances of what had changed in her house, such as how everyone dressed, what they ate, how strictly they followed namaz, how many duas they recited, how some of the younger ones were being trained as hafizas (one who has memorized the Quran by

132

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

heart) from an early age under the tutelage of the new ‘alima in the making’ in the house. Parents also expressed how having their daughters educated in a madrasa had brought social prestige, honour (izzat) and respect to the family. Many cited instances of how neighbours and their d ­ aughters and close relatives regarded their daughter as a role model. Some talked about how their daughters had motivated ‘so-and-so’ to join the madrasa. During discussions between teachers and parents I often observed that they would have lengthy discussions about how the halqa (a group of women sitting in a circle around a person imparting religious teachings) in their houses and neighbourhoods were progressing. All these enquiries were rather specific, with the parents and teachers using particular names, for example, ‘Are the gatherings at Ghazala Apa’s still going strong?’, attesting to the close links between the networks that these women were continuously building and the central role of the madrasa in nurturing and maintaining these links. I also came to know of a few instances where two sisters or cousins from the same house would together conduct the lessons in these religious circles of women. For the parents, their daughter becoming an alima not only introduced piety in their homes but also established their household as a dindar ghar, a religious family to be emulated, considerably increasing its social standing. The groups attending religious meetings in their house were an extension of this and a reflection of the elevated social standing it brought in its wake. Here it is pertinent to point out that it is precisely these activities that demonstrate the close circular relationship between the informal channels that facilitate the expansion of the Tabligh network through dawah and other activities and madrasa education. Parents would frequently discuss the relevance of formal institutionalized teaching of dini talim and amal by making references to the changing times and how they had learnt to value piety following their association with the Tablighi Jamaat. Education, especially formalized religious education for girls, was new to almost all the families. As discussed earlier, the majority of mothers had little education themselves with daughters describing them as jahil (illiterate) or panchvi pass (educated till the elementary level). The majority of the fathers had completed their schooling up to the higher secondary level. Of these, just a handful of parents had formally studied in a madrasa



Making of Kamil Momina

133

or had any kind of formal training in religion. During interactions, parents would reminisce about ‘their times’ when din was casually learnt in homes or in nearby mosques. And when I would ask them what had changed, they would refer to the dangerous ‘changing times’ and the importance of madrasa education as a form of schooling that allows for ‘Muslim-ness’ and ‘Muslim ethos’. Their responses revealed a sense of anxiety bordering on panic due to what they perceived as a moral crisis looming large, reflected in their repeated use of bahar ka mahaul (outside ethos). As one of the mothers said: School and college girls are in aafat (rush) to imitate boys, they walk with their hair open, wear chhote chhote (revealing) clothes, loaf around alone, watch movies and want love marriage, no sharam (shame), no adab (etiquettes) no tameez (manners). This is the waahiyaat mahaul (sickening and terrible atmosphere) outside. —Mother of Aamna

The word mahaul is an intriguing one. Though it roughly translates to a generalized atmosphere or ethos, it is hard to find an English equivalent. The parents commonly used the word to juxtapose ‘bahar ka mahaul’ with ‘madarse ka mahaul’ (atmosphere of the madrasa), ascribing positive attributes to the latter and negative qualities to the former. They characterized bahar ka mahaul as decadent, using terms like galat (wrong), kharab (bad), or wahiyaat (terrible). According to the parents, the moral decadence was reflected in the unbecoming ways girls were acting in terms of dress, behaviour, and conduct. The madrasa was seen as a safe haven for the girls where they were mehfuz (safe) from bahar ka mahaul. Here it is important to note that for most of the families this was the first time they were sending girls to an educational institution not just outside their locality and neighbourhood but in a different city. In this light, the understanding of the madrasa as an extension of the family is extremely critical to comprehending the parents’ decision. The parents repeatedly drew a distinction between the outside and the madrasa environment, clearly implying that the madrasa was a space that represented an extension of the private sphere of the family by following the religious beliefs and cultural practices of Muslims. As Nida’s mother explained to me:

134

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

Our girls come from a dindar ghar (religious and practicing household) where purdah is followed; they will not be able to adjust to bahar ke bepardgi wale mahaul (the outside environment where there is no purdah).

Such responses of the parents, highlighting the moral degradation that to their minds characterizes the bahar ka mahaul, closely align with the popular view presented by girls’ madrasas to explain their genesis, which is discussed in greater detail in the next section. The responses of parents also illustrated the gendered nature of educational choices. Stressing on the future lives of the girls, parents went into great detail to discuss how madrasa education equipped their daughters with amal. They appeared fully convinced that only formal training in a residential madrasa could teach the girls amal. As one of the mothers said: The manner in which this madrasa teaches, ladkiyon ke zehan mein utar jaati hai (girls realize) the deep power of Prophet’s sayings and namaz. All their lives girls remain sahi (right) ... amal karti hain (they practice). I believe in amal (practice) more padai (study) less. —Mother of Zainab

Very similar to Zainab’s mother, most parents regarded amal as critical for educating girls to live pious lives and conduct themselves in a way that Muslim women ought to. Though each parent’s definition of this way differed, the common ideas included adab, akhlaq, purdah, farmanbardari (obedience). Parents constantly juxtaposed their daughters with ‘others’, that is, bigadi ladkiyan (spoilt girls) who were products of a different system of education, victims of the changing ethos, describing them as unruly, undisciplined, lacking manners which was evident in their speech, clothing, and conduct. As one of the mothers stated in a very matter-of-fact way: After going to school and college, girls pat-pat bolne lagti hai (speak a lot). In Islam there is no akkad (arrogance) and place for being opinionated. Madrasa girls are considered jannati (ones that go to heaven); they epitomize dindari (religiosity), farmanbardari (obedience), and dil mein khuda ka khauf rakhne wali (God-fearing). —Mother of Nagma and Saima



Making of Kamil Momina

135

This association between madrasa education and the inculcation of good virtues was closely tied up with the parents’ views on marriage. Most of the parents aspired to get their daughters married in their native places—rural or semi-urban Haryana, Rajasthan, Bihar, and Uttar Pradesh. This is perhaps best revealed in the statement repeated to me countless times, ‘shaadi to gaon dehat mein honi hai’ (she will marry in the village and rural countryside). Parents chose to educate their daughters in a girls’ madrasa as it offered the promise of better marriage alliances without risking ‘gossips to cast slurs on their family’s honour’ (Jeffery, Jeffery, and Jeffrey 2004). Still (2011) notes similar discourses amongst Dalits in Andhra Pradesh where questions like how much education, when and where, were critical to the educational choices Dalit families made vis-à-vis their daughters. The parents she interacted with saw education as a route to a good marriage rather than a route to employment or equality. Similarly, among the parents I interacted with, madrasa education closely ­corresponded with their ideas on marriage and motherhood. With regard to marriage, the underlying assumption for all parents was that decisions pertaining to a daughter’s marriage were the family’s prerogative and the daughter’s duty. Several parents talked about how their daughters would get married ‘back home’ into the same biradri (community) as theirs, often into households located in small towns and villages from where the parents had migrated to Delhi in search of better opportunities. It is important to note here that the fact that the daughters would get married ‘back home’ was presented as a foregone conclusion. In many ways, this represents an intertwined reality as madrasa education and the parents’ notion of wanting daughters to get married in families in their native places, both reinforce each other. Parents repeatedly talked about how education in the madrasa prepared the girls and equipped them with the religious and domestic knowledge they would require as wives and mothers in these native contexts variously described as gaon dehat (village and rural areas). As Ruksana and Shahana’s mother explained: Our whole extended family (saara khandan) is from Bijnor. It is obvious that we would to get our daughters married there. That’s why, from the beginning (shuru se) we thought that we will send our daughters to the madrasa (madrase mein bhejenge). —Mother of Ruksana (Year five) and Shahana (Year four)

136

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

Further, from conversations with parents and teachers it appeared that being alima educated in the madrasa put girls in a coveted place in the arranged marriage market. This is because the distinction of being a ‘madrasa-educated alima’ carried connotations such as a sense of modesty, religiosity, piety, and propriety. One of the mothers, while giving me a lengthy explanation as to what were the criteria that were advised by the Hadith in spouse selection, told me how the foremost requirement was that the both the boy and girl should be dindar rather than maldar (rich) or khoobsoorat (good looking). In this context, being madrasa educated automatically signalled that the girl was dindar. In the Moradabad madrasa, the Principal herself went so far as to say that her madrasa had acquired the popular image of being ‘lucky’ for girls as many women who came to meet daughters would also be on the lookout for prospective daughters-in-law for their sons and countless rishtas (matrimonial alliances) had been fixed this way: ‘Some girls do such harkat (actions) that their parents send them here to reform and rishta pakka kar ke hi to unhe madrase se bulate hain (only after fixing their daughters marriages so they allow them to return).’ This statement made by a madrasa teacher is indicative of countless instances wherein girls are sent to the madrasas in the ‘waiting to get married’ phase.2 This phase arises from a range of factors, such as the presence of an elder female sibling in the family who is not yet married, exploring potential grooms for an arranged marriage, and so on. At such times, parents prefer to send girls to madrasas. It is felt that rather than idling around (for which expressions like gossiping, wasting time, and so on were used) it would be better if the girls used their time constructively in the madrasa. While none of the parents directly cited this as a reason, several teachers outlined the above logic and even cited names of girls who were generally 17 or 18 years and above and had come to the madrasa after completing their schooling or having studied at other madrasas. I was also told in whispers and undertones that some girls were sent to the madrasa to ‘reform themselves’ as they had done some harkat (activity) like boyfriend-baazi.3 2  This

is in no way linked to the ‘waiting period’ relating to the time a divorced or widowed woman has to wait before she can remarry. 3  Boyfriend-baazi is slang meant, derogatorily, to convey a girl hanging around with a ghair mahram or actually having a boyfriend, which itself is considered a wrongdoing.



Making of Kamil Momina

137

Intriguingly, a common response to my question, ‘How come you sent your daughter to the madrasa?’ was ‘Ladki ne kaha aur padhna hai to yahan bhej diya!’ (Our daughter wanted to study more so we sent her here). It is only after much interaction that I realized that this rather simple statement, which made madrasas appear as a choice exercised by parents at the behest of their daughters, hid a more complex storyline. It was closely linked with notions of marriage, as outlined earlier, and a multifaceted set of concerns such as (a) how much education was required for girls, (b) till what age and level was it necessary, and (c) what were the appropriate educational institutions for girls of different ages. Recent anthropological studies, such as Still’s (2011) work with Dalits in Andhra Pradesh and Lukose’s (2009) research amongst college-going middle-class students in Kerala, highlight similar contesting dilemmas stemming from the desire to balance ideals of femininity and respectability with modern education. In my field, the parents’ views on this subject were rather diverse with each set of parents having their own opinion on this matter, but there were certain common factors that decided the above questions. Tasleem scored good marks in the [class 12 board] exam that’s why her father gave her aage padhne ki ijazat (permission to study further), otherwise amongst us, who educates their girls so much. Then we thought this (madrasa) education is better (achchi) than college education. She will learn about religion and a little about household work—cooking, stitching … that’s also necessary for girls. —Mother of Tasleem

In Tasleem’s case, her good result in her class 12th board examinations ensured her father’s decision in favour of her continuing education, but her family chose to send her to the madrasa instead of a college as they found it more appropriate. The underlying assumption being that schooling till Class 12 was sufficient in terms of mainstream education and hence continuing to a college wasn’t necessary. Rather, going to a madrasa which would help supplement her existing knowledge and also provide practical training in household affairs was a better choice until she got married. The idea behind citing Tasleem’s example is not to say that this represents a common pattern or that other larger factors aren’t at work but to highlight the underlying gender norms

138

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

that govern parental attitudes. Similar underlying principles can also be seen in some of the other educational choices I commonly encountered in the madrasa, such as considering a co-educational setting appropriate for girls only till Class five or pre-puberty; if the school is till Class 10 then withdrawing girls and admitting them into madrasas vis-à-vis colleges; admitting daughters into a madrasa while allowing them to simultaneously appear for their Class 10 and Class 12 examinations as open school candidates; post madrasa, admitting girls into colleges that recognize madrasa degrees as private candidates. Asna’s father’s description of his daughter’s educational background perhaps best captures this: Asna has a good mind (zehan bahut achha hai); we never stopped her from studying. When she was small she would roam around with her brother’s slate. Earlier we sent her to a nearby school, which also had a religious ambience even though the syllabus was CBSE (mahaul dini tha par padhai CBSE ki thi). Then she studied here (in the madrasa) for two years, now she is teaching in the madrasa and also doing her BA at Jamia through private mode (private se Jamia mein BA bhi kar rahi hai). —Father of Asna

Parents have to balance a range of competing concerns when it comes to making educational choices for daughters. All the parents I spoke to aspired to remain true to their native roots located in rural or semi-urban north India, and for them the right kind of school was a place where their girls could avail benefits of both dini and duniyavi talim, which in turn provided some degree of certainty of access to respectable marriages but did not corrupt them into modern ways. An institution that was not co-educational had purdah and was an extension of the family when it came to safety. There was a constant sense of tension and anxiety resulting from a changing socio-economic and educational landscape articulated in the repeated use of the word mahaul. It was clear that this often brings parents face to face with a number of double-binding choices—educating their daughters but not over-educating them as that would make it difficult to find a befitting match in the same biradri; ensuring girls know their din, retain their Muslimness and



Making of Kamil Momina

139

have basic knowledge of what is taught in regular schools; provide practical training to girls in Islamic etiquettes and morals befitting pious Muslim girls in a modernizing India where the educational system that looks down on such practices as outmoded. Parents see Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat as the ‘right’ school as it offers a way of straddling these two worlds. This was expressed in the recurrent themes in their narratives, which revolved around the importance of education, religious sanction, notions of pious and complete Muslim women, marriage, protection from vices of the outside mahaul, and fulfilling their daughters’ wishes. These recurrent themes and concerns greatly overlap with the vision and mission of the girls’ madrasas in general and Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat in ­particular, which offers its educational programme and the anticipated moral reformation in girls as the sole remedy to the moral crisis. The madrasa’s understanding of its own vision is presented in the following section. producing a kamil momina : the vision of a madrasa

A … girl will serve her husband and keep him happy by taking care of his various needs within the Shariyah. With her technical and academic knowledge she can also help her husband with work, business and family. As a mother [the] girl will be able to provide proper upbringing to her children and provide them with good morals, religious and modern education. She will be able to build a sound character in her children. All this will be possible because of the knowledge she has gained during her education. As a neighbour a … girl is also well-equipped and trained to give the last bath before burial and perform proper funeral Islamic rituals. As an independent member of society she can also earn support and provide for her family because of her academic and vocational training and vast skill set.

The above extract is drawn from the brochure of a girls’ madrasa in Moradabad, placed under the heading, ‘Approach to Education’. It provides a glimpse into the manner in which girls’ madrasas seek to reproduce an idealized normative Islamic womanhood. The heads and principals of the madrasas I visited presented similar imagery of the ideal madrasa educated girl.

140

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

In this section, I begin by briefly discussing the ideological roots of the normative ideal of the Muslim woman that can be traced back to the debates in nineteenth-century colonial India around the women’s question. I go on to focus specifically on the educational vision of girls’ madrasas and the educational regime instituted by Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat to objectify the ideal of a kamil momina. Women as Repositories of the Moral Community Women play a numaya kirdar (key role) in the construction of a sualeh mashara (pious community). The future generation of Muslims will not become din ke alambardar (flagbearers of religion) and keemati sarmaya (precious resources/capital) for the mulk (nation) and millat (community) until its development has a woman’s hand, a woman jiske andar islami akedah ki pukhtagi ho (who is firmly ingrained in Islamic values) and islami talimat ke zevar se poori tarah arasta ho (who is completely covered with the ornaments of Islamic knowledge implying a woman who is well versed in Islamic knowledge). —Excerpt from the Introduction to Jamiatul Banat, Information Sheet of Madrasa Jamiatul Banat in Gaya, Bihar.

The madrasa authorities in Jamiatul Mominat gave a very similar explanation. One person after the other—from the President to the teachers to the khala who guarded the gate—outlined a very similar story about how girls’ madrasas like theirs were pioneers in girls’ education, making the community realize the importance of educating girls to safeguard the moral fabric of the community. It was madrasas like theirs, they argued, that made the common Muslim realize that women were the vanguards of Islam, the ones who would teach Islam to the coming generations and, therefore, the religious education of women was critical to the future of the ummah. Piecing together the interviews with madrasa heads and administrators in an attempt to document the rising salience of girls’ madrasas, I realized that the narratives of madrasas are very similar to each other, often mimicking the narratives employed by global preaching movements such as Tablighi Jamaat to mobilize members. The rationale and vocabulary for setting up the madrasas employs the Tablighi



Making of Kamil Momina

141

rhetoric of declining moral values, disappearing religious roots, and changing external environment owing to rampant modernization and materialism, painting a picture of the Indian Muslim community in crisis. The significant addition in the case of the narratives of the madrasa heads was that girls’ education in madrasas was presented as an attempt at remedying these wrongs. Bano draws a similar conclusion about the growth of girls’ madrasas in 1970s Pakistan, contending that ‘female madrasas emerged from an ideological move to preserve traditional value structures in light of threats from the growing liberalisation of society’ (Bano 2012: 132). In India, too, madrasa authorities explain the shift of girls’ education from the confines of the home to the setting up of formalized girls madrasas in the 1950s, and their rising popularity ever since, as a move to curtail and reverse the prevalent moral crisis. This rationale for girls’ madrasa education clearly emphasizes the role of women as repositories of community identity. Several commentators working in the field of women and Islam have argued that women are often held responsible for preserving, articulating, and perpetuating the Islamic identity. They are regarded as symbolic of the community, the cultural identity ‘vested in women’s selves’ (Boddy 1989: 252). By extension, girls’ madrasas, by educating women to be virtuous Muslim women, help maintain the values of the community. In the Indian context, the construction of the pious madrasa-educated woman greatly draws from the nineteenth-century debates on Muslim women’s reform. Winkelmann (2005) terms the views of the nineteenth-century Muslim reformers on women’s education as ‘the ideological foundation’ (2005: 35) of girls’ madrasas emerging in post-Partition India. In the literature review, I have highlighted how the twin motives of resisting the colonial regime and carving out an identity distinct from the Hindu majority led nineteenth-century Muslim reformers to construct an imaginary of Muslim womanhood, which combined Muslimness and a modern educated status, responsible for maintaining the cultural authenticity of the private sphere (Chatterjee 1993). These nineteenth-century notions of educated Muslim women being the repositories of the community’s values and being responsible for preserving Islamic authenticity continue to define the educational vision of present-

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

142

day girls’ madrasas. In contemporary India, the impetus that fuels this process often derives from the increasing communalization of the social space, especially the constant deployment of the ‘Muslim Women’s Question’ to consolidate religious community identity.4 In such a scenario, the imaginary construct of the ideal Muslim woman gets more and more distilled to emphasize a distinct religious identity. Madrasa education both caters to and feeds into this imaginary construct of the ideal Muslim woman. When one juxtaposes the above-mentioned vision of girls’ madrasas with the parents’ views discussed earlier, one sees a shared understanding of ideal Muslim womanhood and the norms and values that frame it. The parents’ idea of the ‘right school’ illustrates the desire for a combination of religious and secular education, a Muslim ethos reflected in gender segregation and dress, practical training in amal, an education that enhances marriage prospects and family repute. Girls’ madrasas promise an educational model tailored to produce an ideal Muslim woman who is the moral repository of the community’s identity. In the next section, we focus on how this ideal is objectified by madrasas into an educational regime comprising the physical context, institutional routines, rules, and body practices. the educational regime

Our girls are educated in such a way that they can achieve the heights of worldly success without ever taking even a single step out of line with Islamic principles and hudud (boundaries) for women. —President, Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat

The patron authorities of Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat believe and proclaim that any attempt to serve the ummah rests on ­socializing 4  The

notion of Muslim women as symbols of the community’s identity gets further entrenched in present-day India due the ongoing communal discourse wherein Muslim conservatives employ it as a means to consolidate religious group identity whereas members of the Hindu right use it to justify violence against Muslims (See Hasan 1994).



Making of Kamil Momina

143

students into becoming ideal pious Muslim women or kamil momina. The attainment of the ideal of a kamil momina is objectified into an educational regime incorporating a closed ­ physical structure, institutional routines, rules and regulations, and body practices. Several scholars who have worked on madrasas in the Indian subcontinent (Alam 2013a; Farooq 2013; Winkelmann 2005) employ Foucault’s model to describe the disciplinary practices characterizing madrasas in general and girls’ madrasas in particular as representing a ‘total institution’. Developed by Goffman (1961),5 the concept of a ‘total institution’ is employed by Foucault (1995) to analyse how social power is exercised through institutional and bodily practices. Drawing on Foucault’s work, which regards the physical lay-out of institutions as being central to the exercise of power, Alam (2013a) argues that the spatial arrangements of a madrasa resemble the apparatus of Bentham’s panopticon wherein each and every aspect of a student’s movement is visible, the students have no private space, and are constantly ‘caught in a power situation of which they are the bearers’ (Alam 2013a: 232). Citing Foucault’s work on the body, Alam (2013a) and Winkelmann (2005) argue that the educational process in madrasas involves subjecting the student’s body to disciplinary control to make it ‘docile’. The main aim is to increase the mastery of the students over their bodies so that over time, they internalize the madrasa norms. In the case of girls’ madrasas, docility is created by internalization of the madrasa norms pertaining to ideal Islamic womanhood (Farooq 2013; Winkelmann 2005). My research builds on the findings of the above-mentioned scholars but offers a more nuanced perspective by juxtaposing the disciplinary 5  Goffman

(1968) developed the concept of total institution as ‘a place of residence and work where a large number of like-situated individuals, cut off from the wider society for an appreciable period of time, together lead an enclosed, formally administered round of life’ (Goffman 1968: xv). Goffman focused on the exercise of bureaucratic authority, that is, how daily habits of the inhabitants were monitored and controlled through routinized and highly structured patterns.

144

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

educational regime in girls’ madrasas with the everyday experiences of students. I argue that the educational regime of madrasas reflects normative expectations, but these are not always synchronous with the daily lives of the students in the madrasa. This section focuses on the normative expectations. The closed architecture, constant surveillance, intense disciplining and implementation of a standard ideal of behaviour in the girls’ madrasas I researched echo Foucault’s insights on how bodily ­practices and institutional routines are implicated in the disciplining process. The educational regime of the madrasa can be described as what Foucault terms as ‘discursive practice’, a means through which society’s underlying ideas and values circulate and are made material (Foucault 1995). I argue that a discourse inspired by a normative understanding of Islamic womanhood and ummah configures the educational template of Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat. For example, the madrasa’s architecture, layers of security, and surveillance manifest norms considered acceptable for women. Each of the following sections details the practices enforced by the madrasa and its underlying norms and values. The first section elaborates the principle of keeping girls’ mehfuz or safe espoused by the madrasa and how it defines the architecture, spatial arrangements, mobility, and interaction patterns inside and outside the madrasa. The second section discusses the madrasa’s emphasis on privileging male authority. The third section details the curriculum of the madrasa. The fourth subsection discusses the informal curriculum of the madrasa and its emphasis on the notions of purdah, adab, akhlaq, and hudud and huquq (obligations or rights that others enjoy over a person). Physical Space and Surveillance: Keeping Girls Mehfuz

The description of the physical structure of the Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat in Chapter 4 refers in great detail to the closed architecture and spatial insularity of the madrasa from the outside, through the enforcement of the concepts of purdah, gender segregation, restrictions on mobility, and constant surveillance. The common argument in support of such arrangements, variants of which were

Making of Kamil Momina

145

cited by madrasa authorities in all the madrasas that I visited, was that the girls are the amanat6 of parents entrusted to the madrasa. Hence, the primary responsibility of the madrasa is keeping the girls mehfuz, a responsibility that takes precedence over the principal aim of educating the girls. Madrasa authorities consider the closed and monitored spatial organization of the madrasa as an inalienable part of fulfilling their responsibility as guardians of the girls and assuming the role of the family in keeping the girls safe (Figures 5.3 and 5.4). Here it is important to understand that the notion of keeping the girls mehfuz from the standpoint of the madrasa operates at several levels, which extend much beyond the physical context. These are discussed in the following section.

Figure 5.3 Security Arrangements in madrasas. A teacher locking the gate

to the terrace in Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat to ensure students don’t run wild on the pretext of drying their clothes on the terrace. 6 Amanat here connotes the notion of guardianship, wherein the madrasa authorities are temporarily entrusted by the parents with the guardianship and safekeeping of the girls while they are studying in the madrasa.

146

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

Figure 5.4 Grilled windows of a madrasa in Moradabad, Uttar Pradesh.

Protection from Ghair Mahram7

The most obvious manifestation of the imperative to keep the girls safe and secure is the segregation of female and male spaces. In the case of a girls’ madrasa, the madrasa as a whole is seen as a female space out of bounds for men. A common template is strict regulations governing access to the madrasa, with various stages of screening. In the madrasa 7 Ghair mahram or Na mahram refers to a man who may be a potential marriage partner.

Making of Kamil Momina

147

I visited in Moradabad (Uttar Pradesh), at the time of admission, the parents are asked to list three to five family members who are likely to visit and submit their photographs, after which the madrasa issues ID cards for them. The girls are only allowed to meet these visitors (Figure 5.5). In the madrasa in Gaya (Bihar), only parents can visit the daughters. While the mothers are allowed inside the premises, the father of a student being ghair mahram for the rest of the students can only talk to his ward in the mehmankhana (guestroom) of the madrasa.

Figure 5.5 The Board of Announcements in the madrasa in Moradabad

clearly states that it is a purdah institution. It also lists instructions for relatives who wish to meet the girls, stating that meetings are allowed only on one day in the week, that is, Fridays, and with only those mahram whose photographs have been submitted in the office at the time of admission.

148

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

Similarly, girls are not allowed to step outside the boundaries of the madrasa while the madrasa is in session. They are allowed to go home for vacations but only when a related male relative comes to pick them up and drop them back. At Jamiatul Mominat, the girls who are residents are only allowed to go out in case they fall ill and then, too, they must be accompanied by a teacher. The girls have to submit a written application to a teacher for approval, and then it has to be signed by the head teacher who finally gives permission and notes down the name of the teacher who is to accompany the girl. The girls have to dress in a burqa and niqab to be allowed to exit the building. The letter and the dress are checked by the khala who guards the entrance of the madrasa and the chacha who mans the main gate. Even male teachers are to follow the rules of purdah. I saw several variations of this rule in practice—in Jamiatul Mominat, the male teachers have a room in the outer area of the madrasa where they speak on mikes so the loud speakers allow them to be heard inside the classrooms. In Moradabad, each classroom was provided with a private cabin with an external entry where the male teachers would teach from, communicating through microphones and loudspeakers (Figure 5.6). In Dhanbad and Gaya, the madrasas couldn’t afford elaborate infrastructure so the male teachers taught in the classrooms, facing the female students, who wore niqabs (which covered their entire face other than eyes). Keeping Girls Safe from Corrupting Influences

Students who go to melas, cinemas and other entertainment places will be expelled. The above constituted one of the many rules and regulations governing admission in Jamiatul Mominat. It stipulated that the parents had to ensure their ward would not indulge in any means of entertainment prohibited in the madrasa. Melas (fairs), cinemas, movies, TV, music, mobile phones, and Internet were all regarded by the madrasa as potentially corrupting influences and hence prohibited as part of keeping the girls mehfuz. The madrasa did not allow the students to carry or use any of the above-mentioned things in its premises. It is very interesting to note that while ‘Computers’ is a taught course in Jamiatul Mominat, Internet use is not permitted. I sat in for a few

Making of Kamil Momina

149

computer classes. These happen three times a week, from 4 pm to 6 pm, and the girls are required to pay an additional annual fee of Rs 1,500 to be able to attend them. The computer trainer is a lady teacher hired from outside. The emphasis is more on teaching the

Figure 5.6 The private cabin for male teachers in the classroom of a girls’

madrasa in Moradabad. Each cabin is equipped with a mike for teaching and an external entry for male teachers.

150

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

girls theoretical things about the hardware and programmes rather than explaining to them the practical uses of the machine. While the course does make them computer literate, I often found that they were not taught basic things like looking up or searching something on the Internet, or sending a mail, or booking a train ticket, even though they knew, by heart, things like ‘parts and functions of the CPU, monitor and keyboard’, ‘steps to use Corel Draw’, and so forth. When I asked the computer teacher during an informal conversation as to how come she did not teach the girls how to access the Internet, she told me she had ‘theoretically’ taught the girls about it but the madrasa did not provide students access to the Internet so she had not explained it ‘practically’. Her own opinion on the matter was that it was in the best interests of the girls because while the Internet was ‘convenient’, it exposed the girls to several ‘un-Islamic practices’ like ‘chatting, Facebook, YouTube’, and so forth.8 While this may be a highly stereotypical response, it nevertheless points to the manner in which the Internet, being a potential medium for the girls to gain unrestricted access to the outside, is regarded as dangerous and corrupting and hence prohibited or highly restricted. In fact, I observed variations of this practice in other madrasas too. There would be an elaborate computer lab, which was amongst the first places I would be shown to illustrate how the madrasa was abreast with the changing times and taught ‘useful modern subjects’. However, each time I would ask if there was any Internet access, the answer was always ‘No’ (Figures 5.7 and 5.8) Keeping Them Safe from Becoming Like ‘Other Girls’

It was not only men that the girls needed to be kept secure from, but also ‘other’ women. The ‘other’ in this case was often described as somebody who did not have any haya/sharam (modesty), which was reflected in not following the ‘practice of purdah’, ‘travelling unaccompanied by 8 This rule is rather hypocritical given that the madrasa itself has a Facebook page on which photographs of the madrasa building and some images of the students in complete burqa are posted. The daughter of the President and his son administer the Facebook profile of the madrasa with the assistance of the computer teacher.

Making of Kamil Momina

151

Figures 5.7 and 5.8 Students being taught ‘Computers’ in the madrasa.

The focus of computer classes is mostly on theoretical aspects as reflected in the questions, rather than practical aspects. Girls are not taught how to use the Internet or allowed Internet access in most madrasas. Often computer laboratories were existent but in a state of disuse.

152

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

mahram’,9 and ‘trying to act like men’. This ‘other’ was not someone who was defined in terms of religion but someone who indulged in ‘conduct inappropriate for women’, commonly seen in non-Muslims or ‘Muslims who were Muslims only in name’ (nam ke musalman). An oft-repeated statement in the madrasa was, ‘Allah created men and women different and thereby created different roles for them’. The ‘other’ girls did not understand these boundaries and hence tried to emulate men by trying to wear clothes like men (jeans, pants, and so forth), by trying to speak like them (loudly and boisterously), by trying to work and earn like them, by trying to move around like them (unaccompanied on foot or in public transport). They jeopardized their own safety by these activities, ‘attracted men’, and ‘invited trouble’. Thus, the madrasa girls were not to mingle with these ‘other girls’ at any cost except if they felt there was a chance to ‘reform them’. The madrasa teachers often explained that these other women could be anyone, from a relative like mother, sister, to a friend and neighbour, but notwithstanding who it was, the same principle applied.10 Thus, the notion of mehfuz in the vocabulary of the madrasas does not simply translate into elaborate safety and security arrangements but is a crucial construct in the imaginary vision of educating girls into becoming ideal Muslim women. It is seen as critical to creating a Muslim ethos or mahaul appropriate for educating the students into kamil momina. Respecting Authority

The importance of respecting those in authority—parents, teachers, and senior students—was strongly emphasized in the madrasa. Encapsulated in the notion of farmanbardari or obedience, this permeated the classroom etiquette and conduct outside classrooms. As the warden of Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat remarked, ‘any student who passes through the walls of this madrasa learns the importance of obedience—you will never find them being insolent (na farmani), answering back or rudely arguing (tu tadak)—not just here but even when they go home’. This resonated with the views of parents, many 9 

Mahram refers to unmarriageable kin. In this light the biggest challenge for me was not just gaining physical access to the madrasa but convincing the girls I wasn’t like the ‘other girls’, even though my profile made it appear in their minds that I was. 10 



Making of Kamil Momina

153

of whom discussed their daughters’ increasing obedience and respect for elders as a positive outcome of madrasa education. The teachers and staff believed that this respect and obedience was not something that could be taught. They constantly drew comparisons with regular schools to convey this point. As one of the teachers explained: All schools teach these things—wishing teachers, elders, listening to and obeying elders. But if you were in another school, teachers would have to prompt the student: ‘inko hello bolo, khade ho’ (say hello, stand up). You see our girls, we never have to prompt, because for them this respect comes andar se (from within)—this is the akhlaq of a madrasa.

According to the teachers, the girls just ‘picked up’ these habits in the madrasa due to prolonged exposure to the islami mahaul (Islamic ethos) in the madrasa, especially by emulating and imbibing the example set by senior students and teachers. Despite the teachers’ assertion that students simply ‘picked up’ virtues like obedience, it has to be said that the students were made to learn obedience by punishing even the slightest act of disobedience. Though I did not witness or hear any accounts of corporal punishment, the students were often rebuked and reprimanded publicly in front of their peers. Further, they were subtly reminded that true punishment awaited them on the Day of Judgement. This reminder was regularly employed to induce guilt and instil a sense of deep fear. Here it is important to note that it was not just the teachers and madrasa authorities who were involved in cultivating this obedience but also senior students who often checked the girls in junior classes. For example, during evening halqas, which are peer activities (where teachers are absent), the senior students would often question the girls present on the whereabouts of the girls who were absent. The absent girls would either be tracked in the premises of the madrasa or, when they appeared the next day, pulled up by the seniors for disobedience. While the students were taught to respect all figures of authority, there was a special focus on educating them to submit to male authority. This is perhaps best revealed in the administrative structure of the madrasa. The organizational and management structure of the Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat is designated as a male sphere despite the institution catering exclusively to girls. In fact, across girls’ madrasas, it is largely men who are in charge (Jeffery, Jeffery, and Jeffrey 2012; Winkelmann

154

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

2005). They are the patrons, managers, and those responsible for designing the curriculum (Farooq 2013). In Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat, and all the other madrasas (barring one) that I visited, while the Principals were women, the managing committee responsible for the running of the institutions was exclusively male. The decisions pertaining to the syllabus, admission, finances, hiring of staff, daily administration, were regarded as the exclusive purview of men. The general explanation cited was that men were more qualified, and the requirements of purdah automatically excluded women from performing these functions. Thus, it is men who decide how the pious self of the girls should be developed in the madrasa and what constitutes the right social behaviour for women. The role of the Principal, who was, in most cases, a relative (daughter, wife, sister) of the men in charge, was largely confined to being the nigran or one who supervises vis-à-vis the men who were the nazim or managers in charge with the real positions of authority. The view that men are in charge of decision making, especially regarding those pertaining to the outside world, was not just something that was confined to the organization of the institution but conveyed actively or subtly at every level. For example, as per the madrasa rules the girls were not allowed to meet their fathers within the premises of the madrasa and only female relatives were allowed. However, when it came to the girls going home during breaks and vacations, they were not permitted to travel with just their mothers and had to be accompanied by a male relative. Similarly, when the girls were to graduate after the fifth year, I was repeatedly told that the madrasa authorities would consult with their fathers or elder brothers to decide what would be the best future course for them. In conversations with students, when I would enquire about their future plans, the teachers would often interject saying that right now the girls’ fathers had given them permission to study but later it would be their future husbands who would decide whether they could study or work or do something else. In the classroom lessons and informal conversations outside the classroom, I observed the teachers glorifying and actively encouraging submission to male authority, presenting a daughter’s submission to her father and a wife’s submission to the husband as desirable traits that the girls needed to cultivate. This generalized notion of obedience and submission to male authority was reinforced while teaching the girls about huquq.



Making of Kamil Momina

155

While the girls were taught the obligations of parents, husbands, and children towards women, there was a distinct emphasis on teaching the girls the obligations of a wife towards her husband. Teachers often told girls that a wife who is itatguzar (obedient) and respects the husband’s rights would enter jannat (heaven), with all its doors open to her. However, a na-farman (disobedient) wife may do any good deed but the doors of heaven would always be closed to her. As a part of the huquq, girls were taught that they had the responsibility of keeping their husbands happy, ensuring he found sukoon at home, protecting their izzat when he is away from home, not allowing anyone who their husband does not like into the house, and so on. Teachers often cited instances from the lives of the wives and daughters of the Prophet to demonstrate that god rewards such behaviour. Thus, the ideal woman that madrasa wanted the girls to emulate was one who demonstrably respects authority, especially male authority. Discipline in the Madrasa: Pabandi (Restrictions) and Hudud (boundaries) ‘Pabandi’ (restrictions) replied the teachers in unison. I had just asked them what was responsible for the madrasa’s success. —Notes from the field

Discipline was seen as critical to the success of the learning regime of the madrasa. The teachers and administration repeatedly told me that what set the madrasa apart from regular schools was that madrasas could enforce and maintain pabandi. This was illustrated by pointing to the strict daily routine, visible practice of Islamic strictures such as purdah, gender segregation, and so forth, and constant surveillance and security arrangements to keep the girls safe. The President of Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat described these restrictions as having been imposed ‘for the girls’ own good’. The central idea was that a strict disciplinary regime would translate into self-discipline, wherein the girls would internalize and practice the rules learnt in the madrasa. This was best expressed in the discussion around hudud (limits and boundaries). The madrasa administration and teachers believed that the girls learnt about hudud through their daily life in the madrasa. The restrictions in the madrasa taught the girls

156

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

the value of control and restraint in their daily life—in dress, speech, comportment, conduct, food, leisure. Internalizing these restrictions and self-disciplining themselves made the girls realize their limits. Whenever I would ask the teachers what precisely were the hudud for women, I was given a range of answers—from strict practice of Islamic rituals and routines to moral virtues like not backbiting, thieving, cheating to confining work, education, and recreation to places where there was gender segregation, and so on. The following sections dealing with the curriculum and embodying discipline give a better sense of how this discipline and control is repeatedly inscribed in appearance and bodily practice, until it becomes natural for the girls. Curriculum

The madrasa follows a five-year study plan, which allows the students to earn the degree of an alima. For students who are not conversant with Urdu, especially written Urdu, an additional one-year basic level course called Ibtidai is offered. The formal curriculum, taught during what is referred to as ‘school time’, from 8 am to 2 pm, offers a combination of dini and duniyavi talim. Before embarking on the specifics of the curriculum, it is important to point out certain caveats. Firstly, my description of the curriculum is essentially a reconstruction based on the official syllabus specified in the admission brochure, observations, interviews, and discussions with the staff and students. Secondly, given my inability to read or write Urdu, my understanding of classroom discussions relied heavily on the teachers’ and students’ descriptions as opposed to reading the text. Further, throughout my engagement with the madrasa, my focus centred on the informal curriculum and everyday experiences of the students rather than the formal curriculum. In the following discussion of the formal curriculum, my aim is to provide an outline of the mixed curriculum offered by the madrasa and emphasize that dini talim classes constitute the didactic basis for the informal curriculum practiced in the madrasa. The dini talim component of the syllabus focuses on recitation, translation, exegesis, and memorization of parts of the Quran, specialized study of the Hadith, and the history of Islam (by teaching the biography of the Prophet and history of the caliphs). Particular emphasis in the history lessons is laid on teaching the girls about the model

Making of Kamil Momina

157

behaviour of the Ummul Momineen (the mothers of believers or wives of the Prophet). There is a strong emphasis on learning Arabic, with the first three years focused on learning Arabic grammar and morphology while in the more advanced classes the girls are exposed to Arabic literature. The students are also taught Islamic jurisprudence, or fiqh, with focus on what the teachers termed as the masla masal (issues and problems) of women. The girls are given moral lessons on adab, or social etiquette. The duniyavi talim component of the curriculum comprises English, maths, and computers. In addition, there are vocational classes for stitching and embroidery, and in the final year the girls are to compulsorily attend cooking lessons (Figures 5.9–5.11). During interviews, the madrasa authorities described this curriculum, especially the dini talim component, as similar to what is taught in boys’ madrasas. However, in private conversations the teachers often suggested that the syllabus taught in the girls’ madrasas is a highly condensed version of the syllabus in the boys’ madrasas. This abbreviated syllabus was explained by the teachers as tailored to the needs of girls, given their impending marriage and motherhood.

Figure 5.9 ‘Dini Lab’ in a madrasa, which stores teaching and learning material to instruct students about Islamic prescriptions.

158

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

Figures 5.10 and 5.11 Selected works of art and craft by madrasa students

displayed on the classroom walls. Arts and crafts, especially stitching, embroidery, and painting, are encouraged in girls’ madrasas.



Making of Kamil Momina

159

The understanding offered by the madrasa authorities behind the purpose of the religious or dini part of the curriculum was that it enabled the girls to understand how to lead their life as per Islam. As one of the senior teachers explained, ‘there is a difference between wanting to gain Allah’s raza (pleasure) and knowing how’. The curriculum was designed to impart this knowledge to the girls. This was best illustrated in the teaching of Arabic. Being the language of the Quran, proficiency in Arabic was accorded great importance in the madrasa. The understanding was that learning Arabic would enable the girls to read and understand the Quran themselves rather than relying on translations or others for explanations, which often diluted and corrupted the ‘real meaning’ of the verses. Teachers described learning Arabic as a transformative experience, which brought students closer to internalizing and observing the correct practice of Islam. The teachers repeatedly told me that the madrasa was well known for its proficiency in teaching Arabic and most of them claimed that their expertise in Arabic played a significant role in their being offered a teaching post. In fact, the level of proficiency in Arabic was an informal marker of seniority among the teachers. Senior teachers who had great expertise in Arabic were assigned classes on exegesis, referred to as khulasa in madrasa parlance. Knowledge of Arabic was one of the key factors in determining the teacher’s ability to explain the meaning of Quranic verses, provide in-depth explanations by drawing connections with the Hadith and other literature in a manner that the girls could relate it with their everyday lives. In the Arabic classes, much like the students, I largely relied on the Urdu translation and explanations given by the teachers to make sense of what was being taught. Throughout my fieldwork I heard great reviews, and both parents and teachers told me of numerous cases where girls who had not known a word of Arabic could now deliver speeches in the language. However, I always remained cautious in taking these statements at face value as neither the teachers nor parents had any basic understanding or exposure to the Arabic language outside the madrasa to judge the level of fluency, and I never once heard the teachers communicating amongst themselves or with students in Arabic outside class. However, here it is important to mention that the teachers appeared very invested and engaged

160

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

while teaching Arabic and other dini talim classes, in contrast to my observations of the classes for mainstream subjects, such as English, Maths, and Computers. Most of the teachers were in their early twenties and were recent alumni of the madrasa, with little or no training in teaching mainstream subjects. Part-time teachers were hired by the madrasa to teach English, Maths, and Computers, but the classes seemed excessively focused on rote learning rather than actual practice, despite a display of great interest by the students, especially in learning English. As mentioned earlier, my research does not focus on the curriculum and quality of teaching, but the idea behind discussing the curriculum is to emphasize the manner in which participant observation revealed classroom lessons, especially dini talim classes, as a didactic tool. The lessons from dini talim classes were cited and repeatedly employed by the teachers to discipline the students and teach them moral values, social etiquette, and other bodily practices befitting Muslim women outside of classrooms. For example, the teachers would often refer to classroom lessons on the Quran such as  Amr-bil-Maruf  (enjoining good) and  Nahi anil Munkar (forbidding evil/sin) to teach the girls moral values such as honesty, not backbiting, the practice of purdah, to motivating them to do dawah (religious preaching) and shun practices the madrasa considered as incorrect. Thus, lessons were employed as a pedagogic tool to teach moral values, social etiquettes, rules, regulations, and bodily practices that were considered central to becoming pious Muslim women. I discuss these disciplinary practices that govern everyday life in the next sub-section. Embodying Discipline

The overt focus of Jamiatul Mominat’s disciplinary regime on the student’s body best reveals the attempts made by girls’ madrasas to morally (re)define the common sense of what it means to be a pious Muslim woman through practices of embodiment. This was a shared theme; central to the vision of all the madrasas I visited. As a means of protecting the girls’ modesty, morality, family honour, and imbibing piety, the madrasas devise an elaborate arrangement that strongly emphasizes surveillance, disciplining, and control over the women’s



Making of Kamil Momina

161

bodies, movement, and behaviour. The inculcation of the prized moral virtues in the madrasa is synonymous with their bodily expression. For example, the virtue of haya is imbibed through observing purdah. Similarly, akhlaq and adab are demonstrated by following a certain way of talking, walking, and sitting. Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat envisages the inculcation of these traits and accompanying bodily practices as a means of training girls to prove their fidelity to Islam and become an asset to their home and family. Learning Purdah

Purdah (concealment) is strictly enforced in the madrasa. The rules that guide the practice of dress (libas) is where the madrasa’s disciplining is most prominently displayed. All students, teachers, and staff of Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat—from the khala to the Principal—wear salwar-kameez with a dupatta covering the head. Labelled as an Islamic dress, the salwar-kameez was the common dress across all the madrasas I visited, though the length of the kurta, or kameez, and the style in which the dupatta was used to cover the head varied. At Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat all students wear identical white uniforms comprising a loose salwar-kameez with the white dupatta tied like a hijab in such a way that not even a single strand of hair is visible. The day-scholars, who travel daily to the madrasa, wear a black burqa, which covers the body, along with a niqab covering their entire face except for their eyes, each time they enter and exit the madrasa. Since after school hours (8 am to 2 pm) the madrasa functions as a residential institution, the girls staying in residence are allowed to change out of their uniforms. However, the only difference permitted is that instead of the white uniform the girls are allowed to dawn the same dress, that is, salwar-kameez and dupatta tied on the head like a hijab, in different colours. Just as in the case of day-scholars, any student or teacher exiting the boundaries of the madrasa has to wear a burqa and niqab. These rules of dressing are strictly enforced by the madrasa authorities and employed like a disciplinary tool to regulate the conduct of the girls. During classes teachers silently inspect the dress of each of the girls, especially to check if the hijab has been tied properly or not. Any girl who has even a strand of hair visible or is wearing a kameez that is too tight or

162

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

too short is snubbed in front of the whole class. I witnessed several instances in the madrasa where the teachers would reprimand girls in the corridor if their headscarf was slipping or if the fabric of the hijab was transparent. So much so that the teachers would scornfully stop and ask a girl to readjust her scarf even if the tip of her braid was visible from under the scarf. At the end of the day’s classes, at 2 pm, loud instructions would echo from the speakers saying that ‘All girls should ensure that they are wearing the niqab’. Similar instructions were issued when girls exited the madrasa to meet relatives or to visit the doctor. Every day, for the first couple of months that I visited the madrasa, the teachers would swarm around me—one would adjust my scarf into a neat hijab, another would dash off to get pins so as to ensure the hijab stays in place, and the others would explain the logic of why such dressing was prescribed in Islam. The explanations varied—some evoked logic while others induced fear—but the underlying justification was that this manner of dressing, referred to as ‘purdah ka lihaz’ (obedience to the rules of purdah), was for the ‘girls’ good’, to ensure their safety and prevent moral corruption (fitna). Teachers explained the strict enforcement of the rules of dressing in the madrasa saying that they were preparing the girls for later life. Learning Etiquette, ‘Proper’ Behaviour, and Morality (Adab and Akhlaq)

There is a lot of emphasis in the madrasa on teaching students proper manners, etiquette, and deportment, referred to as adab. Metcalf (1984) captures the essence of adab when she describes it as behaviour denoting good breeding and refinement that results from discipline and training. Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat prides itself as an institution that inculcates adab in its students. As the head teacher in the madrasa described it, ‘Our girls know how to sit, how to walk, how to talk … no one can call them be-adab (without adab)’. However, adab and akhlaq are not just confined to an outward display of civility but encompasses an internal, moral, and spiritual way of being. The underlying understanding is that the way one conducts oneself outwardly—how one sits, walks, talks—reflects inner virtues such as respect, patience, morality, and modesty. In the madrasa teaching adab



Making of Kamil Momina

163

and akhlaq mean disciplining and training girls to behave in certain ways which exemplify adab and, at the same time, constantly making them aware that they need to self-consciously internalize virtues which exhibit akhlaq (morality), such as respect, patience, kindness, modesty, and coyness, all qualities which girls ought to have as ideal Muslim women in the making. In the classroom, both teachers and students follow a formal way of sitting called dozanu, wherein they sit on their haunches, their backs bending over the wooden desks in front of them and their eyes cast downward, rocking back and forth while reciting what they are reading. Both students and teachers sit in this manner on a flat mattress on the floor, with the teachers sitting at an elevated level. The first couple of times I sat in a class, I often crossed my legs to sit on the ground; however, I was told my cross-legged (alti-palti) style of sitting was informal and that the right way of formally sitting in a classroom was dozanu which the girls and the teachers followed. Similar mechanisms of disciplining everyday activities were evident in the manner in which girls were informally taught how to sit, stand, walk, talk, and conduct themselves. For example, they were constantly told that their stride should be gentle and controlled, without any jerky movements, so that they appear balanced and poised. They were strongly reprimanded if the teachers saw them shaking their head vigorously or moving their hands during animated conversations, walking down the stairs too loudly, walking in small groups with their arms interlinked, or putting their hand on another’s shoulder. Another aspect of modest conduct was lowering the gaze. While this was strictly prescribed to the girls in their interaction with men as a preventive measure to avoid the lustful male gaze, the girls were also encouraged to lower their gaze while talking to teachers and seniors. This was considered a mark of respect and maintaining eye contact, especially with a teacher, was considered extremely disrespectful. I often observed the senior girls telling the new entrants to the madrasa that the correct posture when facing a teacher was standing with the head bent, eyes lowered and hijab tightly secured. The students were not to sit or stand until asked. The madrasa prescribed similar modesty in terms of speech. The girls were taught that the rules of purdah applied to speech too,

164

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

with the madrasa strongly advising that students follow awaz ka purdah (purdah of the voice) in front of men. At all other times in the madrasa the girls were constantly advised to speak softly and any raising of voice or shouting would be reprimanded and regarded as unbecoming of a pious woman. Inside and outside the classrooms the girls were encouraged to listen quietly to the teachers and to those senior to them, and to obey instructions. Any form of answering back was regarded as disrespectful to the teacher. However, here it is important to mention that a few teachers took a more liberal view of these rules in the classes by welcoming the girls to raise questions. There were similar rules accompanying every aspect of daily life. The whole day was charted out into a daily routine incorporating the five namaz prayers, school hours, lunch, evening halqas, dinner, and sleep. A given set of rules and regulations pertaining to the body accompanied each of these activities. From the rhythmic set of body postures that constituted offering namaz to the correct way of eating food—beginning from the right hand to wiping the plate clean—the madrasa prescriptions were all encompassing. The teachers had ­suggestions on duas to recite and things to do for mundane activities like bathing, going to the toilet, cutting nails, and so on (Figures 5.12 and 5.13). To conclude, this section details the educational regime in the madrasa. It highlights the manner in which the madrasa fashions the ideal of a kamil momina into an educational template that incorporates a closed physical structure, institutional routines, rules and regulations, and bodily practices. This educational regime is instituted and practiced by the madrasa authorities with the distinct objective of disciplining the girls—their appearance, speech, comportment, behaviour, and movement—till such behaviour becomes a natural part of them. However, this disciplinary regime is not entirely representative of the experiences of the students and only exemplifies the normative expectations of the madrasa and parents. The following chapter juxtaposes the disciplinary madrasa regime as understood by the parents and madrasa with the everyday lived experiences of the madrasa students. This allows us to trace the tensions and ambiguities in the continuum between normative expectations and actual experiences of the girls.

Making of Kamil Momina

165

Figures 5.12 and 5.13 A view of the corridors during classes with pin drop

silence. The disciplining of students is evident in the orderly way in which the girls arrange their slippers everyday—one after the other in a straight line—without the presence of an inspecting teacher.

chapter six

Becoming a Kamil Momina Girls’ Lives Inside Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat

The day starts very early in the morning in the madrasa as we all get up to offer Fajr namaz1 (around 5:20 am). After that we go for the Quran Pak halqa2 that lasts till around 6:30 am. Following that we get ready, eat breakfast, and attend classes from 8 am to 2 pm. There is a short half-hour recess at 11 am. We have to offer Zohor namaz sometime after 12:30 pm, 1 Namaz

or Salat comprises five daily prayers regarded obligatory in Sharia. The five times are: Fajr (early morning just before sunrise), Zuhr (afternoon prayers after the sun is perpendicular to earth), Asr (post afternoon and before sunset), Maghrib (just after sunset), and Isha (late evening after the sunset is complete and darkness is complete). 2  Halqa refers to a group sitting in a circle with a teacher or guide akin to a general tutorial lesson. Quran Pak halqa refers to groups of students sitting in a circle and learning how to read the Quran Pak; one of the teachers is generally the guide. Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood. Hem Borker, Oxford University Press (2018). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199484225.003.0006



Becoming a Kamil Momina

167

and most of us do it after classes. Lunch happens between 2 and 3 pm. After classes some of us rest, others do classwork or their own reading, sewing, embroidery, etc. Some of the girls attend computer classes between 3 and 5 pm. Once we have offered the Asr namaz (around 5 pm) we go for talim (knowledge about din or religion). The time between Asr and Maghrib namaz is spent in tasbihat (praying with prayer beads). Then we offer Maghrib namaz (around 7 pm). Following this we go for the Padhai ka halqa.3 We eat dinner, offer Isha namaz (around 9 pm) and go for the Masnoon dua halqa.4 Later we just read raat ke muamalat,5 tasbihat, etc., and sleep. All the girls follow this every day; this is the way we learn amal (practice). —Sabiha Mubarak (Class 3)

Sabiha virtually dictated the above paragraph to summarize all that the students of Som (Class Three) had said while responding to my queries about the daily routine in the madrasa. Sitting next to me, Sabiha could tell I was struggling to pen down the responses of 20 or more girls, all of who were rattling the daily schedule like reciting a mathematics table. This timetable, etched as it is in the minds of the girls and followed zealously day in and day out, illustrates the daily routine of students in the madrasa. In this chapter, I focus on everyday experiences of girls inside the madrasa Jamiatul Mominat. The daily life of girls inside the madrasa emerges as the second key juncture revealing the uneasy relationship between the girls’ experiences and the disciplinary project envisioned by the madrasa. My research highlights the tension that characterizes this relationship wherein the girls’ ostensible espousal and 3 

Padhai ka halqa refers to groups of students sitting in a circle and discussing studies. In the madrasa the girls of the same class sit together with one of the seniors. 4  Masnoon dua halqa refers to groups of students sitting in a circle and discussing everyday duas or prayers—such as prayer before sleeping, before and after eating, leaving and entering the home, leaving and entering the toilet, when someone is sick, before, during, and after wuzu or ablution, and so forth. 5  Raat ke muamalat refers to the practices the girls followed at night such as doing the Tahajjud or night prayer post the Isha namaz and other duas or prayers before sleeping.

168

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

embodiment of the madrasa norms coexists with practices that are not permissible in the madrasa. To develop an understanding of this tenuous relationship between the girls’ experiences and madrasa prescriptions, I engage with the work of Mahmood (2005) and Schielke (2009a, 2009b) on pious self-fashioning, weaving them together with De Certeau’s (1988) attention to everyday life. I argue that the girls’ understandings and practices of kamil momina have an inherent flexibility wherein practising pious submission learnt in the madrasa and engaging in practices that transgress madrasa norms are not seen in oppositional terms. The first section sketches the ideal of a kamil momina that the girls seemingly aspire to achieve and how it influences their perception of the madrasa. The second section describes the students’ efforts to mould themselves to approximate madrasa ideals by focusing on their articulated views about practices of dress (purdah), comportment and etiquette (adab and akhlaq), and perceptions about what I term as the ‘educational others’, that is, jahil (illiterate) women and school-going girls. In the last section, I highlight how a large number of ambivalent and contradictory practices accompany the girls’ articulated commitment to the madrasa ideals of a kamil momina. becoming an ideal muslim woman ( kamil momina )

Sar par tere Maryam ke taqadus ki rida ho Aankhon mein teri Fatima Zehra ki haya ho Khadija Aisha ko banao deen mein rhbar Tareeqa Fatima Zehra na chute zindagani bhar. (Have the sacred veil of Maryam on your head Maintain the modesty of Fatima Zehra in your eyes Let Khadija Aisha lead you in matters of faith Always follow Fatima Zehra in your life.)

These lines, often recited in the madrasa during functions, classes, and candid conversations, best capture the imagery of the ideal Muslim woman extolled by the madrasa and repeatedly presented by the girls as their own conception of a mukammal or kamil momina. The interviews that I conducted in the madrasa with

Becoming a Kamil Momina

169

100 students contained a question on the girls’ role model. Nearly half of the girls said they wanted to be like the Prophet’s wives and daughters. Of these, nearly one-fourth specifically mentioned the Prophet’s favourite daughter, Hazrat Fatima, as their role model, saying that they wanted to emulate her as she was a great follower of purdah and was the first to enter heaven on account of her pious deeds. Others said that they wanted to emulate Hazrat Aisha, the Prophet’s favourite learned wife, who many described as alimon ki alim (scholar of scholars), referring to her scholarly status. Closely following the girls who wanted to model themselves on the Prophet’s wives and daughters were those who regarded the companions of the Prophet as their role models. Most of them quoted passages from the Quran in support of their choice of role models, saying that Allah was pleased with his companions and they wanted God to be similarly pleased with them. There were also several girls who said that their only role model was the Prophet. The students associated studying in the madrasa with learning how to become like these religious role models, women who embodied knowledge, piety, morality, and modesty (Figure 6.1).

Figure 6.1 A view of lessons being held in the classroom.

170

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

destiny and studying in the madrasa

‘We are the Chosen Ones’ Only those who are Allah’s favourites (pasand hote hain) come here and study. Just like a gardener selects only his favourite (pasandeeda) flowers, the same way, from the whole wide world (puri duniya) Allah has chosen (chun kar) only us to come here and study. —Shahana (Class 4)

For most of the girls, the madrasa represented a place where they first discovered that being a pious Muslim woman requires a person to become a certain way, learn a new way of being. In this light, most of them thought of their presence in the madrasa as a manifestation of a larger divine force. In interviews and conversations, the girls repeatedly expressed how prior to joining the madrasa they were embroiled in life and used terms like gumrah (misled), duniya ke the (belonged to the world), duniya mein magan (engrossed in the world), to explain their past. They contrasted it with how on joining the madrasa they had realized the true purpose of life, which was to remember Allah, worship him (ibadat) and gain his approval (Allah ki raza). Thus, for many of the girls the very fact that they were in the madrasa was an indication that they were the blessed and chosen ones. Girls constantly presented the imagery and vocabulary of akhirat6 to explain how madrasa education was a medium to help them attain this true purpose. They contrasted mainstream education as being of value in the worldly sense (qualifications, employment, recognition, and so on), which is a transitory phase in a human being’s life, whereas education in the madrasa guaranteed a place and prepared a person for life in heaven, which was an eternal life. Several girls likened life in this world to a journey and human beings to travellers and, therefore, the choice was between ‘preparing for the journey versus preparing for the destination’. Another sentiment was that being an alima would grant the girls a higher status in akhirat, as one of the girls explained: ‘Whosoever acquires knowledge by staying at 6  Akhirat refers to the hereafter. In Islamic belief, the world of the hereafter is where one goes after one dies. Akhirat is regarded as the last abode, as opposed to the nearer abode/life, that is, the present world.



Becoming a Kamil Momina

171

the madrasa and practices what she has learned (amal), he or she is called alim. In heaven there is a great status for the alim. This is the greatest value of this education.’ This understanding articulated by students that they were the few chosen ones, blessed to have an opportunity to learn in the madrasa, the benefits of which they would reap in their afterlife, was deeply entrenched in the minds of the girls. For them, the significance of the madrasa lay in making them realize that true accomplishment for a Muslim woman was not about achieving individual success in the world but in the intangible afterlife. In several self-portraits the girls chose headings like ‘My life for my Allah’ and described how they wanted to dedicate the rest of their life to learning and spreading the message of Islam. They talked about how they were blessed to get an opportunity to fulfil the obligation of amr-bil-maroof, or ordering others to the right path, and nahi-anal-munkar, or to stop others from straying away on the wrong path. Thus, in their minds the significance of madrasa education lay in making them realize the ‘true purpose of life’, which lay in remembering God and becoming a pious Muslim woman who not only conducted her everyday life in a pious way by following what was taught in the madrasa but also respected the duty of sharing this learning with others. One of the girls poetically summarized the value of madrasa education as: Na duniya se, na daulat se, na ghar aabad karne se Tasalli dil ko milti hai khuda ko yaad karne se (Neither from the world, nor from wealth, nor from family The heart only finds solace by remembering god)

This newfound sense of awareness is best represented in the girls’ descriptions of their journey to the madrasa as a journey from ignorance to the right path. Jihalat (Ignorance) versus Jeene ka Saliqa (Learning the Right Way to Live Life) Earlier there was so much ignorance in me (itni jihalat thi). I did not know anything. What is religion (din), what is the right way to live life (jeene ka saliqa), what is right and wrong (halal and haram), what is

172

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

­sincerity (ikhlas) and ethical conduct (akhlaq) and other things about this world (duniya) and the afterlife (akhirat). —Ruksar (Class Three)

While elaborating on the changes that studying in the madrasa had brought in them, the girls referred to their earlier lives as being marked by ignorance, denoted by the Urdu term ‘jihalat’. They called themselves jahil (uneducated) despite having studied before, as on entering the madrasa they realized that they knew little about their religion and, by extension, the correct way to live life, that is, to learn and practice what the Prophet had prescribed. One of the young girls recounted her transformation after coming to the madrasa: Before coming here, I gave importance to the world (duniya) and worldly things (duniya ki ashiya). I did not know anything about dini talim—what it is, its relevance, what will we do after studying. After I took my class 8 school exams, my father got me admitted to this madrasa. When I came here to take the entrance test, I did not know what kind of a place this is, what is taught here. I could not even write my name in Urdu. I was very naughty, I used to run everywhere, watch TV and dress the way I wanted. Now I have really improved. Coming to the madrasa was my khushnaseebi (good destiny). After coming here, I realized what is the true purpose of life. Through my reading of the Quran and Hadith I have learnt how I need to spend my life. I realized the importance of firmly (pukhtagi) following what the Allah and his Prophet (rasool) has taught us. If I had not come to the madrasa I would never have learnt how to live my life the right way because for practice (amal), knowledge (ilm) is essential. That’s why it is said: Muhammad ki itaat dine haq ki shart awal hai Is hi mein agar ho khami to sab kuch na muqamal hai. (The obedience to Muhammad is the first requirement of religion. If there is a shortfall in this everything is useless.) —Sadiqa (Class Five)

Sadiqa’s account of her transformation in the madrasa highlights the relationship between the notion of destiny and the girls’ understanding and embodiment of the madrasa educational ideals. God’s will, naseeb, or kismet were idioms pervasive in the girls’ everyday lives, playing a



Becoming a Kamil Momina

173

crucial role in their understanding of why they were in the madrasa, embodying prescribed practices and their aspired future. Explaining being part of the madrasa as God’s will and destiny allowed the girls to come to terms with the sequence of events—often outside their control—that had brought them to the madrasa. The madrasa authorities encouraged this notion as it lent legitimacy to their programme and contributed to the girls’ efforts at imbibing the madrasa rules and practices. Like Sadiqa, most of the students’ understanding of their own education in the madrasa was intertwined with the notions of destiny and piety. They understood the educational project of Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat as equipping them with both the knowledge and practice of piety to fulfil their destinies and lead pious lives. Ironically, the girls also invoked similar idioms of God’s will and destiny to explain their aspirations in an uncertain future. When confronted with parental opposition to higher education or the pressure to marry, the girls would often explain their desire to study further or marry later as God’s will or something that was to be determined by destiny. This is best illustrated by the example of Shabnam, who was a student in the madrasa when I first met her and was appointed as a teacher while I was doing my fieldwork in the madrasa. Soon after finishing her studies in the madrasa, Shabnam had applied for admission to Jamia Millia Islamia University but didn’t manage to clear the entrance. She described her decision to stay in the madrasa as God’s will, another chance to ensure she could study further. Next year she cleared the entrance and faced the daunting task of convincing her parents, who were against the idea of further studies. With a lot of persuasion, they later acceded. When I asked Shabnam how she had managed to convince them she explained that Allah had heard her prayers, her destiny had changed. She told me that she made her parents realize that since this idea of studying Urdu had come to her in the madrasa, ‘it was a sign from Allah’. He wanted to test her sincerity, so he did not make her clear the entrance exam in the first go, but because she persisted, and did not let the shaitan (devil) distract her, she proved her merit. Allah again tested her by making her parents disagree, but because she persevered he rewarded her by putting sense into her parents. Shabnam’s story explains how ideas learnt in the madrasa such as those of a transcendent destiny mingle with the girls’ agency, acquiring a life of their own. Notions of destiny play a

174

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

key role in allowing girls to both accept and negotiate change in their life trajectories. The next section focuses on how the girls understand and embody their learning in the madrasa. As discussed in the previous chapter, the madrasa programme lays tremendous stress on amal or practice wherein the girls are required to demonstrate their religious knowledge by behaving and conducting themselves in a certain way. The girls described the rules of dress (purdah), character building (akhlaq), and etiquette (adab), learnt and performed in the name of gaining amli tajurba (practical experience), as the primary way to demonstrate their religious knowledge and establish their status as a ba-amal alima (practising female scholar). practicing piety

Whenever I asked the girls about what they had learnt in the madrasa, the responses I received ignored classroom lessons and focused instead on how the education they received equipped them with the knowledge, skills, and virtues to become an ‘ideal Muslim woman’ or kamil momina. As mentioned earlier, the ideal Muslim women on whom the girls wanted to model their lives were generally the wives and daughters of the Prophet and occasionally their favourite apa (teacher or senior student) in the madrasa. Each girl’s conception of the qualities of a mukammal momina differed, yet their articulations help us in understanding the broad contours that seemingly define this shared ideal. ‘Having dini and duniyavi talim is a must’, I was repeatedly told. For most of the girls duniyavi talim meant a combination of school ki talim or education imparted in schools—which included knowledge of subjects like English, maths, science—and practical skills such as cooking and stitching, which the girls would repeatedly refer to as ‘basics all women should know’. The girls would often tell me how without dini talim any duniyavi talim was redundant as it was only religious education which could ensure that a person developed the much desired ‘fear of Allah in her heart (Allah ka khauf) and walk the right path. The girls generally explained the significance of acquiring religious education by saying that ‘it is a religious duty (farz) for all Muslims’; ‘An educated woman can educate the family and ummah,



Becoming a Kamil Momina

175

as a mother’s womb is the child’s first madrasa’. Other oft repeated sayings were ‘mard padha toh fard padha, aurat padhi toh pura khandan padha’ (Educating a man means educating one, while educating a woman means educating the whole family); ‘Ummat ki kamiyabi ka rasta hai aurat ki padhai (The path for the ummah’s success is women’s education). Others talked about how only a dindaar girl could beautify the whole house and act like a benefactor who does good deeds (mohsina), guarding her husband from the devil. In terms of what constituted religious knowledge, the girls generally mentioned the following: knowing and learning about the sayings and deeds of the Prophet; learning the everyday must-dos such as namaz, wuzu, and so on, learning haram and halal, learning how to conduct oneself in different problematic situations (masla masal ki malumaat), learning about duniya and akhirat, and propagating religion (tabligh ka jazba). Echoing the madrasa view, most girls regarded amal as being reflected in following the purdah, adab, and akhlaq, as the most important ways of attesting if a girl was pious and knowledgeable or not. In terms of qualities, the girls talked about how a kamil momina was a repository of values such as patience, obedience, sacrifice, and respect. The most prized quality was that of farmanbardari or obedience, which stemmed from recognizing the rights of others over her, or huquq, and her own boundaries, known as hudud. During a speech on the ‘Rights of Women in Islam’ on one of the Thursdays, Absha, a student of class five, explained the importance of huquq to the audience of girls in the following manner: In Islam women have more rights than anyone. But as responsible Muslim women each of us should be asking, ‘what is my duty (zimmedari)’. That’s why we are taught what rights others have over us (huquq)—our father, our husband our children … and how to fulfil those. We need to respect and follow those so that we do not stray on the wrong path or else the doors of paradise (jannat) will forever be closed to us.

Voicing a similar view, a large number of girls described a kamil momina as one who realized her duty of respecting the rights others had on her (huquq ada karna), such as obedience to her parents before marriage and to her husband after marriage, giving due respect to their wishes, fulfilling her responsibilities towards the house

176

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

and children, especially in terms of giving children a good training (tarbiyat). In several discussions around career and marriage, girls often indirectly referred to this concept when they talked about how decisions like whether they would work or study in the future depended on their husbands, as it was the husband’s right to decide whether the wife could go out and work or not. Related with this concept of recognizing others’ rights over one, was the idea of recognizing one’s own boundaries, termed as hudud or daira. During discussions the girls would talk about hudud or daira in the context of the ‘right’ behaviour for a Muslim woman. Their notion of what is ‘right’ largely echoed the madrasa view, that the women’s sphere was largely confined to the home, and if women were to explore career options then the only permissible choices were those where they could follow the rules of purdah and not compromise on domestic responsibilities. Girls often cited the analogy of the left and right hand, saying that just like the two hands were equal but had different roles, similarly men and women were equal but had different roles in Islam. The man was the provider while the woman was the one responsible for the home and children. Whenever I would ask the girls about what they wanted to do after they graduated from the madrasa, a majority of them said they aspired for roles that lay within the permissible boundaries prescribed by their madrasa learning. Most of the girls stated that they wanted to become a daiya (female preacher of Islam), teach in the same madrasa, establish a madrasa of their own, or teach Urdu in a mainstream school along with spreading the message of Islam through tablighi activities. Many of the girls wanted to get a higher religious degree or fazila level at another madrasa or a BA degree from Jamia Millia Islamia, especially undergraduate degrees in Urdu, Islamic Studies, or Arabic. Some wanted to pursue Bachelors in Unani Medicine and Surgery (BUMS), and practice Unani7 medicine. The girls would discuss these potential career options with a sense of great pride. They would 7  Unani is a form of traditional medicine that draws from Graeco-Arabic medicine traditions and is widely practiced by Muslims. In India, there are many Unani medical colleges where the Unani system of medicine is taught. After five and half year courses, the graduates are awarded BUMS (Bachelor of Unani Medicine and Surgery).



Becoming a Kamil Momina

177

excitedly tell me about alumni or former teachers of the madrasa who were currently engaged in what they wanted to do, to illustrate how studying in the madrasa equipped and allowed them ‘so many right options’—options where their religious education was useful and they could also fulfil their duty of serving the community while remaining within the parameters of permissible behaviour. The girls’ responses ostensibly painted the picture of a kamil momina that was very similar to the madrasa’s vision. They saw a kamil momina as one who had dini talim, including both theoretical and practical aspects, duniyavi talim, and practical skills like cooking and sewing, and used this knowledge to serve the cause of Islam and the community in ways that were ‘right’ without transgressing the boundaries laid down for women. Embodying the Rules of Purdah and Everyday Etiquettes

One of the most important aspects of learning to become a kamil momina was observing the practices of purdah, adab, and akhlaq. The girls quite literally sanctified these practices taught in the madrasa and visibly dedicated themselves to following them to perfection. The previous chapter discussed how the practice of purdah and teaching of adab and akhlaq are strictly enforced in the madrasa, the defining logic being that it is only through the disciplining of the girls’ bodies from a young age that it could be ensured that they would continue these practices all through their lives, imparting the same knowledge to their family, especially their children, and eventually build the ideal community of pious people, or ummah. In the following section, I focus on the girls’ experiences and their views on the practices of purdah, adab, and akhlaq. Purdah

The term purdah in the Indian context applies to a range of practices from gender segregation to veiling. Many studies that examine the practice of purdah in the Indian context have discussed its workings in great detail (Jeffery 1979; Mandelbaum 1988; Papanek and Minault 1982; Vree-deStuers 1968). It remains one of the most widely debated tropes associated with Muslim women both within India and internationally (Kirmani

178

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

2013) with some regarding it as the ultimate symbol of the Muslim woman’s subjugation, others terming it as an assertion of a distinct religious, cultural, or political identity; some deem it as a personal choice, others a conservative diktat. My objective behind discussing the practice of purdah is to highlight how the girls in Jamiatul Mominat understand and practice purdah, especially given the fact that it is mandatory for all women (and even men) to follow the rules of purdah inside the madrasa. While purdah was employed in the madrasa to denote gender segregation, girls generally used the term to discuss the rules for dressing (Figure 6.2). By and large, there was a general consensus amongst the girls that the rules of purdah prescribed in the madrasa— salwar-kameez with a hijab covering one’s head and bosom at all times, and a combination of the hijab and burqa concealing the entire body while in public spaces—constituted asli (real or true) purdah. This true purdah practised in the madrasa subscribes to the rules that characterize ‘re-veiling or new veiling’ practices seen across India wherein only the face, hands, and feet are visible (Osella and Osella

Figure 6.2 The practice of purdah is strictly followed in the madrasa. The rules of purdah prescribed in the madrasa include wearing salwar-kameez with a hijab (headscarf) covering the head and bosom at all times.



Becoming a Kamil Momina

179

2007: 9). However, even within this asli purdah there were many grey zones whose intricacies were a subject of much debate in the madrasa. My own dress on a cold winter day spurred one such debate. While I usually wore salwar-kameez with a dupatta covering my head, since it was very cold, I had also worn a long, grey overcoat on top. As soon as my class ended with the teachers, I saw a bunch of students crowded outside the door, giggling and waiting, one of them whispering something to a teacher who had just stepped out ahead of me. The teacher also started giggling and told me that the girls wanted to compliment me. Surprised to be the subject of a joke that only I did not seem to get, I looked at my clothes, not realizing what was different. By now we had a bigger audience—over 30 girls were standing with almost all the teachers. Visibly embarrassed, I asked what the matter was. One of the teachers replied, ‘the girls are saying Apa has started doing purdah’. Realizing that I would never get a better opportunity to discuss this, I decided to fuel the fire, asking how. And soon everyone was voicing their opinions as we made our way to the biggest space we could find—the corner of the library—and sat on the mattresses. Sanjeeda (Teacher): The girls are saying that your coat is like the burqa we wear when we go out as it is covering your whole body. Since you anyway cover the head you are doing purdah now. Zehra (Student): But can we call it burqa if it is not black? Nabeela (Student): Black is worn because it is the least see-through, isn’t it, Apa? Or the burqa can be any colour. Sabiha (Student): Even the hijab can be of any colour; many people match it with their dress. Samia Apa who comes to teach computers wears matching headscarves. Asmat (Student): It shouldn’t be made of net material or light colours that are see-through, like white or pink. Nida (Student): Also, the burqa and hijab shouldn’t have adornments like sequins and embroidery. Hem (Researcher): Why? Nida (Student): Apa, you don’t wear a burqa to do fashion or attract attention. If one puts all chamakti (shining) things, won’t it attract attention? Haya (modesty) and saadgi (simplicity) is the principle of burqa. If you want to do fashion and attract attention, what is the faidah (use) of purdah?

180

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

The discussion went on for nearly an hour with the girls voicing a range of opinions on the degree to which digression from the norm of a black hijab and burqa was acceptable and could be still termed as a girl practising purdah. They gave a variety of examples of digressions and each of them was discussed and debated in the group. Some of the descriptions went like this: ‘Girls who wear hijab over tight jeans and tops’, ‘girls who leave home wearing a burqa but take it off or change into other things outside.’ Amongst the various breaches, the girls attributed the madrasa girl who knew the significance of purdah and digressed from it or abandoned it altogether on leaving the madrasa as the worst deviation, followed by girls who pretended to embrace the practice in certain places,8 and then came the girls who never followed purdah. The students used very strong and often harsh words like besharmi (shamelessness), chori (theft), and natak (pretence) to describe the above digressions. According to the students, any girl who understood the true significance of purdah—a form of dressing to protect one’s modesty and a deterrent for women to indulge in a display of beauty—would willingly follow the true purdah as defined in the madrasa. Girls generally tried to establish the significance of purdah by pointing to its relationship with the virtues of sharam or haya (modesty), decency, and respectability. They would quote relevant passages from the Quran, citing the use of the terms jilbab (long and loose-fitted coat or garment not covering the head) and khimar (headscarf draped all over the entire body) to make their point and exemplify how clothing protected their modesty and did not display their beauty, how clothes shouldn’t be tight-fitting or be used to attract others. In one of the evenings, the topic under discussion was the importance of purdah. The girls made the following statements: Kaikasha: Earlier I never used to follow purdah. But after coming to the madrasa I realized it is mandated by our religion that we dress modestly and cover our head. Shabnam: It is important to understand why there is a restriction (bandish) on dressing like men in jeans and pants, or why shamelessly 8 

Several authors have described how forms of situational veiling wherein women wear the purdah at certain times but not necessarily at other times are common practice in India (see Osella and Osella 2007).



Becoming a Kamil Momina

181

(besharmi) showing your arms or legs is not allowed. It is for our own good so that we remain safe. Saima: Just like uncovered sweets attract flies and insects, similarly, everything about women is sweet and attractive, so it is important that she cover (protect) herself to not attract dirt (bad-eyed people). Therefore, purdah is for our own protection (hifazat).

Different girls mentioned different reasons: it is one’s choice, all religions have purdah, it is for our safety, and the like. However, the common underlying understanding was that following purdah was a hands-on way of practising modest dressing, a practice central to the conduct of a pious moral woman. The girls attributed its significance not merely on account of the fact that they felt that Islam mandated it, but because they regarded it as an important means to demonstrate their piety and decency, a demonstration that was closely tied with concerns around safety (hifazat), respect (izzat), and mobility. This is perhaps best revealed in the discussions around the relevance of purdah that happened in the madrasa in the context of the 16 December gang rape in Delhi,9 which led to massive uproar all over India as well as internationally. For many weeks following the incident, conversations about Nirbhaya circulated in the madrasa—in the classroom, corridors, and rooms. These often followed a similar trajectory—Nirbhaya was a victim of the corrupt environment (mahaul ka shikar) that was prevalent outside. The biggest manifestation of this ‘corrupt environment’ (ganda mahaul) was girls wearing immodest clothes and/or provocative clothes, people not following other rules mandated by Islam, such as not interacting with ghair mahram men, not lowering their gaze when they see men, consuming alcohol, and so forth. For example, a group of students presented a skit during a Republic Day function organized by the madrasa on 9 

On 16 December 2012, a 23-year-old medical intern was brutally gang raped in a moving bus in New Delhi, which eventually led to her death a few days later. The woman, whose identity was kept confidential, came to be known in the Indian media as ‘Nirbhaya’, a word meaning ‘fearless’ in Hindi. The attack spurred weeks of nationwide protests and triggered an unprecedented debate about the safety of women and sexual violence in India.

182

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

26 January, wherein they depicted three scenes, drawn from common everyday occurrences, of women being harassed (Figures 6.3–6.5). The three scenes that were presented were as follows: a college girl shunning the advances of a man who vengefully throws acid on her, a man harassing a woman in a public place, and a girl being sexually assaulted. The message conveyed at the end of the skit was the importance of not being a silent bystander and that women should actively resist such violence. The first step towards such resistance, according to the skit, was to follow the rules of attire suggested in the Quran and practice the dress code prescribed by the madrasa. For the girls, abiding by the practice of purdah represented one of the most important ways for woman to actively cultivate and protect their modesty. Here, it is important to note that these conversations were not discussions amongst girls leading isolated lives in the madrasa, unaware of the debates raging outside. On the contrary, the girls often framed their arguments in response to what they thought were the opinions circulating outside, which they came to know through newspapers and heard from friends and family. For

Figure 6.3 Republic Day celebrations being held in Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat. The girls sang and danced to the song Kaum Agar Tum Sath Na Do To Tanha Humse Kya Hoga (As a community if you do not support us what can we achieve alone) stirring the audience to support women and their causes.

Becoming a Kamil Momina

183

Figure 6.4 The stage was decorated in the Indian Tricolour theme with the Indian flag at the centre. All the madrasa students had pinned small ribbon sashes in the tricolour theme on their dupattas.

Figure 6.5 The girls presented a skit that demonstrated instances of everyday harassment and abuse of women. It recommended purdah as one of the measures to combat such instances.

instance, in February 2013, a bunch of girls crowded around me in the library showing me a newspaper cutting of the Nirbhaya case. Around this time the newspapers were giving a lot of coverage to the protests that rocked Delhi for months after the incident. The cutting had a photograph of girls carrying placards which made statements like ‘No outfit is an invitation to rape’, ‘My skirt is not responsible

184

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

for your inability to control yourself ’, and so forth. The students expressed their shock at the girls carrying such outrageous placards and vehemently argued how wearing revealing clothes was indeed a reflection of women who did not value their modesty and hence did not protect it. As one of the girls said: Wearing revealing clothes and not doing purdah leads to incidents like rape. I cannot believe these are the posters the women protesters are carrying; they are trying to argue that you can go into a lion’s den and escape unscathed?

The girls explained purdah as something that provided a sense of security. A need that arises from what Anand (2014) terms as ‘gendered vulnerability in urban masculine spaces’. The purdah becomes, to use Papnek’s (1971: 518) terminology, ‘symbolic shelter’ against sexual desire and aggression. The girls repeatedly expressed the faidah (advantages) of purdah by stressing that it was a means of hifazat, a source of izzat, and allowed them to navigate public spaces. As one of the students remarked while explaining to me how the practice of purdah had won her the permission to leave the premises of her home, purdah was her ‘ticket’. Many girls narrated incidents of how practising purdah had brought them renewed respect in the family and community; elders would allow them to go out, and so on. One of the abiding images for me, associated with witnessing the practice of purdah in the madrasa, was seeing day-scholars and, on certain occasions, hostellers don the burqa as they made their way home, the air inundated with the instructions screeching out of the madrasa loudspeakers: All girls must do niqab. Any girl without a niqab will not be allowed to go out. Seeing the girls inside and outside the madrasa offered a contrast of sorts. From the demure, shy girls inside the madrasa, with their heads always slightly bent and gaze lowered, the moment they would exit the premises, they would stand upright, maintain an erect posture, and look straight up. I recall mentioning the same with a tone of utter surprise to one of the students, Tahira, while I was escorting her to a nearby doctor, and she described it as a manifestation of the confidence the niqab gave her:



Becoming a Kamil Momina

185

Apa, you didn’t realize I was taller than you, maybe because I sit lower on the ground and bend my head as I am writing. Right now I have the niqab on, and no one can look at me, and this [anonymity] gives me a sense of confidence. Maybe that’s why I seem tall.

Many of the girls expressed similar feelings, saying that they felt buland (uplifted and confident) when they followed the practice of purdah. Thus, the madrasa girls’ awareness of and adherence to true purdah was an important part of becoming a kamil momina. While undoubtedly the girls were given little choice in the matter, as purdah was mandatory in the madrasa, interacting and observing them revealed that their adherence to the practice was closely associated with trying to achieve self-perfection—becoming pious, guarding their modesty, and so on. In fact, purdah was amongst the few practices that the majority of the madrasa students who went to university continued (I discuss this in greater detail in the next chapter). Saba Mahmood (2012) emphasizes the importance of embodied practices such as veiling in her work by terming belief as a product of outward bodily acts like purdah, rather than as just an expression (Mahmood 2012: xv). But unlike the women in Mahmood’s study, these madrasa students’ cultivation of a virtuous self, which included practices like purdah, was not confined to belief and piety alone. These girls also laid a great stress on the faidah or practical advantages of practising purdah, such as security, respect, and mobility. The girls’ narratives explain the practice of purdah at, what Anand terms as, the ‘intersection of worldly or banal rationale, the rich resources of an inherited tradition and an emphasis on correct Muslim ethical and social comportment’ (2014: 386). Thus, it was not just the desire to adhere to the requirements of piety but also the banal uses of purdah that figured prominently in the students’ responses and actions. Etiquette of Sitting, Standing, Walking, Talking, Eating, and Sleeping

As with purdah, the girls attached great significance to adab (manners or etiquette) and akhlaq (morality). The girls could be seen

186

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

working very hard to learn and practice the etiquette taught in the madrasa—how to sit, stand, walk, talk, eat, and sleep in the right way (Figures 6.6 and 6.7). The previous chapter discussed how the teaching of adab and akhlaq permeates the curriculum and everyday activities of the madrasa, the defining logic being that it is only by disciplining the girls’ bodies from a young age that one can ensure that they will continue it all through their lives, imparting the same manners to their family, especially children, and contributing to the cause of the ummah. The teaching of adab in the madrasa draws from the Islamic understanding of cultivating a virtuous self through repetitive disciplinary practice, the outer practices leading to the development of virtuous inner qualities (Lapidus 1984). At most times, the girls could be seen in the classrooms and outside observing the rules of adab—formally sitting on their haunches in the dozanu style, standing erect with their head bent and gaze lowered, walking quietly in a balanced and poised manner, eating with the right hand, and so on. Adab and akhlaq also emerged as an important motif in the girls’ narratives. Presented by them as one of the most important constituents of a kamil momina, the girls would often discuss adab and akhlaq as intrinsically related. According to them, adab constituted the way one conducts oneself outwardly—how one sits, walks, talks, and eats—reflecting one’s akhlaq, that is, inner morality, or virtuous disposition. Together adab and akhlaq show whether a girl has a good character or, like the girls said, is ba-amal (one who practices), jannati (one who will go to heaven) and nek (good). During my first few days in the madrasa, I was invited by the teachers to witness an informal session in the evening where the senior students were teaching the newly admitted students about adab and akhlaq. Nagma, a panjum (Class Five) student, was leading the discussion, flanked by Sanjeeda and Azma, her classmates. Sitting in front were over 40 girls. With practised ease, Nagma asked the audience in a loud clear voice, ‘Who is a ba-amal alima?’ Without even waiting for a reply she answered her own question, ‘One who knows and follows amal’. Nagma spoke for about 20 minutes, telling the girls what constituted amal. The junior girls listened with rapt attention. The teachers sat on the periphery, carefully observing both the speaker and the audience. Nagma presented adab and akhlaq as intrinsically related with amal and described how the rules of adab were derived

Becoming a Kamil Momina

187

Figures 6.6 and 6.7 The adab of sitting in a classroom involves sitting on one’s haunches or in the dozanu style.

188

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

from the Quran and Sunnah, citing passages from the texts. She explained adab as performing one’s duties in the world—towards God, parents, siblings, friends, guests, and so on. She explained that mindlessly learning and repeating practices that demonstrated adab did not constitute amal; one had to self-consciously internalize qualities which exhibit adab and akhlaq, such as respect, politeness, patience, kindness, modesty, and coyness, and only then would a girl become and be seen as an alima ladki. Throughout her interaction she drew the attention of the girls to everyday customs in the madrasa such as ‘greeting a person with assalam alaikum and responding with wa ‘alaikum assalam, saying bismillah before eating and alhamdulillah after eating, speaking politely, talking respectfully to elders, lowering one’s gaze, walking quietly, eating with the right hand, and so on. After every few sentences Nagma would quote the canonical texts, ratifying her prescriptions on manners and decorum, forewarning the girls that those who did not follow those practices were not true followers. For instance, midway through the interaction, Nagma said, ‘It is said in the Hadith, one who doesn’t respect elders or show kindness to younger ones and does not know the rights of alimeen (Islamic scholars) is not a part of the ummah’. The manners and etiquette presented by Nagma captured the everyday practices of adab and akhlaq that I witnessed in the madrasa. Any discussion with the girls on adab would culminate in a long list of dos and don’ts that extended to almost every conceivable activity—greeting (such as saying salaam properly), walking (such as walking demurely), sitting (such as when to sit in the formal dozanu style and when to sit in the informal, cross-legged, okrun style), talking (such as speaking nicely, saying positive things, talking softly normally but roughly in the presence of ghair mahram men), eating (such as cleaning oneself, eating with the right hand, sitting while eating), travelling (such as travelling with company), sleeping (such as ensuring one’s legs did not point in the direction of the ka’bah while sleeping), praying (such as cleaning oneself), and so on. Adab was the idiom through which the girls embodied amal. Across classrooms, the girls could be observed following the same classroom etiquette—sitting in a formal dozanu style, their covered heads slightly bent over their books, engaging respectfully with their teachers, talking only in whispers amongst themselves or through glances, and maintaining quiet decorum. During classes, the books were placed on



Becoming a Kamil Momina

189

wooden desks (dasta) with the girls seated on the floor. Terming this way of seating as part of the adab of learning, a group of girls explained its significance to me, saying that this ensured that the books, especially the Quran, was respectfully placed in an elevated position, as opposed to the common practice of sitting on a chair and table seen in general schools wherein the books were on the desk but the students’ feet were placed right below. The girls addressed their female teachers as ‘Apa’ (endearing address for an elder sister), a personal term, conveying a sense of bonding and friendship, as opposed to ‘Ma’am’ used in general schools. However, in terms of conduct, the student behaviour was characterized by a display of high respect, best illustrated in the newfound reverent status that recently graduated students who were appointed as teachers enjoyed. The moment a teacher would enter the class, the girls would greet her with an assalam alaikum and would speak only when spoken too. If the girls had a question they were required to raise their hands and if they were asked to answer a question they were to do it in a particular manner. In the case of a male teacher teaching the class, the rules of engagement differed. In Jamiatul Mominat, in accordance with the spirit of purdah, the male teachers were respectfully referred to as Maulvi sahib, had a room in the outer area of the madrasa where they would speak into a mike and could be heard through loudspeakers positioned inside the classrooms. A female teacher would monitor the class to ensure that the girls were paying attention. When Maulvi sahib asked the girls a question in the middle of the lesson, then it was the teachers who heard the answers, and, in a similar vein, students addressed their questions to the female teacher. This practice was followed because the concept of purdah in Jamiatul Mominat included concealing one’s voice (awaz ka purdah) from ghair mahram. While such uniform reverential behaviour was more conspicuous in the classroom, the girls followed the same behaviour even outside classes—standing immediately in attention and greeting the teachers the moment they saw them, their hands going towards their head to check if the dupatta was properly covering it, neechi nigah (lowering their eyes), and going back to what they were doing only after the teacher had passed them. Even while walking, the girls extended respect to the teachers by not walking in front of or beside them but behind them. The adab extended to the teachers was similar to what the girls were expected to follow with their parents and elders.

190

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

Another inconspicuous part of learning everyday etiquettes in the madrasa was reciting dua, or short prayers, while performing routine activities. Most of the students had memorized the duas by heart and recited them very softly, almost like offering a silent prayer, before virtually every daily activity such as eating, drinking, standing, sleeping, waking up, entering and leaving the toilet, putting on clothes, entering or leaving the madrasa, and so forth. The girls explained to me that they recited these duas to protect themselves from the devil (shaitan) and obtain the blessing of Allah because the central idea was not to merely worship him five times a day but to remember him while doing everything. Even really young girls would silently say a dua before entering the toilet and, as one of the 12-year-olds explained to me, ‘It is so that the shaitan does not see us when we take off our clothes, or else we would be shamed’. Similar to the practices that guide the girls’ comportment, the girls described reciting duas as part of the larger self-conscious effort to lead an Islamic way of life. This learning of etiquette would be transformed into a public exercise when students performed at more public forums. These included functions formally organized by the madrasa such as on Independence Day, Republic Day, Eid, wherein the audience comprised mostly of the parents of the girls and women from the neighbourhood. The other, more informal, occasions where the girls were asked to give a spontaneous presentation of their learning included: visitors visiting the madrasa, weekly performances organized by the students every Thursday (wherein the audience comprised of students from all classes and madrasa staff), and the daily evening halqa. During these performances the students were asked to recite naats, give speeches (taqrir) and occasionally do a skit, dance performances, and sing qawwalis.10 These performances were regarded as critical for developing the confidence of the girls to eventually present their learning to the outside world, preach Islam (din ki dawat dena) and motivate people to become more pious in daily life. The girls religiously practised all the above-mentioned activities that were taught in the madrasa as central to the practice of piety. The 10 

Qawwali is a form of devotional music.



Becoming a Kamil Momina

191

girls believed that they were in the madrasa owing to the divine will, their increasing awareness and explicit critique of their past as one marked by jihalat and ignorance, and the importance they attributed to madrasa education, were all closely related in their narratives with the desire to learn how to become a kamil momina. In this light, the girls often presented their strict adherence to the rules in the madrasa as an attempt to self-discipline and reform themselves. They described their everyday practices as attempts to perfect themselves, be a ba-amal alima, one who did not confine herself to obligatory practices such as namaz and roza but embodied piety in every action. The Educational Others: Jahil Women and School-going Girls

The picture of the ba-amal alima that emerged from the narratives of the madrasa girls was often expressed as an ideal in stark opposition to primarily two imaginary educational others—the jahil woman and the school-going girl. I employ the term educational others because the defining parameter of otherness was ostensibly the women’s education as reflected in everyday conduct. Thus, the other was not someone that was defined in terms of religion, though casual references to this inappropriate conduct being more common to Hindus, Christians, and ‘Muslims who were nominally so’ (naam ke musalman) were occasionally made. The Jahil Woman

The girls often expressed their madrasa-educated status with a great sense of pride and termed it as the most important aspect which distinguished them from older women termed as jahil or illiterate women by the girls. Since most of the girls came from families where the mothers had little or no schooling and madrasa education was particularly rare, a common way of claiming the importance of their education was by comparing their conduct with the older, uneducated women in their own families and neighbourhoods. Girls used the term jahil to describe the behaviour of their mothers, elder siblings, cousins, neighbours, and sometimes even their own pre-madrasa selves. According to the girls, jahiliyat, particularly the lack of knowledge of Islam, was reflected in the women’s

192

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

everyday conduct—bolne khade hone ki tameez (manner of talking and standing), the talim (education), and tarbiyat (training) given to children, interactions with others, everyday management of the household, especially the hisab (finances) of the house, the mahaul (environment) of the house, travelling, and so on. The work of Jeffery, Jeffery, and Jeffrey (2006) with male teachers of madrasas in Bijnor, Uttar Pradesh, captures the sense of pride associated with madrasa education and the accompanying disdain about failings of the uneducated as a feature that defines the larger madrasa educational project. Terming the activities of the madrasas as a ‘civilising mission’, Jeffery, Jeffery, and Jeffrey (2006) argue that the work of madrasa in Bijnor can be read as ‘part of a class project aimed at gentrifying rural and poor urban Indian Muslims by transforming their pupils into replicas of their urbane and respectable middle class co-religionists’ (2006: 249). They detail two accompanying processes as an important part of this ‘civilising mission’. One is the disparagement of the poor and illiterate as ‘dirty and uncivilised, their speech crude and parenting faulty’. The second is instituting an educational regime which disciplines children into behaviour patterns that set out to reverse the above-mentioned shortcoming by emphasizing ‘self-control and good manners, respect and docile obedience towards elders and tidiness and cleanliness’ (2006: 249). The girls in Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat demonstrated a very similar disdain for the uneducated women noted by Jeffery, Jeffery, and Jeffrey (2006) amongst the madrasa teachers of Bijnor. The madrasa students would ridicule and mock the older women for their unpadh (uneducated) behaviour by contrasting their madrasa learnt manners, etiquette, and religious knowledge with the supposedly wahami (superstitious), dehati (rural, employed in a backward sense) ‘typical auraton wala’ (typical womanly) behaviour of these so-called jahil women. However, it is important to note that if the jahil, superstitious woman lay at one end of the spectrum, at the other end lay the over-educated but immodest schoolgirl who was touted as besharam (literally without a sense of shame), their school education regarded as substandard since it alienated them from Muslim culture. The madrasa students located themselves as occupying the coveted middle ground, with knowledge of worldly and religious education.



Becoming a Kamil Momina

193

The School-going Girls

The derision and mockery directed against school-going girls was a common theme in the madrasa. This is best reflected in the jokes, anecdotes, and repartees that usually circulated in the madrasa. For example, the following was a common joke that I overheard several times: ‘A school-going girl asked a purdahwali (purdah-observing girl), “How can you wear this black burqa in the sweltering heat?” to which the purdahwali replied, “I cannot tolerate the fire and heat of hell”’. The content of such wordplay and mockery varied but the two central characters were always the same, the school-going girl and the purdahwali girl, with the purdahwali girl trumping the other on account of her pious knowledge and conduct befitting women. Despite a lot of the students having studied in schools themselves prior to joining the madrasa, they were very critical of girls who went to regular schools and compared school education very disparagingly to madrasa education. A large part of the criticism was directed at the inappropriate dressing practices prescribed as uniforms in school. The girls used strong terms that were completely antithetical to the usual vocabulary I heard in the madrasa, such as ‘obnoxious dressing’ (behuda pehnava) and ‘unveiled’ (bepardgi) to describe school uniforms such as skirts and pants commonly prescribed by schools. They derided school-going girls in very harsh terms. For example, as one of the students said: The girls who study in schools are so shameless (besharam) that let alone covering their head they wear skirts, which show their legs. In schools there is less study and more fashion, singing-dancing (naach-gaana) and loafing around (awaragardi). School girls compromise on their safety, manners, respect because schools do not bother to teach them all these things.

In a manner similar to the statement described above, madrasa students used terms like besharam (shameless) and behaya (immodest) to describe school girls and talked about how they do not respect the notion of boundaries for women and therefore try to emulate men by trying to wear clothes like them (jeans, pants, and so forth.), by trying to speak like them (loudly and boisterously), by trying to work and earn like them, by trying to move around like them, unaccompanied by mahram. This jeopardized their safety by attracting men and

194

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

led to moral corruption (fitna) in society. According to the madrasa students all these shortcomings of school-going girls were linked to the ganda mahaul in schools, especially co-educational schools, which breached rules of gender segregation and fanned moral corruption by encouraging intermingling of sexes, prescribing revealing uniforms such as skirts and teaching girls to ‘act like men’. Some girls also talked about more general problems while talking of the ganda mahaul in schools, such as teachers’ absenteeism, lack of discipline, and the impersonal environment. They compared this with the conscientious teaching, discipline, and personal environment and brotherhood that prevailed in the madrasa, which, according to them, ensured that girls don’t go astray. A related criticism was about the learning in schools being confined to duniyavi talim and an excessive focus on qualifications, degrees, and worldly success, without any attention to religious learning, which was critical for the moral and spiritual growth of a person. The girls repeatedly talked about how schoolgirls were ‘lost in the ways of the world and had forgotten Allah’ because schools did not teach them how to practice one’s religion, or respect things like prayer timings, food restrictions of haram and halal, or teach manners and etiquette. Thus, for the madrasa students, while the older, jahil women from their native homes were undesirable others on account of their lack of education, school-going girls were equally if not more unfavourable as they lacked the knowledge and civility associated with the ‘right’ education, despite their schooling. In such a scenario, the girls felt that madrasa education offered the perfect combination—allowing them to avail the benefits of secular education without getting exposed to the injurious effects of modern education. In fact, the entire process of the construction of the self as a kamil momina was closely intertwined with the production of the educational others—the jahil woman and the school-going girl. Both these processes emerge as constituting the twin faces of the same reality. However, here it is important to note that just as the kamil momina is an ideal with fluid boundaries, so are the others. Despite deriding school-going girls, the madrasa students—especially those who aspired to pursue higher education—often coveted the opportunities and wider exposure that school education offered.



Becoming a Kamil Momina

195

Understanding Practices of Piety among Madrasa Students

How does one analyse the girls’ accounts and practices? It is tempting to read their accounts as exemplifying the internalization of madrasa ideals. However, such an analysis does not pay adequate attention to the embodied experiences of the girls. The students’ accounts and practices resonate more closely with anthropological studies that conceptualize pious submission to traditional Islamic ideals as an active mode of self-fashioning (Deeb 2006; Frisk 2009; Mahmood 2005). Particularly relevant to my research is Mahmood’s (2005) argument on Islamic piety and embodied agency based on her ethnographic research with women participants of the dawa movement in Cairo. Mahmood (2005) illustrates how women in the dawa movement do not seek to challenge established gender norms; instead, they actively acquire religious knowledge and cultivate a shy, modest self by embodying practices of pious submission. Critiquing the western liberal assumptions that posit ‘women’s agency as cosubstantial with resistance’ and the accompanying understanding of freedom and liberation as a universal desire, Mahmood (2005) locates agency in pious submission and conformity. Mahmood asserts that the women’s outward bodily practices of ritual and worship are not merely an expression of inward belief; rather, belief is a product of outward practices (2012: xv). She argues that ‘agency is confined not just to acts that resist norms but the multiple ways in which norms are lived and inhabited’ (2005: 15). Mahmood contends that ‘the meaning of agency but be explored in the grammar of concepts within which it resides’ (2004: 34). For the women in Mahmood’s study, practices such as donning the veil and ritual prayers were a part of cultivating pious dispositions. Each practice was, as Mahmood describes, ‘one among a continuum of practices that serve as a necessary means to the realisation of the pious self … critical instruments in a teleological programme of self formation’ (2005: 128). In a similar vein, Frisk (2009) emphasizes the creative and generative aspects of the process through which Malay women ‘actively cultivate themselves as subjects with a disposition to submit to God’s will’ (2009: 190). In my research, the students of Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat articulate and practise a very similar understanding of Islamic piety. For students, embodying madrasa prescribed norms is an exercise of

196

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

amal, which would enable them to develop a pious disposition and win Allah ki raza (God’s pleasure). Applying Mahmood’s conceptualization of Islamic piety as an active mode of self-fashioning allows us to understand the meaning that the girls ascribe to their daily lives in the madrasa. For the madrasa students aspiring to become alimas, learning Islamic piety involves conscious embodiment of madrasa prescribed norms such as purdah, adab, and so on, described in the earlier section. However, Mahmood’s work allows us a partial understanding of the girls’ pious practices. Owing to the excessive focus on declared attempts, Mahmood’s work obscures the contradictions, ambiguities, and tensions that emerge in the everyday practices of piety. The limitation with Mahmood’s understanding of piety, as Schielke writes, is that focusing on intended outcomes and professed attempts accompanying pious discipline highlights only the ‘moments of perfection’ (2009a: 33), obscuring the ambivalence of everyday practices. My research highlights the importance of attending to the ambiguities inherent in the everyday practices in the madrasa. Even though ostensibly the students’ articulations and practices convey the impression that their sole aim is to approximate their behaviour to madrasa prescribed ideals of a kamil momina, their everyday practices and life trajectories problematize such a representation and analysis. A close observation of the everyday life in the madrasa highlights how the girls’ pious practices are not as synchronized, absolute, or stable over time and space, as their narratives often depict. On the contrary, the students’ practice of piety emerges as fluid, ambivalent, and contradictory. Recent anthropological work (Deeb and Harb 2013; Schielke 2009a, 2009b) highlights the importance of attending to the ambiguities evident in the everyday practices of Islamic piety. Schielke’s (2009a, 2009b) ethnographic work on Muslim youth in Egypt draws attention to the ambivalence inherent in the everyday experiences of young men trying to lead pious, moral, disciplined lives. For example, he describes how Ramadan football replaces temporarily unavailable forms of entertainment like flirting and making out, consumption of alcohol and cannabis, pornography, and so forth, in Egypt. Schielke (2009a) argues that football represents an ambivalent practice, a fun way to ‘kill time that is not un-Islamic’, thereby offering a ‘mix of ascetic discipline with fun and entertainment’ (2009a: 24). He contends that



Becoming a Kamil Momina

197

ambivalent practices such as Ramadan football are very significant because even though it is mostly confined to Ramadan, its practice during the ‘month of exceptional morality’ (2009a: 27) legitimizes less consistent approaches to religion and morality for the rest of the year. Arguing that adherence to piety is contextual, Schielke (2009b) demonstrates how the ‘pious subject’ described in Mahmood’s (2005) work is not mutually exclusive with those that engage in ambivalent practices. He illustrates this with the example of young Egyptian men who aggressively touch women on the street, thereby not acting piously at those moments, but the same men acting very piously on other occasions. Thus, Schielke (2009b) argues that ‘the knowledge and practice of notions of piety does not overcome the ambivalence of their moral ideals, actions and expectations for life’ (2009b: 161). Demonstrating the lack of a coherent set of aims and clear hierarchy of ideals in people’s everyday lives, Schielke argues that ‘morality is not a coherent system but an incoherent and unsystematic conglomerate of different moral registers that exist in parallel and often contradict each other’ (2009b: 166). Through his account of young men in Egypt, he (2009b) discusses how moral registers such as normative religion, the idea of social justice, community and family obligations, and so on, are accompanied by declaredly amoral aims and strategies, such as the necessity of earning an income, sex and desire, and fun and excitement, including the consumption of alcohol and drugs. Thus, he illustrates that rather than ‘cumulative self-perfection’, pious commitment is a ‘fragile form of continuous day-to-day self-suggestion’, which inherently is a ‘troubled and usually incomplete process’ (2009b: 180). A close observation of the everyday practices of the girls in Jamiatul Mominat paints a similar picture of piety as an ongoing process of daily negotiation. The madrasa students aspire to become kamil mominas, but they adhere to madrasa norms to different degrees at different times. This can be observed when madrasa prescribed ideals of pious womanhood compete with other aspirations of access to alternative spaces such as educational spaces (like regular schools, universities), spaces of leisure, non-gender segregated spaces, and employment in sectors that lie outside the domestic and religious sphere. Within the madrasa these contesting concerns are reflected in the girls’ everyday lives wherein their commitment to madrasa norms is accompanied by a range of ambivalent and contradictory practices. These are revealed in a range of

198

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

scenarios where their actions, at times, lie on the fringes of pious behaviour prescribed by the madrasa (such as gazing), sometimes push the boundaries of piety (such as playing games and future choices, especially pertaining to education and marriage), contradict requirements of piety (such as lying, fighting, pragmatic acceptance of norms), and on rare occasions, subvert the norms of piety (such as openly flouting norms). Bringing together Schielke’s argument about the ambivalences in pious lives with De Certeau’s (1988) attention to everyday practices allows us to develop an understanding of the girls’ everyday practices of piety. De Certeau contends that an attention to ‘ways of operating—ways of walking, reading, producing, speaking and so on’ (1988: 30) allows an understanding of how users (who are not the makers) manipulate situations to create space for themselves. De Certeau’s (1988) concept of ‘tactics’ is particularly useful in this regard. Defining ‘tactic’ in opposition with what he terms as ‘strategies’,11 De Certeau (1988) characterizes tactics as immediate actions, clever manoeuvres, manipulations and diversions that emerge from and creatively use the gaps within the strategy’s system without directly challenging it. In a similar vein, the ambivalent practices of the girls in the madrasa emerge from the openings provided by the disciplinary regime and surveillance of the madrasa. The everyday life of madrasa students highlights how the range of ambivalent practices—discussed in the following section— can be seen as creative and tactical ways through which they make use of their madrasa education to create a wider space for themselves without directly challenging madrasa norms. Given the weight the madrasa places on compliance of pious ideals and heightened surveillance, these ambivalent practices are often expressed in subtle ways. ambivalence in the practice of piety

The Badminton Game

On one of the days in October 2012, I was waiting outside the locked staffroom door on the first floor. It was 4 pm and I had a class 11  De

Certeau (1984) associates ‘strategy’ with ‘proper’ or already constructed actions in accordance with the overarching plans of the institution or those in power.



Becoming a Kamil Momina

199

scheduled with the teachers, but they were nowhere in sight. I stood outside, watching the girls loiter around after lunch, talking and laughing softly, some other girls sitting and sewing in a big group at the far end of the corridor, and others busy washing, cleaning, and carrying things. I slowly walked across the corridor and peered into the rooms that lined both sides, the mattresses had been pulled down as the classes were over. Inside the rooms, some of the girls were resting; some were reading, while others were sitting together and chatting. Despite my attempt at being as unobtrusive as possible, each time I peered into a classroom all eyes would rivet towards me. The girls would greet me with assalam alaikum in unison, their hands automatically reaching out to adjust the dupatta on their heads, and they would stand till I gestured that they needn’t. A little later I had checked all the classrooms on that floor; yet there was no sign of any of the teachers. I thought it was best to go upstairs and ask the senior girls. As always, the stairs were lined with girls leaning forward towards the wall, standing on tiptoe, peeping through the jali cut windows that offered an obstructed view of the busy road downstairs. I made my way past the girls, who, the moment they caught a glimpse of me climbing up, would move away from the windows as though caught in a wrong act, and lower their faces and start scampering in the opposite direction. When I reached upstairs, I saw a sight that I had not so far seen in the madrasa till then—some girls were playing badminton in the corridor. They did not have a net, so two other girls were standing on the edges to mark the net and there was a huge group of girls encircling the area, cheering the players. The moment the girls saw me, the whole place fell completely silent. The ones who were playing quickly put their racquets on the floor and sheepishly began to offer a stuttered explanation about how it was their free time and so they had decided to play. As stunned as them (that they could think I had an issue with them playing badminton), I tried to say something reassuring and muttered something about how I liked badminton. The girls suddenly seemed more relaxed, and perhaps to ensure that their worst fear—me tattling to the teachers—did not come true, I was asked if I would play with them and become a partner-in-crime. We played for a long time, with each hit and miss greeted with a loud cheer, ‘Wahh!’ or ‘Ohh!’ Later, one of the younger girls came up the stairs, panting, and said that the teachers’ meeting was over. Within seconds the scene

200

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

changed. With a practised ease, the racquets were swiftly put away, most of the girls went to their rooms, some others busied themselves in picking clothes left to dry on the wire, sewing, reading a book, and other everyday activities. Over the year I realized that these badminton games were a regular feature. I started to identify the unspoken signs (as the girls hardly ever directly mentioned the games)—the exchange of glances, the whispers, the giggles, the sudden headaches, the pressing need to collect clothes from the terrace. Since the madrasa timetable did not make any space for sports and play, the girls had devised this way of utilizing spaces such as the terrace, the corridor, and the wudu area, when the teachers were busy, such as during staff meetings with the Principal or preparations for occasions like Milad un-Nabi, the Prophet’s birthday. The girls alternated between badminton and other games like Kho Kho,12 pakdam pakdai (catch-me-if-you-can) and participating in rowdy water fights whenever they felt they could possibly get away with it as the teachers were busy elsewhere. Variants of pakdam pakdai (where one girl becomes the den and chases others; and whoever she touches has to leave the game) were particularly popular with the girls running here and there, making noises, laughing loudly, and trying to dodge the den. Even though none of the teachers revealed this explicitly, I got the impression that most of the time the teachers were aware of these activities, having themselves played these games as students, but chose to turn a blind eye. Similarly, most of the girls never let me even ask, let alone answer, my questions on such games. I’d be met with a ‘shhhhh…’ or, ‘please, Apa, what if someone hears?’ The few girls that I did manage to speak to described the games as innocent attempts to do tafree (fun and amusement). Such instances can be best described as ambivalent practices. In the madrasa, their ambivalent status arose from the fact that games were not explicitly allowed or disallowed in Jamiatul Mominat but looked down on as jangli (wild and uncivilized) and not befitting well-mannered girls. 12 

Kho Kho is a popular traditional sport in India. It is a modified version of ‘run-chase’, which in its simplest form involves chasing and touching a person. It involves a lot of dodging, feinting, and bursts of controlled speed, which make the game enjoyable. It is played by teams of twelve players who try to avoid being touched by members of the opposing team. In the madrasa, the teams had flexible numbers and were not confined to twelve.



Becoming a Kamil Momina

201

On their part, the girls would often defend themselves, saying, ‘Quran mein khelne pe manai nahi hai’ (Quran doesn’t say don’t play), and look for any and every opportunity to indulge in such fun. Gazing Outside: Chhajje pe latakna

Another such ambivalent practice was the rather inconspicuous way in which girls would spend hours doing nothing other than just gazing outside the jali screen that covered all the windows and open spaces in the madrasa. In fact, this daily practice, literally embodying the imagery of the colloquial metaphor chhajje pe latakna (literally, hanging in the balcony), was one of the most common sights in the madrasa after classes ended at 2 pm. Several studies in recent times have highlighted the need to reflect on such everyday processes of killing time or ‘timepass’ (Dyson 2014; Fuller 2011; Jeffrey 2010). For example, Jeffrey (2010) describes how several young male students enrolled in Meerut colleges see time as something that has to be killed. Rather than attending classes, they spend most of their time doing ‘timepass’—hanging out in small groups drinking tea, smoking, and harassing women. In a similar vein, Parry (1999) describes the culture of passing time in an Indian steel plant as an expression of boredom. However, the above-mentioned accounts which look at the notion of killing time as ‘timepass’ do not delve into what such acts of doing nothing achieve for the doer—for example, the possibility of leisure, the act of getting away, and so forth. Further, they tell us nothing of the range of symbolic goods that a person engages with in the process of doing nothing. By focusing on themes of boredom and passing time these accounts lend the impression of killing time as a non-purposive activity. In stark contrast, the girls’ activities in the madrasa, such as gazing out, though often described as ‘doing nothing’, were marked by purposeful ambivalence. Despite being constantly reprimanded, the girls did not give up on this practice of gazing out. The moment the teachers weren’t in sight the girls would pair up or form small groups and gaze out. In fact, most of them had favourite ‘spots’, generally along the staircase and the landings of stairs, rather than windows in classrooms, as the teachers’ rooms were on the same floor as the classrooms.

202

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

The teachers strongly chastised any girl seen gazing outside. As Sumaiya, one of the teachers, explained, ‘these girls are here to learn amal and find sukoon (peace) in remembering God; looking outside is like cheating, hiding and doing something you are not supposed to. Even if you are not caught you have still cheated’. Though I never saw the girls answer back to the teachers, on different occasions I did bring up this topic, and many of the girls described ‘gazing out’ as behaviour that was well within the bounds of piety. These girls clearly did not think they were ‘cheating’. This is perhaps best captured in the following exchange between Sanjeeda and her younger sister, Gulzar. Sanjeeda had just admonished Gulzar for wasting her time looking out of the jali. I heard the exchange when it became more public, with both the sisters involving their friends to make their point. Gulzar thought she was well within limits and was doing nothing galat (wrong) because she hadn’t breached the rules of purdah. ‘I am only looking, no one can see me!’ she kept saying. Sanjeeda and her friends, on the other hand, were trying to reason with Gulzar that activities such as wanting to look outside were ‘temptations, efforts by the shaitan to distract one from the higher goal of achieving piety’, and telling her that she should not succumb to such distractions. Gazing out, for many girls like Gulzar who regularly indulged in it, was one of the grey zones of pious behaviour. It was an indulgence they clearly sought out, waiting for it to be afternoon when the teachers went to rest, or when the other girls were praying, to go to their favourite spot on the stairs and sometimes even daring to go to the terrace. The girls’ practice of ‘gazing out’ has parallels with Radway’s (1984) argument with respect to reading romantic fiction. Describing reading as a ‘social event’, Radway demonstrates how reading romantic fiction provides women a strategic space for themselves, away from their demanding domestic roles. Similarly, ‘gazing out’ was a way for the girls to strategically seek space for themselves, a moment of respite, a moment to be alone or produce sociality. Being engrossed in the act of gazing out allowed the girls a chance to indulge in what Goffman (1968) terms as ‘being away’, by temporarily becoming oblivious to their immediate situation. It offered them both the anonymity of a distant spectator—the screen on the window precluding any possibility of anyone outside seeing

Becoming a Kamil Momina

203

them—and the pleasure of watching the hustle-bustle of the adjoining main road, and the wider expanse of the river that the madrasa overlooked (Figure 6.8).

Figure 6.8 Latticework screens accompanied the grilled windows of the madrasa. These gave the girls a view of the main road and River Yamuna but prevented any possibility of an outsider seeing them.

204

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

Practices of Piety: Contradictions and Contestations Disciplining Friendships and Partners in Crime

One of the most ambiguous social spaces in the madrasa is that occupied by friendship groups and networks. Friendship amongst the madrasa girls represents a paradox, or, in Dyson’s (2010) terminology, a ‘contradictory resource’, responsible for both reaffirming prescriptive madrasa norms through everyday policing and creating a space for practices that circumvent rules and subvert madrasa norms. Recent anthropological work in India highlights the important role played by friendships in the negotiation of societal norms, be it around caste, class, or gender (Dyson 2014; Lukose 2009; Nisbett 2007; Osella and Osella 1998). In Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat, as discussed earlier, friendship groups and peer group activities played a crucial role in the disciplining process. There was an unsaid hierarchy between juniors and seniors, with seniority defined in terms of the years spent in the madrasa, knowledge, and age. Girls addressed senior students as Apa, which was also how teachers were addressed in the madrasa. It was the senior students who mentored the girls during their initial days, teaching them the everyday rules of the madrasa, conducted evening halqas and often assigning themselves the responsibility of policing the girls, especially when the teachers were not around. Seniors reprimanding younger girls for lapses such as the headscarf slipping off, non-attendance in the evening halqas or classes, and so on, was a common occurrence. However, the lines between such disciplining friendships and the ones that created the space for girls to circumvent rules were often blurred. The same girls who would reprimand the younger girls would also initiate them into the ways and means of circumventing madrasa prescriptions. The most common manifestation of this was the smuggling of mobile phones into the madrasa premises, and singing and dancing in small groups. On many occasions in the evening, after classes, amidst a lot of giggling, girls would prompt each other to sing movie songs in low voices. During interactions some girls revealed that occasionally, late at night, at times like after exams, girls would dance together and jump around, albeit quietly, without letting the teachers know. Another common manifestation was the covert attempts made by the girls to escape the premises of the madrasa for short



Becoming a Kamil Momina

205

durations. The usual pretext employed by the girls was that they had fallen ill. Almost every day an unusually high number of girls would approach the teachers for permission to see the doctor on some excuse or the other. The protocol put in place by the madrasa necessitated that a staff member or khala, the old lady who manned the main gate of the madrasa, accompany the girls. However, to circumvent this situation, most of the times the girls would suddenly approach the staff in groups of five or six, making it appear like an emergency so that they would be immediately sent out with one of the older girls instead of the teachers. The senior student in question would be in on the secret, generally close at hand, and would volunteer to accompany the girls. Even though recounting the instances lends the impression of a predictable plot, the girls executed it to perfection. As an onlooker, one really could never tell that it was an enactment because it seemed so real, especially because generally the girls were so obedient. I discovered this secret rather late in the day after discreetly recognizing the girls huddled in a shop on one instance, and while walking through the gali (narrow lanes) on a couple of other occasions on my way home on the rickshaw. After catching different groups of girls a couple of times, some of them explained that at times when they felt ghutan (claustrophobic) or needed fresh air, or just wanted to talk to their parents on the phone or request them to come, they made the excuse of illness to be allowed to get out of the madrasa. Subverting Norms: Out in the Open

On rare occasions, the girls were not even particularly discreet about defying madrasa rules and openly flouted the norms that they felt at that point were invalid. One such occasion was during the farewell of the final year students in 2013. The girls from junior classes wanted to give their friends and seniors small tokens and gifts as remembrances. But Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat prohibits gift-giving because, as the Principal explained, it is difficult for girls coming from poor families to give gifts to seniors. Seeing everyone gifting things to each other alienates girls from poor families, who either get left out or are pressurized into writing to family members who can least afford such indulgences. A week before the farewell the Principal eased this rule after being requested by the students, supported by some of the teach-

206

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

ers. She allowed the exchange of gifts on the condition that they were inexpensive and relevant to education, such as books, pens, and so on. However, as the last day approached, huge packages began to arrive at the madrasa; parents started coming to drop off things. The teachers reprimanded the girls and asked the senior girls to control their juniors, but the packages kept coming. Finally, the teachers conducted what they termed as a ‘raid’, wherein they checked each and every student’s bags for gifts. Complete chaos broke loose when the raid was conducted—girls started running here and there, hiding stuff, putting things in each other’s bags; when the teachers were on first floor, students in close collaboration with each other would hide things on the top floor and move them back down using the back corridor when the teachers were made to go upstairs. The items that were eventually confiscated included clothes, sceneries and showpieces, fancy artificial jewellery pieces, make-up items, photo frames, and vases. There were also a lot of photographs with a full view of their faces and girls posing with notes saying things like ‘Love You’, ‘Remember’, ‘Best Friends’. An interesting feature of these photographs—which, in normal times, are strictly prohibited—was that many had a group of madrasa girls posing without the niqab, most likely outside the premises of the madrasa, indicating that they had probably gone out together to get the photo clicked. Another such situation in which the madrasa norms were rendered invalid, with not only the girls but even the teachers participating in open defiance, was during a medical crisis, especially if it occurred at night, as the madrasa did not equip the girls or teachers with any means to immediately communicate with the men outside who kept the main door locked. Two such cases were narrated by the girls, which occurred during the time I was there. In one case, one of the girls had an asthmatic attack at night; the girls woke up the teachers who rushed downstairs and kept banging at the door till someone came, as none of them had a phone. There was a lot of anger about this and many of the girls broke the glass windows in rage. In another incident, one of the girls burnt herself gravely when boiling milk splashed on her face and neck. This happened in the morning, and the teachers did not have any medication at hand to help the child—they just put some ointment on her wound and wrapped it with a cloth. The girl’s parents were contacted and because they lived nearby she could be



Becoming a Kamil Momina

207

i­mmediately rushed to the hospital. The students and teachers were enraged at the time lag in getting medical help because of them being locked up. Many of the teachers supported the girls when they registered their protest with the Principal. Imagining a Permanent Exit Initially I used to think of this madrasa as a jail ... one cannot go out, talk to anyone outside, including family; one cannot keep a mobile ... You cannot even peep out of the madrasa terrace—if they see you from downstairs they shout at you ... but now I think all this is for our own safety. Anyways, for a Muslim this life here is like a jail where if we bear suffering we will be rewarded in heaven; for a non-believer this life is like a feast but then he will suffer in the afterlife. But some girls cannot bear so much suffering. —Shama, Class Three

For the latter kind of girls in Shama’s description—those who can’t bear the restrictions in the madrasa—the options to go back to their respective homes and old lives are rather limited. As discussed earlier, parents often interpret the restrictions and hardship in the madrasa as a positive means of disciplining the girls. The teachers, madrasa authorities, and even some of the students constantly validated this view, attributing the students’ discomfort to ‘efforts of the devil to distract the girl from the path towards piety’. On extremely rare occasions, however, the girls managed to devise a permanent exit, often by employing the vocabulary of piety. One such strategy was what was termed as jinnat ka asr, or to be possessed by a jinn. I was told that jinns, much like spirits, are imperceptible to our senses as they are made of smokeless fire, unlike humans and angels who are created of clay and light. The only visible manifestation of these intangible jinns possessing a girl, as described to me by the teachers and students, was that the possessed girl would get fits or start shouting or at times her whole body would become still or she would start jumping as though someone was lifting her and throwing her from one place to another. Another manifestation, which the teachers cited as the most common affliction of jinnat ka asr in the madrasa, was that the girl would stop eating and drinking

208

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

for days. The students and teachers would recite duas for the cure of these girls. While I was in the madrasa, two such instances took place, and within a short span of the teachers realizing that these girls had been possessed by a jinn, their parents were called and the girls were sent home. At that time many of the students commented in whispers that two of the girls who had just left the madrasa had pretended to be frequented by jinns so that their parents would take them away. On one occasion, Zainab, a student of class four, while talking about her life in the madrasa, mentioned that she was planning her escape from the madrasa by pretending that she was possessed, though she eventually gave up the idea. She explained to me that girls were sent to the madrasa by parents and many time, despite her not being able to adjust, her parents would not allow her to leave the madrasa, and often such a girl would pretend to be possessed. Jinnat ka asr was a condition taken very seriously by the staff and madrasa authorities, so once a girl was able to convincingly establish before the staff that she was indeed possessed, her returning home was almost certain, as the madrasa authorities then took it upon themselves to send her back to be cured. Thus, in a way, being possessed by the jinnat was employed by a small number of girls as a way and means to make an exit by employing the language and consciousness obtained within the madrasa. An overview of each of these ambiguous practices highlights the tension between the girls’ firm espousal and embodiment of madrasa ideals of piety and the everyday practices of girls that fall outside madrasa prescriptions. Paying close attention to these ambivalent and contradictory expressions illustrates the sense of pragmatism and flexibility inherent in the girls’ understandings and practices of piety. The girls do not necessarily view pious submission learnt in the madrasa and engaging in practices that transgress madrasa norms in oppositional terms. Depending on the time, space, and context, they embrace the norms learnt in the madrasa and the respectable status of ba-amal alima for its inherent worth or to negotiate greater access to opportunities like education, marriage, social status, or, in certain rare cases, they oppose the norms employing vocabulary learnt in the madrasa to escape the pious disciplining of the madrasa (Figure 6.9). This ambivalence observed in everyday lives acquires a new form and meaning in more open spaces. This is discussed in the next chapter, which looks at the lives of madrasa graduates pursuing higher education in the university.

Becoming a Kamil Momina

209

Figure 6.9 Girls playing on the terrace of Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat on the pretext of drying clothes.

chapter seven

From Madrasa to University Changing Aspirations, Boundaries, and Horizons

It was around 2 pm. I was sitting in the garden that bordered the Faculty of Humanities and Languages in Jamia Millia Islamia University measuring up every burqa-clad girl who walked towards me, as I waited to be approached by Lamia. One of the teachers in Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat had offered to put me in touch with her cousin sister, Lamia, a recent alumnus of the madrasa, who was studying at Jamia Millia Islamia. The teacher had confidently told me, ‘Don’t worry, Apa, you just go to the garden. I have told her you are coming; she will find you. She doesn’t have a phone and wears a burqa, so you won’t be able to find her’. Lamia came out of nowhere, accompanied by two other girls. ‘Aap Hem hain na?’ (You are Hem, right?) I said yes, slightly surprised to hear my first name as I had become quite accustomed to being addressed with the suffix ‘Apa’. Lamia introduced me to her two friends, Taqiya and Farheen, and explained that even they had studied in a madrasa and were now studying in the Arabic Department of the university. Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood. Hem Borker, Oxford University Press (2018). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199484225.003.0007



From Madrasa to University

211

Lamia, Taqiya, and Farheen were a stark contrast to the demure, tentative, burqa-clad girls I had expected. Instead of wearing the burqa and hijab combination that was insisted upon in the name of purdah compliance by madrasas, each of them was wearing a variation of the purdah—Lamia wore the burqa and a hijab with her face uncovered; Farheen wore just the abaya1 without the headscarf, while Taqiya had combined the headscarf with jeans (a strict no-no in the madrasa). When I told them that I had been expecting to see black burqa-clad girls, they laughed loudly. Farheen exchanged looks with the others and said, ‘Ye madrasa thodi na hai, yahan par to itna bhi zaroori nahi hai. Yahan par jisko jo sahi lagta hai wo wahi kare’ (This isn’t the madrasa, here even this (pointing to the burqa) isn’t necessary. Here, you do whatever you think is right). This chapter focuses on the transition of girls like Lamia, Taqiya, Farheen from girls’ madrasas to higher education in universities, like Jamia Millia Islamia, that recognize madrasa degrees. By providing a unique insight into the lives of girls beyond the madrasa, it extends and offers another dimension to the argument made in the previous chapter. The ambivalence observed between the madrasa prescriptions and the actual practice of the pious gendered self in a relatively secluded and fenced setting such as a girls’ madrasa takes on a whole new meaning in more public spaces such as Jamia Millia Islamia. The girls’ journey from the madrasa to university and their changing aspirations highlight the fluidity of the ideal of the kamil momina—the ever-changing life trajectories of madrasa students both emerging from and altering the boundaries of the aspired ideal. I engage with Appadurai’s work (2013) on aspirations and De Certeau’s work on everyday life (1988) to discuss the experiences of madrasa graduates studying in Jamia Millia Islamia. everyday aspirations : madrasa education and the capacity to aspire

Appadurai (2013) describes aspirations as socially and relationally constructed systems of understanding. He contends that aspirations are ‘never simply individual’ (2013: 187) but formed socially and expressed in ‘densely local ideas about marriage, work, leisure, 1 

Wearing an abaya is a veiling practice. The abaya is a black, wide, loose garment with large sleeves worn over clothes.

212

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

convenience, respectability, friendship, health and virtue’ (2013: 187). Therefore, he argues, that what appears as immediate individual wants and desires are future oriented aspirations that derive from collective values and shared cultural norms on what a good life might look like. I argue that applying Appadurai’s (2013) concept of ‘capacity to aspire’ brings to light the critical role played by the madrasa experience in nurturing the girls’ aspirations. Drawing on Appadurai’s understanding of aspirations as forged in ‘interaction and thick of social life’ (2013: 187) highlights the unanticipated opportunities offered by madrasa education. The imagined futures of the girls in Jamiatul Mominat often draw on what Appadurai terms as ‘local ideas and beliefs’ (2013: 187) prevalent in the madrasa about marriage, further education, and appropriate employment. Most of the girls’ aspirations discussed in the previous chapter can be seen in this light, such as working as a madrasa teacher or opening one’s own madrasa, pursuing higher education in Urdu, Arabic, Islamic Studies, and so on. A related part of Appadurai’s conceptualization of aspirations is his discussion of the capacity to aspire as a ‘navigational capacity’ (2013: 188) nurtured by the possibility of real-world conjectures and refutations (2013: 189), which provides a ‘map of a journey into the future’ (2013: 191). This resonates with the experiences of the girls in the madrasa. Being in the madrasa unintentionally exposes them to a new set of possibilities that opens up for them through peer group interaction, friendship networks, and learning from madrasa alumni who have availed higher education, as well as employment opportunities both within and outside the religious sphere. Relationships, friendships, and peer networks formed within the madrasa not only introduce and nurture new aspirations but also provide the madrasa girls with what Appadurai (2013) terms as navigational information or the know-how, opportunities, nodes, and pathways to achieve aspirations. The experiences and narratives of the girls discussed in the previous chapters highlight the key role played by a range of relationships fostered within the madrasa in aiding, abetting, and channelling the girls’ pious and worldly aspirations. So much so that often certain actors in these relationships such as a concerned teacher or a senior student or cousin or friend may even negotiate with parents and other adults in authority on the girls’ behalf. For example, senior students and/or teachers in the madrasa informally support students in their preparations for the university entrance exams by covertly arranging



From Madrasa to University

213

casual counselling and guidance sessions with madrasa alumni currently studying in university, who are called to the madrasa on some pretext. Similar informal channels can also be seen at work in other ways such as exchange of information, filling of distance education forms, and so on. However here it is important to draw attention to Appadurai’s argument, that the capacity to aspire is often more limited for those with inadequate resources (2013: 188–9). For the madrasa students a range of intersecting factors including their gender, minority status, socio-economic, religious location, and their educational past of having studied at a madrasa often limit their ‘navigational capacity’. Appadurai’s (2013) concept of the capacity to aspire undoubtedly allows an insight into the imagination that ignites the process of girls’ seeing possibilities beyond the purview of the madrasa. His work draws attention to the relationship between socio-cultural reality, the processes of imaginings about the future and the creation of selves—the possibilities and limitations of aspirations emerging in a culturally defined social life and altering the boundaries of the same world. However, Appadurai’s abstract conceptualization proves unhelpful when one tries to understand the daily practices constitutive of this larger narrative. How does this capacity to aspire translate into daily experiences? How is this process lived in everyday life? With respect to the aspired lives of the participants in my research, De Certeau’s work (1988) on everyday practices allows us to understand how madrasa students engage with and embody the capacity to aspire. As discussed in the previous chapter, through his attention to everyday life, De Certeau (1988) highlights how ‘ways of operating—ways of walking, reading, producing, speaking’ (1988: 30) allow people to discretely and inventively create a space for themselves and draw unexpected results from the situation (1988: 29–30). De Certeau (1988) draws attention to the inconspicuous, daily, tactical practices that transform the official strategic storylines without overtly challenging them. In a similar vein, close attention to the routine practices of the girls at the university—ways of dressing, walking, expressing opinions, daily conduct, demeanour, and so on—allows for an understanding of how imagined aspirations are lived. I draw together Appadurai’s (2013) capacity to aspire and De Certeau’s (1988) understanding of everyday life to argue that the girls’ aspirations do not represent a coherent distant

214

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

vision of the future but emerge as a day-to-day process. Seeing the girls’ everyday practices (in the sense of tools) that both drive and are driven by Appadurai’s capacity to aspire allows us to view the girls’ aspirations as a process in flux, continuously (re)defined by competing concerns emanating from the family, community, and their madrasa education. This everyday negotiation and reconfiguration of aspirations, in turn, enables the creation of new selves. I also highlight how the ongoing process of negotiation between the girls’ changing aspirations and constraints assumes new forms. For example, in the university, balancing gendered notions of respectability (Gilbertson 2014; Lukose 2009; Phadke 2005; Radhakrishnan 2011) with the demands of higher education often takes precedence over practices of piety owing to the change in context from the madrasa to the university. As girls traverse from madrasa to new spaces, the change in contexts bring in their wake new aspirations and constraints leading to the refashioning of pious selves. The earlier chapters look at the journeys of the girls from their homes to the madrasa and life inside the madrasa. The move towards higher education and studying in universities emerges from within this narrative, the girls becoming eligible (owing to the recognition of the madrasa degree by some universities) and aware of this opportunity through diverse experiences in the madrasa. As more madrasa students nurture aspirations of going to university, higher education often becomes the site for negotiation between the realization of these aspirations and the defined realms of possibility prescribed for women by their madrasa, family, and community norms. This chapter provides an insight into the lives of girls who graduate from girls’ madrasas and pursue higher education in more mainstream universities by drawing on interviews conducted with girls who have previously studied in girls’ madrasas and were enrolled in regular BA courses in Jamia Millia Islamia at the time of the study. The second section introduces Jamia Millia Islamia University and the possibilities it represents as one of the few universities in India that recognize madrasa education. The third section highlights the range of intersecting factors that shape the ability of the girls to pursue their aspiration of further studies. The fourth section focuses on the girls’ understanding and experience of the transition from the madrasa to the university.



From Madrasa to University

215

jamia millia islamia : the new horizon

Every day on my way to the madrasa, the moment I would cross the Jamia Millia Islamia campus, I knew I was about to reach. Jamia Millia Islamia University was my landmark, the destination I quoted to autorickshaw drivers while haggling with them to reach the madrasa, what I mentioned to people curious about my research while attempting to explain the area I worked in. To students and teachers in the madrasa, I often explained what doing a DPhil from a ‘big university abroad meant’, by drawing parallels with Jamia Millia Islamia. It took me some time to realize that for the students and teachers in Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat, Jamia Millia Islamia was a landmark too, albeit in different and more important ways. Jamia Millia Islamia, established in 1920 became a Central University by an act of the Indian Parliament in 1988. Jamia was recently accorded the status of a ‘Minority University’ in 2011 by the National Commission for Minority Educational Institutions, which allows it to  reserve up to 50 per cent of the seats for Muslims.2 The University recognizes the ‘Alima degree’ of Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat (Jamia Millia Islamia Prospectus 2012).3 Jamia Millia Islamia recognized madrasa degrees as early as the 1970s. It was among the first handful of universities in India to create a list of madrasas whose alima and fazila degrees it recognized. In the recent past, several such universities4 have started admitting 2  As per the new rules, 30 per cent of the total seats in each course are earmarked for general Muslim applicants, 10 per cent of the total seats in each course go to Muslim women applicants and another 10 per cent are reserved for Muslim OBCs and Scheduled Tribes as notified under the Central government list. In case seats remain vacant under the categories reserved for women and OBC and ST Muslims, these automatically get transferred into the category of general Muslim applicants. 3  The term ‘recognizes’ in the context of higher education in India means that the particular university, in this case Jamia Millia Islamia, regards students who have successfully completed the certain courses from specified madrasas as eligible to apply for higher education (undergraduate studies) in the university. 4 For example, in February 2009, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) decided to recognize madrasa degrees from certain madrasas listed in its

216

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

madrasa students from select madrasas directly into their undergraduate programmes. This is owing to recommendations from various quarters, 5 most notably the Sachar Committee Report, which supported the idea of giving equivalence to madrasa degrees, that is, treating them at par with secondary and senior secondary level education. It was felt that such a move would allow madrasa graduates to avail higher education and pave the way for better employment opportunities in the public and private sector. The central idea behind the recommendation, as Justice Sachar expressed in a personal interview, was that ‘equivalence would catalyse madrasas into bringing their education at par with schools, giving an impetus to the still nascent process of madrasas incorporating mainstream subjects into their syllabi’ (Interview with Justice Rajinder Sachar, Chairperson of the Sachar Committee report, 17 May 2013. pers. comm.). As a policy measure, state-led madrasa modernization remains a muchcontested issue. I discuss these debates in Chapter 9. Here the objective is to highlight how this policy of giving equivalence to madrasa degrees is increasingly opening up more and more opportunities for madrasa students to pursue higher education. There are continuing debates around providing equivalence to madrasa degrees. So far, however, there has been little research that engages with the views and experiences of madrasa graduates who have benefitted from these opportunities.6 Initially, my research prospectus as equivalent to intermediate level, which allowed students from these madrasas to appear for B.A. entrance exams. Earlier, students from madrasas could be admitted only in the second year of the three-year B.A. course in JNU—after they had completed their first year from another University Grants Commission recognized college or university. 5  During interviews in Jamia, I was often told that the very idea of recognizing madrasa qualifications originated from the inaugural speech of Jamia Millia Islamia. 6  Work on madrasas in India outlines the importance of university recognition of madrasa degrees. For example, Ahmad (2010: 142) highlights the dramatic increase in number of students in Jamiatul Falah, a Jamaate-Islami madrasa following recognition of its degrees by universities like Aligarh Muslim University, Jamia Millia Islamia, and so forth. He also notes that while there was a rise in number of students pursuing fazilat,



From Madrasa to University

217

did not seek to engage with this question; however, my fieldwork significantly altered this position. In several interviews with students and teachers in Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat, ‘studying in Jamia’ repeatedly came up as an aspired goal. It was these experiences in the field—hearing the girls voice their desire to pursue higher education, helping the teachers prepare for the distance-mode exams conducted by universities, observing the efforts of the madrasa alumni who took up teaching in the madrasa to rewrite university entrance exams—that first drew my attention to Jamia Millia Islamia. Over time, as I started paying greater attention to the students’ aspirations and attempted to follow the routes taken by girls studying in the madrasa, I kept encountering Jamia Millia Islamia. My interest in understanding the ever-changing nature of the girls’ ideals, and aspirations over time, space, and place culminated in the extension of my own research with Jamia Millia Islamia providing me a ready site to explore the unfolding of the girls’ lives beyond the madrasa. I decided to conduct interviews with girls who had previously studied in girls’ madrasas and were currently enrolled in regular BA courses in Jamia Millia Islamia. Through interactions with the faculty and students in Jamia Millia Islamia, I came to know that there were certain courses in which madrasa students were present in greater numbers, such as Arabic, Urdu, Islamic Studies, and Persian. All these departments were part of the Faculty of Humanities and Languages. From the interactions with faculty members, I gathered that the strength of girls was 15 to 20 per cent in the BA programme classes of each of the four departments (Arabic, Urdu, Islamic Studies and Persian), which, on an average, had total class strength of around 60 students. Out of the approximately 60 students in each class, two to five girls were from madrasas vis-à-vis boys from madrasas, who constituted a substantial percentage in each of the classes. As mentioned in the introduction, I conducted interviews with 20 girls who had previously studied in madrasas and were now enrolled in regular classes at Jamia Millia Islamia University. it was lower than almiyat as after completing almiyat (the degree that was recognized by universities) most students left Jamiatul Falah to enter the universities.

218

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

uncertain futures : aspirations and everyday negotiation

Talking to the girls about their educational history and how they got into university brought to light the intersecting concerns that shaped their rather uncertain futures. Aspirations emerged as an ongoing project, requiring the girls to negotiate with a range of actors and changing circumstances. Discussing their journey from the madrasa to higher education, all the girls I interviewed highlighted that there were a range of factors, most of them outside their control, which determined the difference between wanting to study further and actually being able to pursue higher education. While there were notable differences in the girls’ evaluations of these forces, the common sentiment revolved around the number of things that had to fall into place for them to be in Jamia Millia Islamia. Often the girls could not anticipate the manner in which events would unfold and their ability to steer circumstances in favour of their own desires and aspirations was very limited. For instance, When I was trying to get my elder brother to convince my father to let me take the entrance of Jamia I hadn’t even thought as far as admission. I was just thinking of things like how should I convince Abba (father)? Will bhai (brother) accompany me to the exam centre? What about the expense of travelling to Delhi? —Sanjeeda (BA Arabic, 1st Year) After I took admission I heard my classmates talking about how many hours they had spent studying for the entrance and how they did not sleep the night before the exam, and I thought to myself, I wish I had been in their position. I hadn’t slept for two days as I was travelling with my Aunt from Gaya (Bihar) to reach here (Delhi). —Tasleem (BA Islamic Studies, 2nd Year)

The central idea behind highlighting the factors constraining the girls is not to single out madrasa educated students. Such constraints are part of a larger picture which is manifested in the abysmally low rate of participation of Muslims in higher education vis-à-vis other socio-religious categories. A recent report of the Ministry of Human Resource Development based on the latest National Sample Survey (2009–10) data illustrates that Muslims have the  lowest



From Madrasa to University

219

college enrolment for any religion-based group in the country, with only 11 per cent Muslim students enrolling in higher education (and 6.7 per cent in rural areas) as compared to the national average of 18.8 per cent (Srivastava 2013). This disparity is perpetuated by dropout rates among Muslims, especially women, with the increase in the level of education. Through a comparison of the completion rates of primary, secondary, and higher secondary schooling, the recent Post Sachar Evaluation Committee Report has highlighted (Government of India 2014: 89–90) an increase in the rate of withdrawal from education amongst Muslims with the increase in the level of education. Thus, though not limited to madrasa students, the girls’ experiences draw attention to the heightened extent to which female madrasa students find their aspirations limited, their impetus to apply and pursue their admission policed, castigated, and sometimes even apprehended. In order to even be eligible to compete, that is, to write the entrance examination, girls like Sanjeeda and Tasleem had to overcome significant challenges. Most of the girls I spoke to recounted the multiple barriers they had to overcome, some emanating from within the family, some from social and community norms, some personal limitations, and other practical constraints of resources to reach Jamia. These constraints, elaborated in the next section, draw attention to the constant tension between girls’ attempts to achieve their educational aspirations and constraints posed by actors and situations attempting to rein them in. The Risks and Constraints of Higher Education: Family and Community Norms

The girls’ narratives highlighted the constant tension between their aspirations to pursue higher education and the views of prescriptive custodians who considered their availing university education as a breach of moral boundaries. The girls’ narratives bring up a range of actors playing the role of the custodians of moral boundaries, from parents, family members, and neighbours to members of the community. At the receiving end of moral prescriptions, the girls would find their attempts to pursue higher education reined in, policed, ridiculed, reprimanded, and sometimes even apprehended on multiple

220

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

accounts—through constraints of mobility, money, space and/or for daring to harbour aspirations considered unbefitting for women, and so on. Most of the girls I interviewed recounted how their attempts to study further were constrained by their family and the community’s understanding of social norms for women. The barriers from within the family generally pertained to at least one of the parents disapproving of university education, citing reasons such as Jamia is unsafe as it is a co-educational university, what was the point of studying in university when being women they could not work, how difficult it would become to find a husband who was more qualified, and so on. In one such instance, twin sisters Anjum and Tarannum narrate how their express desire to study further was met with opposition from their parents and other family members who were bewildered and could not fathom the sheer purpose of them wishing to study beyond the madrasa. Two years back our village, Bela in Bihar, got a high school, so now girls might still get the chance to study, but when we came here everyone at home was like ‘kya karogi itna padhkar?’ (What will you do studying so much?) … All girls studied till class 8 in our village and then joined the madrasa or stayed at home and work in the lac-bangle factory. —Anjum and Tarannum (twin sisters, both studying in BA Arabic, 2nd Year)

In some cases, the girls recounted that they were not even given a reason for their parents’ flat refusal and were reprimanded for having made such a request. At times, the parents agreed but obstacles were created by the extended family and community members, who emerged in the girls’ narratives as self-appointed enunciators and guardians of social norms. The girls recounted that in stark contrast to their status as madrasa students, which brought them and their families prestige and respect in the community, their aspirations for university education led to a lot of acrimony and dark predictions about their impending doom as studying in a university was associated with moral corruption, over-education, immoral interaction with ghair mahram, and so on. The parents, and sometimes the girls themselves, would be forewarned by a range of people—relatives,



From Madrasa to University

221

concerned neighbours, community elders, religious leaders7—that aspirations for higher education were a sure sign of girls trying to exceed their boundaries. This is best captured by the girls’ description of the manner in which their desire and request to study further was ridiculed and castigated using the popular expression, ‘par nikal aye hain’ (she has grown wings). Parents would be strongly advised that the girls should be told off and put in their place for harbouring such inappropriate expectations. As one of the girls narrated: When I told my father that I wanted to apply to Jamia, initially he was very pleased. He asked my mother to take me to the Mullani’s house and ask how exactly we should go about applying. Mullani was the Imam’s wife; she had been the first person to tell my father to send me to Malegaon (madrasa). But when we went to meet her she got very angry with me; she said ‘bahut par nikal aaye hain’ (you have grown wings), you were sent to the madrasa for education. Now your education is complete. Learn housework, help you mother and if you really want to do something assist me in teaching the young ones here. —Nabeela (BA Islamic Studies 1st Year)

According to the girls, one the most common objections cited by families was not in direct opposition to university education per se, but with the idea of girls living in a hostel. Only two of the 20 girls I interacted with were residents of the Jamia Millia Islamia Girls’ Hostel, even though 16 of them were not residents of Delhi. The girls stated that their parents were reluctant to allow them to stay in the university hostel, even though they were gender segregated hostels, owing to concerns of safety, mobility, and the perceived dangers of living in a mixed-religious setting—a stark contrast to the residential madrasas from which most of them had come. For their parents, hostel life 7  The role of religious leaders such as maulvis and ulama has also been highlighted by Azim’s (1997) study on Muslim women in Karnataka. She illustrates how prescriptions by religious leaders (for example, daughters shouldn’t be sent to school after puberty) often impact parent’s attitudes and constrain education of Muslim girls. 41 per cent of Muslim women respondents in her study reported that Muslim religious leaders’ attitudes were opposed to women’s education.

222

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

had negative associations such as encouraging girls to do awaragardi (wandering outside, for example, to watch movies or shopping, and so on) and the lack of pabandi (restrictions), as they felt that unlike madrasas, hostels were not strict enough in curtailing the mobility of girls, thereby posing a threat to the girls’ safety and modesty. Citing the above-mentioned reasons, most of the girls talked about how ‘saari diqqat padhney se zyada dilli mein rehney ki hai’ (The problem is not so much further studies but living in Delhi). According to the girls, most parents were reluctant to send their daughters to Delhi without the guardianship of a relative, which, in most cases, meant some kind of male support. For example, Imrana told me how she had only studied till Class Eight and later appeared for the Bihar State Madrasa Board Examinations as a private candidate, for which she was homeschooled by her brother. When her brother applied to Jamia Millia Islamia, she also came to Delhi with him and applied. She cleared the entrance for Urdu but he did not clear his Engineering entrance, so she had to go back home with him. Last year, her other brother came to Delhi to take the Jamia entrance and again, she filled out the forms for Urdu. This time, her brother passed the entrance examination, so she was allowed to study too. Often the above-mentioned concerns around living in Delhi and hostel life were compounded by monetary constraints. During interviews, several girls commented that it was not the fees per se but the living expenses in Delhi that made university education unaffordable for their families. The girls’ comments on familial and parental concerns about higher education resonate with the earlier discussion in Chapter 5 on the reasons cited by parents for choosing madrasa education over regular schools for their daughters. The underlying central concern in both these narratives has to do with boundaries and the risks associated with the transgression of these boundaries. Scholars working on India have highlighted the manner in which concerns around risk and safety (Lukose 2009; Phadke 2005; Still 2011) impact women’s engagement with public spaces such as education, the workplace, and leisure activities. In her work on gender and public space in Mumbai, Phadke (2005) highlights how the discourse of what constitutes risk and women’s strategies to produce safety are informed by the women’s social location, that is, caste, class, religion, and ethnicity. She discusses how the narratives of risk employ a ‘language of sexual danger’



From Madrasa to University

223

to restrict women’s access to public spaces. This results in women being confronted with the binary choice of risky public spaces and safe private spaces, though, as Phadke (2005) points out, the definition of public and private space is often contingent on the woman’s socio-economic and religious location. Educational settings like schools and colleges represent a significant public space in this regard. It is in this context that the difference between a madrasa and Jamia Millia Islamia becomes significant. While the madrasa represents a safe, circumscribed space, a community institution regarded by the parents of girls as an extension of the family and community norms, the university represents a high-risk public space.8 In comparison to schooling, higher education is viewed as posing higher risks with fewer remedies, such as the lack of safety and a greater possibility of moral corruption in a co-educational, multi-religious setting, overeducation increasing the risk of sexual encounters, pre-marital affairs, love marriages, and college education nurturing unacceptable desires such as love or aspirations of being a career woman, and so on. The girls’ narratives highlighted an interesting irony: it was the same set of actors—family members, mentors in the extended family, neighbours, community members—who encouraged and supported the girls to pursue university education. Some of the girls talked about how they were in the university thanks to the insistence of their parents who had defied elders and conventional norms and sent them. Some recalled the support of other family members, especially elder brothers, who often got around parents and coached their sisters, allowing them to overcome the boundaries set by social norms. Madrase se Kuch Madad Nahin Mili (The Madrasa Gave Us No Help)

Another interesting observation that emerged from the accounts of several girls was how many of them bracketed their madrasa education with the above-mentioned constraints in pursuing higher 8  Here it is important to note that the notions of private versus public and safety versus risk are relative, and their combinations, complex. For example, when compared with another university in Delhi, a Muslim parent may evaluate Jamia as less risky for their girls, owing to its status as a Muslim minority institution.

224

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

education. Given that all the girls I interviewed had opted for subjects such as Urdu, Arabic, and Islamic Studies, which were closely linked with what they had been taught in the madrasa, and the fact that it was their madrasa qualifications that made them eligible for admission, this came as a surprising revelation. The following account is illustrative in this regard: Shabnam: I feel I was at a disadvantage because I came from a madrasa. I did not know anything. Hem: In terms of Arabic? Shabnam: No, no, I am not saying they did not teach us well at the madrasa. Even now I feel that more than what they teach, it is how they teach—the discipline—that has made me a good student. What I am saying is that I did not know how to get here. People there just display a framed certificate in the office to boast about the official recognition Jamia gives to the madrasa which qualifies its students to sit for the Jamia entrance exams. We have no information. All I knew was from some seniors in the madrasa who had all done Arabic, so when I applied I just applied for Arabic; I did not know I could do something else. —Shabnam (BA Arabic, 2nd Year)

In a similar vein, Zeenat told me how she had never appeared for an interview in her life, so when she cleared the entrance for Islamic Studies and was informed that she had to appear for an interview she went back to her madrasa teachers in Delhi and asked them to do a mock-interview. ‘But they did not know anything’, said Zeenat. Other students recounted similar incidents. Being in Jamia allows the girls to compare their present institution with their previous one. This has much to do with their exposure to the different observations, meanings, and experiences of education, owing also to their interaction with students who come from diverse social and educational contexts. The ideas of retrospectively evaluating the contribution of the madrasa and expectations of greater support from the madrasa are symptomatic of a larger process at work—the girls engaging with what Appadurai (2013: 75) terms as alternate ‘designs for the future’. This represents a significant disjuncture. The transition from home to the madrasa is a secure transition for the girls in so far as the madrasa, in many ways, remains an extension of the family and the home—a part of the circumscribed space. The university,



From Madrasa to University

225

however, emerges as a new space. The rationale behind employing the phrase ‘new space’ and a better understanding of its contours emerge from the discussion in the next section, which discusses how girls juxtaposed their current experience in the university with their time in the madrasa. Here it is important to foreground certain relevant details about the transition from the madrasa to the university. Firstly, this transition stands apart from the earlier transition from the home to the madrasa. The first transition was almost singularly based on the parents’ decision to send their daughters to a girls’ madrasa and, in most of the cases (if not all), higher education would not have been a part of the life trajectory envisaged. It is their time at the madrasa that provides the girls with the requisite exposure and resources, nurturing their capacity to aspire by introducing them to limited pathways such as the possibility of pursuing higher education in universities, which recognize madrasa degrees. In this situation, the capacity to aspire emerges as an ambiguous resource, its ability to translate into real opportunity contingent on the manner in which the interaction/tension between the girls’ aspirations and the range of factors constraining them plays out. For the girls who make this transition—a transition that most of them had not anticipated when they began their studies in the madrasa—the university emerges as a new space, different from the madrasa. University education exposes the girls to a diverse range of educational experiences and aspirations of other girls who have studied in different contexts (other madrasas, schools, and a range of educational institutions). As the girls engage with these differences they also tend to retrospectively reflect on their own experience. As they go through university education, their aspirational horizons change. The processes that constitute this experience become clearer when we look at how the girls discuss their experience of the transition from the madrasa to the university. This is examined in the next section. comparing the present and the past

The girls’ accounts of their transition to the university were replete with comparisons between their present and past institutions, revealing a sense of unease owing to the mismatch between their madrasa

226

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

past and their university present. The girls made repeated references to the dilemmas and challenges they experienced every day in the university. Their dilemmas revolved around numerous issues such as questions of freedom and respectability, especially in terms of mobility, dressing, and comportment, the general mahaul in the classrooms and university at large, the structuring of classes and curriculum, co-education, and so on. Comparing the university and madrasas where they had previously studied, all the girls talked about how the university represented a more open space vis-à-vis the madrasa, both in terms of a physical space and an educational space. Many girls talked about how the university imposed no restriction on their movement and termed it as a ‘bada change’ (big change) because in the madrasa they had been used to living within a confined space. While talking about this difference, several girls voiced the fact that they had never thought of the madrasa as unduly confining in the time that they lived there, because they assumed that ‘aisa hi hota hai’ (that is how it is supposed to be); but, being in Jamia made them retrospectively regard the madrasa as restrictive. Some other girls stated that they had, in fact, found the madrasa a completely closed space, even while being there, and likened it to a ‘jail’ and ‘qaidkhana’ (jailhouse) where they felt ghutan (suffocated). The girls also talked about the madrasa being ‘closed’ in terms of the strict discipline and schedule that was followed, with the whole day divided into slots with an allocated set of activities from morning to night. As one of the girls said: In the madrasa har cheez par pabandi thi (there were restrictions on everything) … what time should one sleep, what time should one get up, what time should one study, what should one wear, who should one meet. Aisa lagta tha hum band hai … Jamia mein khula mahaul hai (One felt like one had been locked up … Jamia is an open place). —Farheen (BA Islamic Studies, 3rd Year)

However, while some girls like Farheen characterized the strict schedule in the madrasa as a negative feature, other girls took a contrarian position. They expressed their appreciation saying that it had instilled a sense of discipline in them and helped them develop focus



From Madrasa to University

227

and not give in to distractions like roaming around, gossiping, shopping, and so forth. This is illustrative of the varying ways in which the girls grappled with the dissonance emerging from the stark contrast between the madrasa norms and what they termed as the khula mahaul (open environment) of the university. On one hand, the girls were tempted to participate in the activities afforded by the newfound freedom and permissibility that the university offered. On the other hand, the imprint of their previous madrasa education led them to have strong reservations about leisure activities such as watching movies, shopping, roaming in public places, which, according to them, were not just a means of idling away time but potentially morally corrupting and something that would adversely impact their status as respectable women. Their daily encounter with such dilemmas left some girls terribly uneasy, while others felt that such encounters were a means of fitting in, achieving their aspired status of being university-going girls. This was compounded by the girls’ experiences in the classrooms. Most of them commented on how the course content and the way of teaching greatly differed at the university level. Even though the subjects that all the girls had opted for were those they had been previously taught in the madrasa, during conversations many mentioned that the content was greatly different. For example, Tasleem told me: I am doing Islamic Studies. This is the main subject in every madrasa but here they teach us about ‘Islam in the modern world’, jis cheez ka humein faidah hai (something from which we stand to gain). The studies there [madrasa] are outdated. The main problem there lies in the teachers. Wahan ki teachers bas madrase mein padh kar padhane lagti hain, unhone university dekhi nahi toh unhe is padhai ki ahmiyat nahi hai (The teachers there have studied in madrasas and start teaching right after that. They haven’t seen a university so they don’t understand importance of its education). —Tasleem (BA Islamic Studies, 2nd Year)

While some girls commented that the level of teaching was better at Jamia, there were many girls who stated that teaching was better in the madrasa. This is perhaps best illustrated by the

228

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

following discussion9 that I had with four first year students of BA Arabic. Hem: Do you find a lot of difference between the studies in both places? Sanjeeda: The level of studies is much better here than the madrasa. Aaira (not from a madrasa): She is just saying this, she knows a lot and whenever we ask her she says she learnt it at the madrasa. Sanjeeda (slightly sheepishly): You haven’t studied Arabic in school so you think that. (Looks towards me) I have a good memory and [am good at] ‘by-heart’ learning, so I know the rules, but I did not know how to use them till I came here. In the madrasa the books were in Arabic but all the explanation was in Urdu and we hardly ever spoke Arabic. Zeenat: But in our madrasa the Arabic level was higher than here ... we were even taught to give speeches in Arabic. Gulafshan (not from a madrasa): I don’t know about the others but I feel if you come to our class and see, the Deoband boys know maximum Arabic, then the madrasa girls, and then us (school boys and girls). Speaking-wise, it may seem school people know more but that’s because we speak more (laughs).

However, with regard to one particular subject, that is, English, all the girls stated difficulties in coping. The English language course is mandatory for all undergraduates in Jamia Millia Islamia. While some of the girls came from madrasas where English had been taught, a few had had no exposure to the language. Even the girls who had studied it in madrasas stated that their previous knowledge of the subject was extremely inadequate as English teaching was not among the core competencies of madrasas. The girls claimed to have been taught basic written English, with greater emphasis on learning of grammatical rules and little exposure to reading or spoken English. The first and second year undergraduate students also complained that the classes in Jamia were rather unhelpful as they could not follow what was happening in class and felt the need for remedial classes or beginners’ classes to be at par with the rest of their class. 9 

During an interview with Sanjeeda three other girls sat around. One girl was Sanjeeda’s classmate from another madrasa, and the two girls had earlier studied in regular schools.



From Madrasa to University

229

Another point that repeatedly came up in the discussions was how, as university students, the conduct expected from them was very different from that of the madrasa. The girls repeatedly talked about how the educational focus in the madrasa was on cultivating the persona of an alima ladki, which included some universals such as being in purdah, dressing modestly, learning and talking about Islam, not being loud and boisterous, lowering one’s gaze in front of men, and so forth, whereas the girls found the expectations in Jamia Millia Islamia quite different where they were encouraged to participate in class, there were no restrictions on dress or communication or movement. As one of the girls said: There is just dini batein (talk of religion matters) in the madrasa. Here there is har kism ki batein (talk about everything). In the madrasa everyone used to say you should keep khamosh (quiet), here everyone says sharmao mat (don’t feel shy). In the madrasa there was a pabandi (restriction) on meeting anyone, here everyone says sabse khulkar milo (you should mingle with others). —Taqiya (BA Arabic, 1st Year)

This transition was not something that the girls had anticipated. For most of the girls coming from madrasas, the concept of asking and answering questions in class, speaking their minds vis-à-vis repeating something that they had learnt, reading non-course books, and so on, was all so new that it seemed alien to them. Girls who I interviewed across classes talked about how initially they had felt lost and isolated because everything seemed so different. Many of them used the term jhanjhana jana (rattled) to describe their initial days in Jamia classrooms and described how it took them a long time to adapt to its mahaul. As one of the girls said: When I first came to Jamia I did not speak to anyone. Dar jaati thi (I would get scared) … ab vaisa dar khatm ho gaya hai (Now that sort of fear has ended). Also, earlier I did not speak in class, himmat hi nahi thi (I did not have the courage and confidence) … now I still have some confidence. In class, Sir insists you have to ask and answer questions, so I’ve started speaking a little now. Still, if someone suddenly asks me something, mein jhanjhana jaati hoon (I get very rattled). —Rabia (BA Persian, 2nd Year)

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

230

A key part of this transition is adjusting to the idea of co-education. Even though co-educational madrasas are known to exist (for example, in the state of West Bengal), by and large girls’ madrasas across India stringently uphold gender segregation as their raison d’être. In fact, the madrasa boards of some states10 and spokespersons of several madrasas11 and Muslim bodies have gone as far as to formally ban co-education, describing it as against the tenets of gender segregation prescribed in Islam. Given this context, it was not surprising that the students I interviewed had little or no experience of studying with boys prior to joining the university. A majority of the girls had spent their adolescence in the madrasa and the only previous experience of studying with boys had been with their brothers or cousins at home or in school when they were kids. During interviews, most of the girls shared that prior to joining the university they regarded co-education as a strict no-no, the factors rendering co-education unacceptable ranging from it being haram (forbidden) in Islam to the potential danger of moral corruption that intermingling of men and women brought in its wake. Thus, accepting and participating in a coeducational setting was a big transition for the girls. In fact, of all the changes that the girls talked about in the interviews, co-education was perhaps the most discussed and debated topic. As one of the girls said: I know it would sound ajeeb (odd) when I say this but I just do not understand how boys and girls can study in the same class. Even though there is an informal segregation, with the boys sitting at the back and the girls in front, no boy or girl sits together but I keep feeling there are eyes on me peechhey se (from the back), though they probably aren’t looking and they also can’t because I do wear the burqa at all times. —Taqiya (BA Arabic, 1st Year)

However, over time it appeared as though the girls became comfortable with the idea of interacting with boys. This came with the 10 

In 2009, the Madrasa Board of Uttar Pradesh (the state with the largest population of Muslims in India) banned co-education in madrasas terming it as against the sharia (Rahman 2009). 11  In 2013, Madrasa Azizia in Nalanda District, Bihar made news for issuing a decree that it will no longer accept girl students since it said Islam forbids co-education of boys and girls under the same roof (Jha 2014).



From Madrasa to University

231

qualifier that interaction should be ‘proper’, or ‘within decent limits’, which translated into the following preconditions—it should be for ‘decent’ reasons such as education (vis-à-vis ‘indecent reasons’ such as boyfriendbazi), and in certain settings such as educational institutions like the university or workplace (vis-à-vis unsuitable locations such as coffee shops, malls, and movie halls). One of the girls I interviewed, Farheen, was particularly vocal on this subject. She was in her final year of B.A. Islamic Studies and was the only girl in her class amongst 49 boys. In her first year there had been two other girls in the course, but both of them left midway (on account of getting married, according to Farheen). Farheen talked about how initially, coming from a madrasa, she thought that even looking or thinking of an unrelated male was wrong, let alone talking to them. She had been taught to walk with a lowered gaze, not talk to unrelated men and, if they tried to speak to her, to talk back brusquely (sakhti se pesh aana). However, she found that she could not cope in class without interacting with any of her classmates or speaking in front of them. As she described: First year I never spoke to boys at all, then at exam time when I just couldn’t cope [with the pressure of the course work] my parents said, why don’t you ask someone for help … I was like, Allah! boys se notes loon? (Should I take notes from boys?) … but they were like, it is fine. I find there is a big havva (fuss) about boys in our heads because of what we are told in the madrasa … but now I talk to them in class, but only as friends, nothing otherwise. —Farheen (BA Islamic Studies, 3rd Year)

Farheen’s experience points to the increasing blurring of boundaries with regards to interaction with ghair mahram men, which often accompanies the transition from a girls’ madrasa to a co-educational setting. But significantly, Farheen’s account also alludes to the limits of such interaction, with only certain forms of interaction being regarded as ‘appropriate’. She invokes how circumstances made interaction with boys necessary—she needed help in her studies and there were no girls in her class. Further, her clear indication that the suggestion first came from her parents foregrounds her parents’ permissibility. Also, she qualifies in the end that she talked to boys ‘only in class’ and ‘just as friends’, feeling the need to justify that the interaction was appropriate

232

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

and within moral bounds. In balancing the competing demands of education and maintaining the public persona of a respectable girl, Farheen chooses to breach the madrasa-learnt prescriptions of purdah from na mahram men and not interacting with men, but she does this in a limited manner. By performing this balancing act, she enacts a certain appropriate form of being an educated Muslim girl. While the anxiety experienced by Farheen may be deeper, given her madrasa background, these dilemmas themselves—regarding the boundaries of respectable behaviour for a Muslim girl, in what ways and in what situations is it acceptable to adopt a flexible perspective on gender boundaries, and so forth—are not restricted to madrasa educated girls. This was most apparent in the girls’ discussions on the boys in their class. Here it is important to note that girls (including madrasa and non-madrasa students) were significantly less in number. There were around 10–12 girls in a class of 60 students in each of the four departments. During group discussions with the girls, madrasa students and non-madrasa students alike talked about how the attitude of many of the boys in class bordered on disrespectful, and they were constantly sneering and passing condescending remarks. The girls talked about how the boys would pass taunts and tongue-in-cheek remarks like ‘Mashallah, Mashallah’12 each time the girls would walk into class. According to the girls, each time a lecturer would direct a question to a girl in class, irrespective of the answer, the boys would snigger or, as one of the girls put it, ‘muh phad phad ke hanste hain’ (laugh loudly). In rare cases, things got particularly ugly—for example, Aaira described the case of one of her classmates who was forced to drop out of the course in the following way: One of my friends, she was very intelligent and smart, one of the few girls who could speak in Arabic because she had studied in Saudi for some time. The boys, especially the madrasa ones, resented her. Some also kind of liked her, but she did not give any bhav (attention) to anyone. After the vacations they pasted printouts of a false afsana (love 12  Mashallah literally means ‘as God has willed’ and the expression is generally used as a praise to convey ‘how finely God has created’. However, in this context the expression was not used as praise but as a means to embarrass, like a tongue-in-cheek jeer.



From Madrasa to University

233

story) using her real name, on all the boards in the Department. She had to leave. No one (in the Department faculty) did anything … some of these boys are so cheap and vindictive. —Aaira (BA Arabic, 1st Year)

When I asked them why they thought the boys behaved like this, the girls gave varied responses. Most of them just shrugged off the question, saying ‘Allah jaane’ (God knows). But some of the girls reasoned that even while earlier they thought that these boys were ‘just behaving like all boys’, their bura tareeqa (bad behaviour) had persisted, so they realized it was jaanbujh ke (deliberate). Sanjeeda gave an illustration: All the girls always sit together, but sometimes if by chance we walk into class after it has started, we sit wherever we find a place. One day I happened to be late and sat a little behind where the boys sit. They kept taunting me even while the class was going on, saying ‘this is not your place … go to your place’.

An interview situation, which eventually turned into a group discussion, was very revealing in this regard. Shabnam (shyly): My aunt says madrasa girls always get preference from boys in marriage. (Laughs from whole group) Sanjeeda: That’s what they used to tell us too, I don’t know ... the behaviour of the boys in class is very bad. When we girls sit together they pass remarks like Arabi madrasa baitha hai (Arabic madrasa is sitting). Shabnam: Sometimes, out of habit, if we say ‘Labbaik’—which means ‘present’ in Arabic—instead of saying ‘present’ in English during attendance, they laugh loudly and imitate us. Aaria: It is shocking; the madrasa boys are the worst. They have never been in the company of girls before, as they come from small places, and then suddenly they find such a khula mahaul, dimagh kharab ho jaata hai (they go haywire). Hem: Why do you say that? Aaria: I feel that. It is the way they talk to us. Like we are nothing. They talk of everyone else’s tehzeeb (manners), even though they have none. In class, when girls answer questions they pass comments like ‘Awaaz sunai nahi di’ (Can’t hear what you’re saying), or ‘Arre boli …

234

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

arre boli’ (She speaks ... she speaks), or ‘Bolna bhi jaanti hai’ (She knows how to speak, too). Shabnam: Also, ‘sabse dhile sabse aage’ (The slowest are sitting in front). Yana: They pass comments and taunts on our clothes, saying ‘madrase wali hokar jeans pehnti hain’ (despite being from a madrasa, she wears jeans), even though I cover my head. But what about them? Why don’t they wear their madrasa dress? They also wear jeans. Sanjeeda: Our class has boys from madrasas, they are to keep their gaze lowered too, but they don’t. It is always expected that girls keep their eyes downcast, but what about boys? The same rule is applicable to boys, too.

The girls’ reflections illustrate how often the boys in class emerged as important actors in the co-educational setting of the university, enacting and reinforcing ‘appropriate’ boundaries for the girls through their tongue-in-cheek remarks and behaviours, which often resulted in making the girls feel out of place in the classroom. Recent anthropological work based out of India cautions against interpreting such remarks of men as performance of gender hierarchies and calls for greater attention to the subtleties of the ambiguous nature of cross-gender interaction. For example, Caroline and Filippo Osella (1998) draw attention to the manner in which ‘gender and hierarchy are played as a game’ (1998: 195) in the form of flirtation that they describe (by employing the colloquial term) ‘tuning’ (1998: 193) in a rural setting in Kerala. While the process begins with aggressive verbal harassment, the intention is to induce the girl, flirt with and romance them—thus the harassing remark is often an ‘opening gambit’ (1998: 193). In this process, it is up to the woman who may regard it as harassment, in which case the interaction ceases, or as an initiation into further interaction, wherein she may retort with a counter-attack. Ritty Lukose (2009) also indicates a similar impulse wherein women resort to witty verbal counter-insults in the event of eve-teasing. However, in my field setting the men’s remarks seem more in line with the conventional manner in which eve-teasing is an exercise in the exertion of male power (Gilbertson 2014).13 The girls I interacted 13 Gilbertson’s

recent research (2014) with middle-class women in Hyderabad demonstrates how women choose not to respond to the verbal harassment by men. She maintains that eve teasing in this context represents a form of exertion of male power (2014: 134).



From Madrasa to University

235

with clearly stated that the boys’ remarks were made jaan-bujhke, or intentionally to harass and disrespect. Also, the women rarely responded or engaged in any form of direct counter-attack when faced with verbal harassment. All the girls from the above-mentioned group discussion deliberately chose to ‘ignore’ the boys’ deriding behaviour, remaining quiet as they felt that their position was more vulnerable. They talked about how, if the news reached back home that they were engaging with boys (even in an adversarial manner) it would cause greater harm to their reputation, and, in the worst-case scenario, could snowball into their families pulling them out of university. On the part of the girls, they have to tread carefully to ensure that their interaction with the boys in the university is proper and appropriate. Unlike the madrasa, which was structured around the premise that girls would have no interaction with men, the co-educational university setting provided the possibility of interaction with men. However, the girls are acutely aware of the vulnerability of their position in this regard. On different occasions the girls discussed how their parents had reposed great trust in sending them to the university, and about how they were responsible for maintaining the family honour, and hence had to take great care to not transgress the boundaries of propriety. In most girls’ narratives, the boundaries of propriety necessitated very limited or no interaction with men. The girls feared that if the news reached home or there was a ‘general impression’ that they were being ‘overfriendly’ with boys in the university it would cost the girl her reputation, bring shame to the family, and worst prematurely suspend their education. The above-mentioned responses of the girls (madrasas and non-madrasa students alike) need to be located within the larger discourses, which associate women’s respectability with controlled use of public space (Gilbertson 2014; Lukose 2009; Phadke 2005; Radhakrishnan 2011). Phadke (2005) describes how notions such as ‘good women do not take notice of unknown men’s comments’ (2005: 45–6) are part of a larger discourse, which ties women’s respectability with subscription to certain norms of gender boundaries. She argues that women are socialized into ‘appropriate’ behaviour not only by instilling fear of external violence but also censure within the family and community which would harm their marital prospects if they were to transgress the boundaries of what is deemed as respectable

236

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

(2005: 45). Recent anthropological research highlights how the pressures on women to embody respectability reveal themes of balance and limited engagement with public spaces. Radhakrishnan’s (2011) research on transnational IT workers illustrates how women exercise the ‘right’ amount of freedom balancing family and work by enacting a model of respectable femininity wherein they pursue only those limited opportunities offered by a professional job that maintain the sanctity of a woman’s sexual purity. Similarly, Gilbertson’s (2014) research with middle-class women in Hyderabad highlights how women adjust their self-presentation to ensure that they are respected in the public domain by dressing and behaving in a modest manner, avoiding spaces where men congregate, and so on. This often results in limiting their engagement to increasingly privatized and exclusive public spaces. Lukose’s (2009) research looks at how female college students move in public spaces in a contained and purposeful manner—their eyes looking down, bags and books clutched to their body, in stark contrast to the ‘open’, aimless manner in which men roam in the college campus. Lukose (2009) illustrates how the demure female body enables women to enter the public domain, but in ways that circumscribe her movements. She argues that the whole process of women’s education is linked to the gendered project of producing a feminine identity based on new forms of middle class respectability. The girls I observed and interacted with in Jamia Millia Islamia, irrespective of their previous educational background, articulated similar attempts to strike a balance between the competing demands of being a university student—which ostensibly encouraged girls to confidently engage in the classroom, interact with boys as equals and offered no restrictions on mobility—and the demands of personifying what Osella and Osella (1998) term as the ‘innocent prudery’ of respectable woman in public, which places the onus on women to engage in restricted purposeful movement in public spaces, modest dressing and demeanour, and maintaining their chastity. For the girls from madrasas, performing this balancing act proves even more challenging as the madrasa conception of a kamil momina with its insistence on purdah, adherence to hudud, rules of modesty (sharam/ haya), and so on, is itself a more demanding one. Attempts to practise pious ideals learnt in the madrasa with the needs of fitting into university life while remaining within the outer boundary of socially



From Madrasa to University

237

defined norms of respectability involves a lot of unlearning and learning for the madrasa girls. The narratives of the madrasa graduates studying in the university highlight this transformative process of learning and unlearning that the transition from the madrasa to the university brings in its wake. They unlearn some of the behaviour which was considered ideal in the madrasa, such as walking and talking with their gaze lowered, being shy and demure, not interacting with men who may be potential marriage partners (ghair mahram), and so forth. They also unlearn the stereotypical impressions they may have formed about the ‘others’ with whom they had had little interaction during their madrasa days, such as school-going girls and men. With greater interaction and exposure also come different views—for example, when I asked the madrasa educated girls in Jamia, in what ways were girls coming from schools different from them, most of them attributed positive qualities to school educated girls, saying the latter were more confident, knew better English, knew more about practical things like taking a bus or metro, booking tickets, filling forms, operating bank accounts, and so forth. They also talked about how girls from schools had what they described as ‘better GK or general knowledge’,14 knew about what was happening in the world, and did not hesitate to speak. Many of them confessed their prior prejudices about school educated girls, whom they assumed to be ill-mannered, shameless, and corrupt (besharam, behaya), loud, boisterous, and competitive, but explained how they had discovered on interacting with them that those were not true for all. Another case involving such unlearning pertains to the critical stance adopted by the madrasa educated girls towards the ‘boys from madrasas’, who they stated were the ‘worst’ of the boys in class as they passed the most remarks and tried to put the girls down by constantly demonstrating how the latter were not subscribing to madrasa rules. For many of the madrasa girls, the boys’ behaviour towards them was ‘unbecoming of a madrasa educated person’ and illustrated how little they had 14  G.K. is a locally used abbreviation for general knowledge. However, in everyday parlance in India, its used to denote someone who has knowledge of things within and beyond course work or someone who appears knowledgeable when s/he talks.

238

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

internalized during their madrasa years, thereby questioning their own assumptions that madrasa education translated into civility. When I asked the madrasa alumni what set them apart from the other girls in the university, most of them pointed to their better knowledge of religion and earnest practice or amal. They maintained that girls from a madrasa background were much more disciplined in their practice of purdah, offering prayers according to prescribed namaz timings, following Ramzan, and so on. According to the girls, this discipline helped them overcome the difficulties they faced, such as adjusting to the new courses, subjects, and patterns of interaction in the university. Their classmates who came from regular schools expressed a similar opinion about madrasa girls. Whenever I would casually ask girls from schools who would often be sitting in the same circle, about what they thought of girls from madrasas, most of them said that initially they had caricatured madrasa girls as ‘typical burqe wali ladkiyan’ (Girls who wear the full veil) who were exceedingly ‘sharif’ (well mannered), and ‘sirf Islami batein karti hain’ (just did Islamic talk). However, as they started interacting with madrasa students they realized that they truly (sach mein) knew a lot about religion and were better at subjects like Arabic, Urdu, and Persian. When I pressed the school girls to tell me some things they did not like about the madrasa educated girls, most of them said that madrasa students generally exclusively hung out with each other (apne mein). Others needed a lot of effort to break into the group. Some also commented that madrasa girls spoke excessively of religion (Allah ki batein bahut karti hain). The timeframe and scope of my research did not allow me to explore the making and re-making of interpersonal perceptions and stereotypes that emerged from the interaction between different groups of students belonging to different educational backgrounds. However, through my limited engagement with the students, I gathered how the interaction between men and women from different educational backgrounds, albeit in a university which was recently declared a minority institution, exposes girls to a range of possibilities not just related to education and professional careers but also the different ways of ‘being Muslim’, without necessarily ranking one over the other. This expansion of horizons was most conspicuous in the girls’ discussions about the future. Most of the madrasa students talked about



From Madrasa to University

239

how pursuing higher education in Jamia Millia Islamia had encouraged them to aspire for further education and a career outside conventional options. The girls candidly spoke about how initially they aspired only to study in a University like Jamia. But having reached Jamia and spent time in the university (especially, with peer interaction), they had realized that they could do a lot more than religious preaching and teaching in a madrasa or Urdu-medium school. Half the girls stated that they wanted to teach; the others (six) stated that they wanted to study further; some stated they wanted to work as translators (three), while one rather exceptional student said she wanted to become a civil servant and had even filled the form for the civil service exam. Here it might be interesting to note that of the ten girls who said that they wanted to teach, all three girls who were in their final year of B.A. had already applied for admission to the M.A. course and stated that they planned to appear for the National Eligibility Test (NET), a qualifying exam to teach at the university level in India. However, each time I asked the girls whether they had secured the permission to work from their families, most of them said that for the time being their parents had said ‘yes’, but the ultimate decision lay with their future husbands. The narratives of the madrasa graduates studying in university highlight the manner in which the girls articulate a range of ‘appropriate’ forms of being educated Muslim girls and thereby reconfigure and re-draw the ideal of a kamil momina. Their madrasa background allows the girls admission to the university, yet the transition brings in its wake many dilemmas. These dilemmas emerge from the tension between what the girls call the band mahaul of the madrasa—a fenced, gender-segregated setting marked by a strict disciplinary regime—and the khula mahaul of the university—a co-educational public space which allows for a greater degree of autonomy to the students. Each girl devises her own way to strike a balance between piety and the need to fit into the university life, thereby contributing to a variety of ways of being educated Muslim women. The next chapter brings together the girls’ journeys across different settings—from the home to the madrasa and beyond. Further, it analyses how each transition leads to a shift in the girls’ understanding and embodiment of the kamil momina.

chapter eight

Conclusion Bringing Together the Educational Journeys of Madrasa Students

I walked into the marriage celebrations to wish Farha, the bride-to-be (as she was the only person befriended in the field, I was likely to know in the gathering). As I was making my way towards her, someone tapped me on the back. I turned around to find the familiar face of Rukaiya Apa, one of the madrasa teachers at Jamiatul Mominat, along with my former students, Nikhar, Anam, Sania, and half a dozen other familiar faces. I was greeted in excited whispers and quickly chaperoned to the segregated section organized for women. Despite meeting after almost one and a half years, I felt immediately transported back to my fieldwork days in the madrasa. I was inundated with questions about my life, swamped with a flurry of detailed updates on theirs, interspersed with Rukaiya Apa’s introductions to people. And my supposed short visit, stretched to quite a few hours. I was just about to leave when Rukaiya Apa informed me that Farha had asked to meet me before I left. I was told she wanted to give me some good news. Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood. Hem Borker, Oxford University Press (2018). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199484225.003.0008



Conclusion

241

‘Apa, I just wanted to tell you that I got the job! Asif said I can take it up and he will give me a mobile (phone) so that we can … you know … talk with each other. I will send you a message, okay!’ said Farha. I laughed, thinking only Farha could describe taking up a new job as a teacher in a secondary school and having a mobile phone as equivalent achievements, that too during her wedding celebrations. On our way out, Rukaiya Apa filled me in on the details. How Farha’s parents had said that the decision to work rested with her prospective groom. How her prospective in-laws were keen that Farha engage in home tuitions but Asna (Farha’s elder sister, also related to Asif), knowing how hard Farha had worked to clear the BEd exams, managed to convince Asif. As Rukaiya Apa concluded, ‘After all, how many girls even clear the BEd exam and get offered a job? It is all Allah’s mehrbani (blessings).’ In the three years I had come to know Farha, this was not the first time she had managed to fulfil her duniyavi (worldly) aspirations in keeping with her dini (religious) and familial obligations. I had first met Farha during my preliminary fieldwork in the madrasa in 2012. At that time, she was pursuing her undergraduate degree in History at Jamia Millia Islamia and had been called to the madrasa by Rukaiya Apa to guide final year madrasa students. Rukaiya Apa had been full of praise for Farha, especially her English-speaking skills, and had introduced her as the only madrasa student who could recite naats in English. Farha studied till class 10 in a private English-medium school in Sharkarpur, Delhi. In 2007, her father joined a new construction business in Okhla, so the family shifted to the same area. Farha was admitted to Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat, a five-minute walk from the new house. Farha felt that a combination of several factors had prompted her parents’ decision to send her to the madrasa—scepticism about sending their daughter to a new co-educational high school, financial problems as the family was paying a higher rent for the house and her father was yet to find his feet in the new business, and the desire to not let Farha’s intelligence go zaya (waste). At 16 years of age, Farha found the transition difficult—she had never stayed away from her parents, was unaccustomed to the disciplined life of a madrasa, and her academic and sports achievements in school counted for little in the madrasa. As Farha spent more time in the madrasa, however, she became more and more disenchanted with her previous schooling.

242

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

She was consumed with the realization that her academic attainments at school and accolades as an athlete would bring her no merit in the akhirat (afterlife). She poetically described her sad realization: ‘duniya ki padhai to asbab hai, kamane ka fan hai, jeene ke liye aur khwahish puri karne ke liye’ (Worldly education is just a means to earn money in order to live and fulfil our wants). Over the next five years, Farha devoted herself to learning the madrasa way of becoming a pious Muslim woman. She recounted this transition in her self-portrait— how she changed from being someone who did not practise the purdah or do namaz, to a point where the ways of the madrasa became part and parcel of her. She distanced herself from her old school friends and ‘school ways’, especially athletics. Even during vacations, she would spend time teaching her younger siblings what she had learnt in the madrasa rather than ‘roam around’ as she used to during her school vacations. Farha described this change as a conscious self-transformation, employing the metaphor of dyeing herself in the colours of the madrasa (‘Maine apne aap ko madrasa ke rang mein rang diya’). However, even as Farha tried to model herself according to the madrasa rules, she felt a nagging dissatisfaction with the level of teaching when it came to school subjects like English, maths, and science. As she later joked, ‘In many cases the students know more than the teachers’. This, combined with the public acknowledgement of her spoken English in the madrasa, prompted her to appear for the class 12 examinations through the open school. In 2011, she secured admission into BA (Hons) History, a rare feat for a madrasa student since madrasa students conventionally cleared the entrances for subjects such as Urdu, Arabic, Islamic Studies, and so on. Farha aspired to finish her BA from Jamia Millia Islamia and teach girls in a madrasa. In the university, Farha faced what she described as the ‘biggest test’ of her life. She joked that it was like falling from the seventh sky (saatve asman se girna), from being a bright student in her school and madrasa to not being able to cope with studies in the university. For the first time, Farha felt the need to take coaching classes. To earn the extra money for her tuitions that her family could ill-afford, she decided to teach in the madrasa in the evenings. Farha described how she often felt torn regarding the madrasa. On one hand, she was thankful for the discipline it instilled in her and the friends she had made, but after coming to Jamia, she felt that there were unnecessary



Conclusion

243

restrictions (zarurat se zyada pabandi) in the madrasa and undue emphasis on religious talk (dini batein). She now lamented her giving up athletics after coming to know from classmates that many universities encouraged sports and extra-curricular activities. She also talked about how she used to try to follow the daily routine prescribed in the madrasa but had found that she could not do ‘everything’. Over time, Farha practised what she thought was important, such as Allah ka shukr ada karna (remaining thankful to god) purdah, namaz, bade chote ki tameez rakhna (being mindful of elders and youngsters), but let go of other practices. Farha now felt that ‘there is too much talk of Allah and din in the madrasa’, and that ‘more than upri batein (superficial matters) it is a person’s akhlaq (character) and zameer (heart or conscience) that is important’. She questioned the assumption that madrasa education was the only way to learn din, discussing how many of her classmates who were not from madrasas knew much more than her. Farha reasoned: I feel the madrasa instils knowledge about many important things, such as those that are haram in Islam (kuch cheez bilkul haram hai). But not everything (har cheez) can be seen like this. Talking to men, travelling with relatives, purdah cannot be divided into haram or halal; if women maintain boundaries (hudud) it is permissible.

When we met in Jamia Millia Islamia, Farha wore a headscarf over a salwar-kameez, without an abaya. She told me that she travelled to the university unaccompanied by a male relative, though often, with a group of friends, and had recently started travelling by the Metro. In 2014, when we last spoke, she was feeling extremely anxious about her decision to prepare for the BEd entrance exam while her family was looking for a groom. She also felt uneasy and torn between wanting to pursue her new aspiration of teaching in a regular school and the guilt of betraying her earlier expressed wish to teach in a madrasa and do dini khidmat (religious service). Farha’s story exemplifies why the (re)configuring of gender ideals within Muslim communities in India is best approached by tracing the various stages in the educational journeys made by girls like her. Tracing Farha’s experiences across different settings brings to the fore an unfolding journey with every transition bringing in its wake

244

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

changing aspirations and competing constraints, leading Farha to embody new ways of being a Muslim woman. Farha’s portrait personifies the central argument of my work—an attention to the unfolding lives of young girls as they make their way from their native homes to the madrasa and beyond which enables an understanding of the continuous process of fashioning and re-fashioning of gendered norms in Muslim communities in India. The remainder of this chapter builds on Farha’s portrait and brings together the analytical contributions of the earlier chapters. In the first part, I revisit the educational journeys of the madrasa students, weaving together the insights from the three transitions highlighted in the earlier chapters. I draw attention to the changes emerging in the community, by highlighting the unanticipated opportunities opened by madrasa education for girls to chart personal futures and negotiate with gender-based family and community norms without overtly challenging them. These changes do not fit conventional binaries of tradition and modernity, subordination and resistance, empowerment and disempowerment, but oscillate between and often combine the defining motifs of these binaries. In the second part, I discuss the contribution of this work to the anthropology of education, Islam, and gender. bringing together the educational journey

This ethnographic work has sought to explain the relationship between madrasa education, Islamic gendered norms, and the lives of Muslim girls by examining the everyday experiences of students in a girls’ madrasa in Delhi. Drawing on ethnography as a method of research and analysis, my approach to understanding the girls’ experiences has emerged from the field. Following the girls in their educational journey from the home to the madrasa and beyond, I have traced how girls’ education in madrasas relates to and impacts wider gender understandings in the family and community. In the initial chapters I situated Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat in its larger socio-political and educational context, by detailing the distinct moment at which girls’ madrasas stand in a rapidly changing India. I have explained the continuity and change that characterizes the long history of madrasa education in the Indian subcontinent. Examining



Conclusion

245

the rising salience of girls’ madrasas in contemporary India, Chapter 4 draws attention to the larger landscape marked by the socio-economic marginalization of Muslims, communalization of social space, rising popularity of Islamic reform movements, and rapid transformation in gender norms. By highlighting a discernible shift in the attitudes and demand for girls’ education within Muslim communities, I have shown how the increasing demand is emanating from the aspiring socio-economic classes which previously disapproved of women’s education. However, this changing attitude is accompanied by an anxiety about girls’ safety, morality, and a possible breach of Islamic gender norms that participation in educational spaces may involve. In this context, gender segregated madrasas that train women as religious specialists, offering formalized alima and fazila courses, are emerging as important educational options. Foregrounding the everyday lives of madrasa students my research has traced the educational journeys of girls studying in Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat in Delhi across three stages—home to the madrasa, life inside the madrasa, and beyond. In Chapter 5, I have examined the girls’ transition from their native homes to the madrasa focusing on the imaginaries of gender and community that underpin parents’ educational choices, and the educational regime in madrasas. I argued that the unifying imagination that drives parents’ educational demand for madrasas and the educational programme instituted by girls’ madrasas needs to be seen in conjunction with the larger discourse on the ummah. Drawing from field narratives, I have employed the concept of the ummah to highlight the imagined goalpost quoted by the participants in my research as the aspired destination. I have argued that the ideal of the ummah as a universal community of Muslim believers constitutes an imaginary production of the kind described by Anderson (1991) as ‘imagined community’. The imaginary of a kamil momina as the moral repository of the family and the community constitutes a building block of the imagined ummah. Girls’ madrasas, by positing themselves as custodians of religious education, are one of the key sites and means for operationalizing the imagined ummah. In this light, girls’ madrasas emerge as both the medium and outcome of the deeply felt need to educate girls into becoming ideal pious Muslim women who not only themselves embody the ummah, but, as future mothers, also contribute to its furtherance. In Chapters 2 and 5, I have

246

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

demonstrated that in the Indian context the ideological roots of the educational vision of the kamil momina, that is, as a representative of the community responsible for preserving cultural authenticity in the private sphere, can be traced back to nineteenth-century debates on the Muslim women’s reform in colonial India. The imaginary kamil momina emerges as a point of consensus between parents and madrasas. In Chapter 5, I highlight this synchrony between parental expectations and the madrasa educational programme by attending to both these dimensions. I have demonstrated how parents regard Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat as the ‘right’ school for their daughters. They explain how the madrasa offers benefits of both dini and duniyavi talim, which, in turn, enable respectable marriages, provide the requisite religious and moral anchorage that eliminates the danger of fitna, while being a gender segregated institution which encourages purdah, and an extension of family in terms of ensuring safety and security. Madrasas, on their part, inscribe the ideal of a kamil momina into their educational programme extending from the architecture of madrasas, to their institutional routines, rules, and body practices. Through a discussion of educational routines in madrasas in Chapter 5, I have described a range of disciplinary practices implemented in Jamiatul Mominat to educate girls towards becoming kamil mominas. For example, the closed architecture and constant surveillance practised in madrasas are regarded as essential to the safety of the girls. Similarly, girls are taught the virtues of farmanbardari and huquq to inculcate respect for authority and teach them their duties as wives, daughters, and mothers. Further, the madrasa educational programme lays great emphasis on practices of embodiment as a means of inculcating Islamic etiquettes and virtues. For example, girls are taught purdah as a means of imbibing haya. Similarly, akhlaq and adab are embodied through a certain way of talking, walking, and sitting. These restrictions (pabandi) are explained as meant for the ‘girls’ own good’, to instil a sense of self-discipline in the girls. Based on my description of the disciplinary regimen instituted in madrasas, I have argued that the madrasa educational project seeks to objectify the broad contours of the imaginary ideal Muslim woman. However, as I have later illustrated, this piety project implemented by the madrasa does not represent the everyday experiences of madrasa students.



Conclusion

247

In Chapter 6, I have examined the second stage in the girls’ educational journeys by focusing on their lives inside the madrasa. Drawing from my observations in the madrasa, I have highlighted the ambiguity that characterizes the girls’ practice of piety. The students’ espousal and embodiment of madrasa ideals coexists with everyday practices that lie outside madrasa prescriptions. Here it is critical to delineate the two strands of my argument. First, as is evident from my description of the students’ accounts, the girls understand and articulate their embodiment of madrasa prescribed norms as pious self-fashioning, or ways to become a ba-amal alima. They express a deep desire to become pious, which is linked in their narratives with beliefs about naseeb (destiny), divine will, life in the akhirat (hereafter), and ideas of jahiliyat (state of being ignorant of religious knowledge). In my analysis, I have described how this understanding resonates with anthropological literature that discusses embodied forms of piety as a means of self-fashioning (Deeb 2006; Frisk 2009; Mahmood 2005), especially the work of Mahmood (2005). However, as I have argued in Chapter 6, these declared attempts represent a partial picture of the everyday lives of girls. What emerges strongly in my account of student life in Jamiatul Mominat is how the girls’ practice of piety is not as synchronized or stable as the girls’ narratives often depict. In Chapter 6, I have explained the students’ ambivalent and contradictory practices by bringing together recent anthropological work on the ambiguity of piety (Deeb and Harb 2013; Schielke 2009a, 2009b; Schielke and Debevec 2012; Osella and Soares 2010) and De Certeau’s (1988) work on everyday life. Foregrounding the girls’ everyday practices in the madrasa, I have detailed how such ambivalence is revealed in a range of scenarios that, at the time, lie on the fringes of piety prescribed in the madrasa (such as gazing), sometimes push the boundaries of piety (such as future choices, especially pertaining to education and marriage), contradict requirements of piety (such as lying, fighting, and pragmatic acceptance of norms) and, on rare occasions, subvert norms of piety (such as openly flouting norms). I have particularly highlighted how friendship groups and networks constitute an important example of ambiguous social spaces in the madrasa. On the one hand, the friendship groups and peer group activities play a crucial role in the disciplining process as senior students mentor the

248

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

initiation of ‘juniors’ into madrasa life. On the other hand, it is the same disciplining friendships that create spaces for girls to circumvent madrasa rules. The embodiment of these ambivalent practices allows madrasa students to tactically use madrasa education to create a wider space for themselves without directly challenging madrasa norms. Having examined both the above-mentioned aspects of the madrasa students’ everyday life, that is, the girls’ desire to fashion themselves into embodying madrasa prescribed ideals of piety and the inherent ambiguity that underpins pious practice, I argue that the girls’ practice of piety emerges as a ‘fragile form of continuous day-today self-suggestion’ (Schielke 2009a: 33). I demonstrate that the girls’ understanding of the idea of the kamil momina and its translation into practice have an inherent flexibility wherein practicing pious submission learnt in the madrasa and engaging in activities that transgress madrasa norms are not necessarily seen in oppositional terms. The girls’ everyday lives depict a sense of pragmatism, flexibility, and fluidity. Depending on the time, space, and context, the girls embrace the norms learnt in the madrasa and the respectable status of ba-amal alima for its inherent worth or to negotiate greater access to opportunities like education, marriage, social status, or, in certain rare cases, they oppose the norms employing the vocabulary learnt in the madrasa to escape its pious disciplining. An attention to this fluidity helps in understanding how girls are fashioning their own definitions of what it means to be an ideal Muslim woman, not by contesting madrasa norms or breaking away from family and community ideals, but by introducing and including new ways of being into the vocabulary. This process becomes more apparent in the choices exercised by the girls after leaving the madrasa, highlighted in this work through narratives of madrasa alumni studying at Jamia Millia Islamia, in Chapter 7. In Chapter 7, I have examined the transition made by some students from the closely scrutinized environment of madrasas to spaces of higher education. Through my discussion of the lives of madrasa graduates in public spaces such as Jamia Millia Islamia, I have built on the argument made in earlier chapters about the fluidity of the ideal of the kamil momina. Engaging with Appadurai’s (2013) concept of the ‘capacity to aspire’ and De Certeau’s (1988) work on everyday life, I have demonstrated how the transition to higher education



Conclusion

249

brings in its wake new aspirations and shifts in the understandings and embodiment of what constitutes a pious Muslim woman. I have argued that the relationships, friendships, and peer networks fostered in the madrasa to nurture certain notions of Islamic womanhood unintentionally provide girls with what Appadurai (2013) terms as ‘navigational information’ to pursue aspirations that lie outside the defined boundaries of the ideal. The pursuit of these aspirations transforms life trajectories anticipated by madrasa education without overtly challenging the madrasa vision. However, this ‘navigational capacity’, to borrow Appadurai’s (2013) term, of madrasa students is also limited by a range of intersecting factors owing to their gender, minority status, and socio-economic and religious location in addition to their educational past of having studied at a madrasa. Thus, aspirations are revealed as a day-to-day process constituted through everyday negotiations, rather than an abstract set of goal-bound desires oriented towards a distant future. I have also highlighted how this continuing negotiation between the girls’ shifting aspirations and constraints assumes new forms. For example, in the university, balancing gendered notions of respectability (Gilbertson 2014; Lukose 2009; Phadke 2005) and pious virtues learnt in the madrasa, often compete with the demands of higher education. Connecting the madrasa students’ lives across three different stages—from the home to the madrasa, at the madrasa, and beyond— reveals an unfolding journey where starting points and destinations are in flux. Each transition heralds a new horizon with new aspirations and imaginings of the self as the girls navigate through multiple constraints using the resources at hand. The continuous negotiation of aspirations at every juncture configures and reconfigures the gender boundaries of the same world from which it emanates. It tells us about the ways in which girls are scripting change within Muslim communities in India. key contributions

Throughout this work, I have sought to tell the lives of young madrasa students by foregrounding motifs and themes that emerged from the field. I have woven together the girls’ disparate experiences by attending to their educational journeys from the home to the madrasa and

250

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

beyond. I have not sought to impose a single frame to understand the girls’ lives, but instead engaged with theoretical concepts that have assisted me in my understanding. This focus on the unfolding of the girls’ lives across different transitions, especially the use of ethnographic portraits (Chapters 1, 3, and 8), have allowed my work to capture the complex process of (re)fashioning of gender norms amongst Muslim communities in India. My work critically scrutinizes the grand narratives of reproduction and empowerment employed in the literature on madrasa education in South Asia. Studies that emphasize the role of madrasa education in creating ‘docile subjects’ (Alam 2011; Winkelmann 2005) assume students’ embodiment of madrasa norms as reflective of the entirety of their lives, in order to argue that girls’ madrasas foster ‘domesticated femininity’, training girls to be good mothers and wives, not for employment and economic independence (Jeffery, Jeffery, and Jeffrey 2004, 2006). This is theorized as reproducing the marginality of Muslims (Alam 2011; Jeffery, Jeffery, and Jeffrey 2004, 2006) with women using religious doctrines to ‘rationalize the subordination they experience’ (Begum and Kabir 2012). On the other hand, work that emphasizes the role of religious education in women’s empowerment tends to overstate agency and resistance. Scholars like Bano (2009) argue that madrasas promote alternate conceptions of women’s empowerment. Similarly, Muslim feminist writings anticipate that women’s access to religious education and superior scriptural knowledge would eventually undermine the monopoly of male dominated patriarchal readings of Islamic law and practice. However, the students of Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat present little evidence that the girls’ experience in the madrasa promotes such feminist consciousness or inspires such questioning. The lives of young girls in Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat do not abide by either of the above-mentioned rigid categorizations. The embodiment of madrasa ideals coexists with ambivalent and contradictory practices that lie outside the ambit of madrasa prescriptions. Depending on the time, space, and context, the girls practice madrasa norms and embrace the respectable status of an alima for its inherent worth or to tactically negotiate greater access to opportunities that lie outside the defined realms of gendered piety. Thus, we see girls engaging in and creating new imaginings of the self, oscillating between and



Conclusion

251

combining the motifs that define reproduction and empowerment. In this regard, focusing on the unfolding journeys of students has allowed my work to highlight the girls’ changing notions and practices of being pious educated Muslim women as they move between spaces such as the home, the madrasa, and the university. Conceptually, a key contribution of my work lies in its examination of the educational journeys of the girls through certain transitions by bringing together the concepts of community, piety, and aspirations in dialogue with each other. I have foregrounded the everyday lives of madrasa students to problematize the totalizing emphasis on piety that characterizes anthropological work on pious self-fashioning in Islamic contexts, especially the seminal work by Saba Mahmood (2005). I have demonstrated how the everyday practices of girls in madrasas cannot be solely attributed to their desire to fashion pious selves (even though this is the most commonly articulated rationale). By drawing attention to the relational, contextual, and ambiguous content of piety, my work builds on recent anthropological scholarship on the ambivalences that pervade pious practice (Deeb and Harb 2013; Osella and Soares 2010; Schielke 2009a, 2009b). Drawing together the concept of piety with imaginings about the community and individual aspirations, I have highlighted how the girls are constantly engaging in the process of learning and unlearning, exploring alternate visions of the future. These transformative engagements, I argue, are reconfiguring wider gender norms by introducing new ways of being educated Muslim women in the vocabulary of the kamil momina. In this regard, the girls’ lives reveal an alternate understanding of aspirations, which stands apart from Appadurai’s (2013) abstract conception of the capacity to aspire. The girls’ aspirations do not constitute a grand project about a distant future, such as the kind plotted by Appadurai (2013) but remain firmly grounded in the everyday minutiae of life, oriented towards the immediate future, which is navigated on a daily basis using the resources at hand. The girls’ capacity to aspire remains a partial project; its success is intertwined with that of the broader democratic gender politics within these communities. At the level of policymaking and development debates in India, this work calls into question the prevalent perspectives on madrasa modernization and educational empowerment of Muslim women. I discuss these policy reflections that emerge from my work in the

252

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

next chapter. I conclude this chapter by reiterating the importance of understanding the changes being introduced in Muslim communities through girls’ madrasas. These changes are often overlooked or viewed through the rigid binaries of secular versus religious and traditional versus modern. My work has offered a more nuanced and complex narrative.

chapter nine

Coda Policy Reflections

August 2017: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government in Uttar Pradesh has launched a portal of UP madrasa board for online registration of all such Islamic institutions to ‘check irregularities’ and ensure transparency.1 This is applicable for the government affiliated/ aided madrasas including 19,000 recognized madrasas and 560 aided madrasas. August 2017: The BJP-led government in Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh have ordered registered madrasas in their states to unfurl the national flag, sing the national anthem, organize a cultural programme on Independence day and submit photographs and video recordings to the respective madrasa boards.2 The 1 

News reports (PTI, 2017) of 18–19 August 2017 state that the order was issued by Uttar Pradesh Madrasa Shiksha Parishad. 2  News reports (ANI, 2017; Choudhury, 2011; Verma, 2017) of 11–12 August 2017 state that the order was issued by Uttar Pradesh Madrasa Shiksha Parishad and Madhya Pradesh madrasa Board in UP and MP respectively. Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood. Hem Borker, Oxford University Press (2018). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199484225.003.0009

254

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

state governments explain their order as just an attempt to record best practices in madrasas so that they can be replicated. Many madrasas have criticized this as blatant targeting of madrasas and the order as an attempt to test the patriotism of Muslims by asking for visual proof and ordering tiranga yatras (tricolour marches). July 2015: The BJP-led government in Maharashtra has decided to classify madrasas that do not teach ‘modern’ subjects such as English, science, mathematics, and social science as ‘non-schools’ and its students as ‘non-school going’.3 The Maharashtra government explains its decision as an enabling measure to allow more Muslim students to avail mainstream education. Critics denounce the move as coercive, illegal, a blatant violation of constitutional rights including the Right to Education, and an attempt to demonize Muslim communities and their institutions. The above-mentioned madrasa reform initiatives cannot be dismissed as yet another move in the history of BJP-led governments at the Centre and in the states to delegitimize idioms associated with Muslim identity. A discernible tone and tenor of compulsion if not coercion characterizes each of the diktats pertaining to madrasas—an online portal to check irregularities, an order to celebrate Independence day and submit video proofs, threats to de-recognize—all pronounced in the name of madrasa reform and modernization. In this chapter, I discuss the key policy reflections that emanate from my research. In the first part, I focus on madrasa modernization. I begin by providing an overview of state-led madrasa reform efforts. I go on to problematize the understanding of madrasa modernization enunciated in policies. I employ my research findings to highlight the ill-conceived binaries of traditional versus modern and religious versus secular that underscore policy perspectives on madrasa reform. In the second part, I question the policy assumptions about the educational empowerment of Muslim women. I argue that the findings of 3  News

reports (Bhakto 2015; Phadnis 2015) of 3–4 July 2015, say that the Principal Secretary of the Minority Affairs Department sent a letter to the Principal Secretary, School Education, saying that students at madrasas which do not teach Mathematics, Social Science, Science and English should be considered as ‘non-school going’.



Coda

255

my research complicate the linear associations between schooling and women’s empowerment. I conclude by arguing that an attention to the lives of madrasa teachers, students, and their families would lead to more inclusive and effective policy-making. madrasa modernization

The State and the Indian Madrasas: Policy Discourse of Madrasa Modernization

The madrasa system of education in India has for long time been a fiercely debated space within the traditional versus modern and religious versus secular dichotomies that dominate the education debate (Metcalf 2007; Sikand 2005; Zaman 1999). As discussed in Chapter 2, the roots of these debates can be traced to the colonial period. In the pre-colonial period, madrasas were associated with the training of the intellectual and bureaucratic elite for administrative jobs along with producing religious scholars and leaders. However, the colonial rule was a critical turning point. It introduced notions like ‘religious neutrality’ and ‘useful instruction’ (Zaman 1999) and ‘backward Muslim’ (Seth 2007), which led madrasas to be categorized as traditional centres of Islamic learning with little use in securing future employment outside the religious sphere. The colonial encounter fostered an increasingly negative perception of madrasa education. At the same time, it had the unanticipated consequence of promoting a new kind of madrasas (Nair 2009), such as the Deoband in 1867 and Nadwatul Ulama in the 1890s. These new madrasas, which arose from the post1857 Muslim reform movements, termed themselves as religious educational institutions that sought to preserve traditional Islamic learning (dini talim) and catered to the educational needs of the common masses. This orientation to adapt and change reform, which characterizes the genesis and history of madrasas like the Deoband, is often cited by scholars (Hartung 2006) to illustrate madrasas as inherently reform oriented. Post Indian independence and the country’s partition, Muslims emerged as the largest minority community in India and madrasas became Muslim minority institutions. Madrasas came under the purview of the Constitutional guarantees given to minority communities,

256

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

particularly the freedom to practice, propagate religion, and manage religious affairs, and establish and administer their educational institutions. In independent India, madrasa reforms emerged as a key policy measure. However, ever since it was first mooted, madrasa modernization has remained a disputed issue in the relationship between madrasas and the Indian state. The Indian state has continued to push for madrasa reforms invoking its responsibility to strengthen educational institutions and provide education to all. On the other hand, madrasas, which wish to stay out of the ambit of state intervention, resist the state’s overtures, referring to their constitutional right to educate children in the tenets of Islam (Nair 2009). An analysis of the policy documents and programmes ranging from the National Policy on Education documents (Government of India 1968; Government of India 1986; Government of India 1992), Committee Reports (Government of India 2006d; Government of India 2007a; Government of India 2007b), and annual reports of national commissions (See Appendix 2 for relevant reports) reveals madrasa modernization as a principal policy intervention of the state. A close examination of the discussions and recommendations in the above-mentioned documents illustrates how madrasas are represented as static and homogeneous traditional entities that need to be modernized. We can identify and periodize policy discussions on madrasa modernization into three overlapping phases based on the nature of madrasa reforms proposed. In the first phase, corresponding with the first three decades of independence, the educational concerns of Muslim are clubbed with those of other educationally backward communities. In this phase, policy documents emphasize identification of educationally backward groups, which require special emphasis like Scheduled Castes (SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs), Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and minorities including Muslims, with gender represented as a crosscutting concern. This phase saw little state engagement with the question of madrasa reforms. The second phase, roughly covering the next two decades (1980s–2000s), witnessed increasing attention to the question of madrasa reform. In 1983, the idea of madrasa modernization was mooted in the Prime Minister’s 15-point programme for the welfare of minority communities. The National Policy on Education (1986)



Coda

257

and Programme of Action (1992) included recommendations on the modernization of madrasas. This was operationalized in 1994 with the Area Intensive Madrasa Modernization Programme suggesting the introduction of English, science, mathematics, and Hindi as subjects on a voluntary basis. In the following years, there were attempts to expand the madrasa modernization scheme to include components such as teachers training, support for infrastructural development, recognition to madrasa degrees for higher education, and the development of state madrasa boards (See Appendix 2 for relevant documents). This gradual expansion of madrasa modernization into a national programme corresponded with its increasing politicization and visibility in media and popular discourse. In 2004, we see a change of policy initiated by the Congressled United Progressive Alliance, or UPA-I, government formed with the support of Left parties, which won electoral success on the promise of inclusive policies. This third phase saw the madrasa modernization policy gather new momentum with an increasing focus on institutional mechanisms to standardize madrasa education. Several new institutions were set up to address the concerns of minorities including the Ministry of Minority Affairs, the National Commission for Religious and Linguistic Minorities, and the National Commission for Minority Educational Institutions (NCMEI). An expert committee of the National Monitoring Committee on Minority Education was constituted to look into the modernization of madrasas. It suggested linkages with the National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS) for accreditation  of madrasa degrees. In 2006, NIOS opened a minority cell (Government of India 2006e) to assist madrasas with accreditation  and facilitate linkages between madrasas and mainstream institutions.4 Around this time, the National Commission for Minority Education Institutions also recommended setting up a Central Madrasa Board to standardize, mainstream, and modernize madrasa education in its report (Government of India 2007a) to the union government based on nationwide consultations. The impetus for madrasa reform and modernization also emerged from the Prime 4 NIOS,

in selected states, also conducts examinations for madrasa students and awards certificates.

258

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

Minister’s New 15-Point Programmes for the Welfare of Minorities (Government of India 2006c) and recommendations of the Sachar Committee Report (Government of India 2006d) and the Ranganath Misra Report (Government of India 2007b). In 2008, the Area Intensive Madrasa Modernization Programme of the central government was recast into two separate schemes, which currently define the central government’s engagement with madrasas. The first is the Scheme for Providing Quality Education in Madrasas (SPQEM), which aims to provide financial assistance to madrasas to introduce regular school subjects like science, mathematics, Hindi, and English in their curriculum. The second scheme, Infrastructure Development of Minority Institutions (IDMI), seeks to facilitate infrastructural development of madrasas and other minority institutions. Madrasas are also incorporated in the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA)5 as a separate component (UNESCO 2015). In 2009, the government introduced the ‘Central Madrasa Board Bill’ to create a national level co-ordination mechanism as a part of madrasa modernization efforts. The new BJP government at the Centre, formed in 2014, has renewed the focus on madrasa modernization—from the pronouncement in the Presidential address to the new Parliament in June 2014 that madrasas will be modernized, the Rs 100 crore allocation for madrasa modernization in the Union Budget 2014, to the announcement

5 

SSA is the Government of India’s flagship programme for the universalisation of elementary education. It is being implemented to achieve the aims of the 86th Amendment to the Indian Constitution, which makes free and compulsory education for children in the 6–14 years age group a fundamental right. SSA is administered in partnership with state governments. Under SSA, madrasas, affiliated to the State Madrasa Board and/or following ‘State Board Curriculum’ are entitled to the same assistance as other schools under SSA. SSA norms also state that support can be extended to madrasas not affiliated to the Government under the Education Guarantee Scheme (EGS) or Alternative Integrated Education (AIE) components. The support to madrasas under SSA includes provisions for free supply of formal education textbooks, teaching-learning material grant, and salary of teachers, teacher training and Mid-Day Meals.



Coda

259

of the education and skill development scheme, Nai Manzil,6 in the Union Budget 2015 and its launch (PTI 2015), which emphasized madrasa students as the main target group.7 It regards madrasa modernization as a principal means for the development of the Muslim communities, a means to strengthen the ‘weak organ of the body without which the body cannot be healthy’ (PTI 2014). The imagery of this ‘modernized Muslim’ that the current policy aims to carve out from amongst madrasa graduates is perhaps captured by the much publicized vision of Prime Minister Narendra Modi for Muslims, ‘the cap wearing Muslim holding the Quran in one hand and the laptop in the other’ (Express News Service 2014). Madrasa Modernization: A Flawed Binary

The history of recent educational policy (See Appendix 2 for relevant documents) establishes madrasa reform as a key policy lever to address the educational deprivation of Muslims. An assessment of the madrasa reform programmes since independence highlights the changing thrust of initiatives. However, the discernible thread running through policy discourse is the underlying conception that madrasas are anachronistic institutions of religious education which offer little or no employment possibilities outside the religious sector and hence face a ‘crisis of relevance’, to borrow the 6  In the Union Budget 2015, there was a negligible increase in budgetary allocations of the Ministry of Minority Affairs and other programmes targeting Muslim communities. The only ‘new’ scheme announced was an integrated education and livelihood scheme called ‘Nai Manzil’ (New Destination). 7  Launched by the Minister of Minority Affairs on 10 August 2015 (PTI 2015) the scheme enables minority youth who do not have a formal schoolleaving certificate to obtain one and find better employment. Madrasa students are amongst the primary target groups of the Nai Manzil scheme. The Minister termed it as a key policy provision to bring madrasa students into the ‘mainstream’ by proving them bridge courses in school subjects to ensure they can take their (class 10 and 12) Board examinations through distance mode; skill development and job-training.

260

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

expression from an NCMEI report (Government of India 2007a),8 in a modernizing India along with posing the potential ‘danger’ of ‘radicalizing’ Muslim youth. Thus, the emphasis on what in policy parlance is termed as ‘madrasa reform’ or ‘modernization’ and ‘mainstreaming’ of madrasa students. While the specifics of the state-led modernization interventions vary with time and geographical area, we can identify certain common features. The status of being ‘recognized’ is accorded to madrasas that accept government aid and/or affiliation to state madrasa boards; in lieu of this recognition the madrasas are required to introduce ‘modern’ subjects in their curriculum such as English, mathematics, science, social science, and computer education. Often the state also extends other support, such as provision for salaries of teachers who teach modern subjects in madrasas, infrastructural development of recognized madrasas, and assistance in fostering linkages between recognized madrasas and NIOS. The qualifications or certificates conferred by these recognized madrasas9 are given a status equivalent to corresponding certificates of the school examinations boards such as the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) for the purpose 8 The

Report of the National Commission for Minorities Educational Institutions on modernisation of madrasa education was submitted to the Minister of Human Resource Development in April 2007. Chairperson Justice M.S.A. Siddiqui headed it. 9  There is great variance in granting equivalence to madrasa qualifications in India. It is contingent on the madrasa fulfilling a range of eligibility criterion, which vary across states. For example, in states with State Madrasa Boards (which includes Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal, Jharkhand, Orissa and Assam) the certificates of the Madrasa Boards granted equivalence by State Education Boards to that of their Secondary and Senior Secondary qualification are equated with corresponding certificates of the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), Council of Board of School Education in India (COBSE) and other School Examination Boards, for the purpose of employment and entry to higher levels of education. Another parallel way of recognition is that many universities across India, such as Jamia Millia Islamia, Jamia Hamdard, Aligarh Muslim University, Maulana Azad National Urdu University, have their own eligibility criteria to recognise the degrees of certain madrasas for enrolment of students in select graduate and postgraduate courses.



Coda

261

of employment and entry to higher levels of education. Policy documents tend to convey the assumption that the adoption of some or all the above-mentioned conditions would instantaneously modernize or reform madrasas, presenting madrasa modernization as a panacea for the educationally backward Muslim communities. The modernization programme has gained some support. However, it is largely confined to certain states. The madrasas accepting government aid constitute a small fraction of the total. Some of the prominent madrasas, like Darul Uloom Deoband and Nadwatul Ulama Lucknow have continued to refuse government aid. The madrasa modernization programme continues to remain a subject of polarizing debate. Critics question the basis of and purpose behind the modernization drive. They argue that given the findings of the government-appointed Sachar Committee Report (Government of India 2006d) that only 4 per cent students go to madrasas, policy focus should be on strengthening regular schooling options in Muslim dominated areas. Their argument is that the policy emphasis on madrasas further marginalizes Muslims.10 On the one hand, the policy discourse refers to educational backwardness as one of the main causes behind the alienation of Muslims and acknowledges inclusive education as a panacea; on the other hand, it confines the question of Muslim education to madrasa modernization, which leads to further isolation of Muslims and limits educational choices to exclusive Muslim managed networks and services such as madrasas. The critique from the ulama and other prominent religious scholars and leaders raises a different set of concerns. A prominent concern among the ulama is that in the garb of modernization, the government may deprive them of their independence and autonomy. In 2009, a section of Muslim Parliamentarians refused to support the Central Madrasa Board Bill, 2009, in Parliament for the same reason. These fears are continually being fanned because despite many madrasas accepting the reform programme, the demand for reforms has not diminished (Hartung 2006). Representatives of madrasas cite this to question the 10  For

example Trivedi (2013) highlights how critics excessive focus on madrasa education ‘politically isolates the Muslims’ and reflect attempts by the government to ‘abdicate the responsibility of providing modern school education to Muslim children in the name of supporting madrasas’ (2013: 239).

262

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

ulterior motives of the state-led reform programme. Those who support the madrasa modernization programme, including voices from within the religious clergy, argue that modernization would bring in its wake many advantages such as access to education in modern subjects, improvement in teachers’ salaries, and presumably the quality of teaching, open up opportunities for higher education and employment, and ensure that madrasas remain relevant. A common critique of state-led modernization levied by both sides, advocates, and the detractors is the lack of attention in policy to the processes that would translate madrasa modernization into practice. In June 2014, following the budgetary announcement of 100 crore rupees for madrasa modernization, the Deoband rector publicly stated that there was little clarity on ‘what the government wants to do’ as a part of the programme (Srivastava 2014a). Similar concerns have been expressed by academic scholars. They argue that the policy’s view of modernization is rather simplistic if not tokenistic, a mere function of adding modern subjects to the traditional madrasa syllabi, without indicating as to how this would translate into practice. For instance, scholars like Jhingran (2005) and Alam (2007) question how the differences between religious knowledge and the knowledge imparted in modern subjects, such as the sciences, be ‘integrated’ and ‘unified’ in madrasas. My work does not engage with the policies to make recommendations on whether madrasa modernization should be supported or opposed. My objective is to problematize the very assumptions that inform policy writing on madrasas. A close examination of the ideal of education enshrined in policy documents such as the present National Curricular Framework (NCERT 2005) betrays a tendency to assume ‘modern’ education as a unified goalpost that ought to be imparted in all schools. Non-formal and informal schools and other schooling institutions in varied contexts, catering to the diverse needs of different communities are held up against this desired model. Madrasas are one such schooling institution regarded as traditional outliers in the universe of mainstream education. Policy thus prejudges madrasas in binaries of traditional versus modern and religious versus secular, brackets them as institutions in need of reform and prescribes ‘modernization’ and ‘mainstreaming’ as interventions. My work highlights these as ill-conceived prescriptions based on a policy process that



Coda

263

involved little real interaction with the ground reality. An examination of policy documents from the vantage point of the journeys of madrasa students over time reorients our understanding of madrasa education in important ways. Complex Linkages

Far from typifying madrasas in terms of traditional versus modern and religious versus secular education, my research highlights that it is not dichotomies but a continuum at work. The madrasas and mainstream educational institutions do not represent mutually insulated spheres; they are characterized by constant to-and-fro movement and continuity. These linkages are often self-consciously contrived, with madrasas actively seeking to get recognition for their qualifications from universities and education boards, or spontaneously generated by parents and students. The girls I researched had studied in so-called secular schools, ranging from government to private schools, before joining the madrasa. Several of them, while in the madrasa, were simultaneously sitting for open school exams through the distance learning mode. On the completion of their madrasa education many of them opted for higher education in central universities that recognized madrasa degrees. The importance of the role-played by madrasas in facilitating admission to regular primary schools (SPQEM Evaluation Report 2013) and higher education (Government of India 2012c) has also been highlighted by recent research. In situating the demand for madrasa education in the wider canvas of the community and the family, my research demonstrates the range of push and pull factors that drive and feed the demand for madrasa education. The current policy discourse presupposes the educational demand of Muslim parents in terms of madrasas versus schools, ignoring the intersecting factors that shape parental choices, such as socio-economic marginalization, real fears about the growing prejudice and discrimination against Muslims, desire for a culturally appropriate mahaul, and the combination of religious and secular education. The emergence of madrasas across denominations embracing motifs of ‘modernization’ without state aid highlights this changing nature of the demand emanating from within the community. There is an increasing adoption of regular school subjects, or what Kumar

264

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

(2003) terms as ‘nationalisation’ of the curriculum, by madrasas which are not receiving any government grant-in-aid (Metcalf 2007). For example, Deoband (despite being at the forefront of critiquing and even opposing the state-led madrasa modernization programme) teaches English, computers, and subjects like general science and history (including the Indian constitution). Many madrasas also offer vocational training courses, teach crafts, and offer other technical training facilities to provide students with livelihood opportunities (Metcalf 2007). Similarly, there is a great demand amongst madrasas to get recognition of their degrees from mainstream universities. Policy documents tend to conflate the madrasas’ scepticism and/or rejection of the state-led modernization programme with the madrasa ideology, positing madrasas and the madrasa leadership as ideologically opposed to modernization. Studies on the engagement between the Indian State and madrasas (Bano 2011; Nair 2009) reveal how the adoption of state-led modernization is not a question of ideology alone but the interplay of several factors. Bano (2011) attributes it to a combination of financial incentives, trust, and how engagement with the state impacts the madrasas’ position and access to community resources (Bano 2011). Nair (2009) illustrates how the dynamics of the relationship between the Indian state and madrasas is based on three factors: the state’s constitutional obligations to the minorities, the quest for political power of parties with different ideologies operating at the centre and state level, and the madrasas’ own quest for survival as institutions that remain relevant to the Muslim community (Nair 2009). Other scholars like Alam (2011) highlight internal undercurrents and sectarian politics such as maslak based denomination and related questions of organizational affiliation. A shift in attention from the top-down and state-led madrasa modernization programme to the bottom-up processes moving madrasas towards ‘modernization’ would allow policy to become more attuned with the complex processes shaping the demand for a particular kind of education emanating from the community as well as the response of madrasas. In this regard, my study highlights the multiple microprocesses at play—the competing interests shaping parental demand for madrasa education and the extent to which these are gendered; the discernible trend in madrasas to combine the dini (religious) and duniyavi (worldly) in its educational programme and the role of



Coda

265

madrasas in fostering peer networks and linkages which aid students’ aspirations and enable them to avail mainstream education in unanticipated ways. The greatest policy failing of the madrasa modernization scheme is its inability to incentivize and the failure to facilitate the movement of madrasa students into so-called mainstream spaces, despite ‘mainstreaming’ being one of the key objectives. The current policy is based on the assumption that the mere recognition of degrees of modernized madrasas would automatically mainstream madrasa students into higher education. While some universities that recognize madrasa degrees do contain the provision of bridge courses, there is little proof of their functioning on the ground. The interactions with madrasa graduates discussed in my book allude to the merit in instituting concrete measures such as bridge courses, remedial classes, scholarships (particularly to cover living expenses), and inter-departmental peer group networks (including senior students in university who have made similar transitions)—which do exist informally but are largely confined to the departmental level—or madrasa alumni groups, to support the transition of students from madrasas to universities. At a conceptual level, this policy gap is symptomatic of the gap between policy prescriptions and everyday lives. By highlighting the tension between the familiar and unfamiliar experienced by the girls in the transition from madrasas to higher education settings, my work illustrates how the policy focus on modernization and mainstreaming pays little attention to students’ experiences. The excessive emphasis in policy on madrasa reform tends to bracket madrasa education (and hence madrasa graduates) at the bottom of an artificially created hierarchy of knowledge forms. Policy haste to mainstream madrasa students by applying ill-conceived ‘universals’ from above often proves counter-productive. It impairs the learning process of the girls and ends up alienating them as the places where they are supposedly mainstreamed (such as universities) have little sensitivity or awareness for the knowledge they possess. In this regard, policy interventions will gain much by moving away from the tendency to view aspired ‘universals’ (such as modern and secular education) as lying at one end of the spectrum and the heterogeneity of lived experiences as lying at the other end. A more viable option, as Talib (2010) writes, ‘is to conceive of universality as

266

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

i­nherent in and not opposed to creatively developing particular formations’. Such an educational vision would acknowledge the diverse knowledge forms through which the learners would be able to affirm themselves (Talib 2010: 243). This is particularly important given the limited participation of Muslims in higher education, highlighted by the recent Post Sachar Evaluation Committee Report (Government of India 2014). Rather than the conventional perception of madrasas as barriers, there is an increasing acknowledgement of their role in facilitating transition to more mainstream educational spaces (Government of India 2012c; SPQEM Evaluation Report 2013).11 rethinking ‘ empowerment ’ and education

Framed in isolated silos of ‘education’, ‘gender’, and ‘religious minorities’, Indian policy-making remains divorced from the way in which these categories are fused in real lives. An exploration of policy discussions on the education of Muslim women requires us to step out of the realm of education into the policy domain of gender. Here we find policy documents, for instance, the report of the NCMEI Committee on Girls Education (Government of India 2012b); Eleventh (2007–12) and the Twelfth Five Year Plan (2012–17) (Planning Commission 2008, 2013), Prime Minister’s New 15-Point Programme (Government of India 2006c), inundated with recommendations for the educational empowerment of Muslim women, to address the educational marginalization of Muslims. A critical enquiry into the policy discourse on Muslim women necessitates an understanding of multiple factors. First, policy documents in general and those relating to Muslim women in particular often uncritically borrow the western-liberal language and concepts of women’s rights, gender equality, and empowerment without taking 11 The findings of the NUEPA Report (GoI 2012c), available on the Ministry of HRD website, highlight the progressive role of madrasa education in strengthening participation of students in higher education. It states: ‘It is important to note that religion in the perception of students plays a positive role and, therefore, Madrasas need to be modernised, mainstreamed and supported at par with any secondary schools in India, particularly so in the regions where Muslims dominate’ (2012c: 10).



Coda

267

into cognizance the conjoining political and intellectual projects (Kabeer 1999; Mohanty 1988) that underpin such conceptions. In the case of Muslim women, this often feeds underlying assumptions that conservative gender norms inherent in Islam lie at the root of Muslim women’s backwardness. Second, in Indian democracy, the constitutionally recognized autonomy of Muslim communities in the spheres of education and religion has often resulted in situations where minority rights tend to conflict with gender equality concerns. In the past, these conflicts have been politicized by the prevalent communal discourse in India wherein Muslim conservatives employ it as a means to consolidate religious group identity, whereas members of the Hindu Right use it to justify violence against Muslim women. In this context, questions pertaining to development—be it in health, education, legal rights, and so forth—often get appropriated and debated by the conservative sections among both Hindus and Muslims, with the ‘Muslim woman’ becoming mostly instrumental in these debates (Kirmani 2009). In this regard, the state’s attempts to reconcile religion and women rights in the case of Muslim women tend to privilege the religiocultural autonomy of the community over women’s rights in the name of secularism (Aleaz 2009; Narain 2001). This effectively translates into putting the entire onus on Muslim women to negotiate the complex set of deprivations they face (socio-cultural, religious, economic, gender). If we explore educational policy interventions for Muslim women against the above-mentioned backdrop we find that the educational empowerment of Muslim women is perceived in rather minimalistic and tokenistic terms. Empowerment is regarded as an outcome of getting girls into schools with little attention to their learning experiences (Kumar and Gupta 2008). Further, there is little attention to the complexity of the push and pull factors that women have to negotiate owing to their religious, economic, and gender location, and to processes of creating opportunities and means that allow women such negotiations. From the vantage point of my research, there is little cognizance in policy regarding girls’ madrasas having any role or stake in this process of educational empowerment of Muslim women. Girls’ madrasas are virtually absent in the policy discussion on education for Muslim women, with the exception of the recent Report of

268

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

NCMEI Committee on Girls Education (Government of India 2012b) that mentions a girls’ madrasa in its educational innovations section (2012: 123) and its recommendations call for the SPQEM programme to prioritize girls’ madrasas (2012: 138). Rather than an oversight, this neglect illustrates the incomprehension of the ground reality that characterizes policy documents stemming from a process that allows little space for interaction with and understanding of the people whose concerns the policy claims to address. The work of scholars like Bano (2009, 2010, 2011) highlights the merits of employing faith based organizations such as madrasas as a means of approaching women within and through the community to achieve limited development and ‘alternative empowerment’. My work argues that such a shortsighted policy view of using culture or religion to serve other ends rests on a highly instrumentalist view of madrasas which misses the complexity of girls’ education in madrasas and its links with notions of ideal Islamic womanhood. I argue that madrasa education, while trying to educate girls into becoming perfect Muslim women, creates a space for and introduces unanticipated changes in the practice of piety and imaginary of what constitutes an ideal Muslim woman. The key arguments highlighted in my book—ambiguity in pious practices and ongoing negotiation of changing aspirations—problematize the usual stereotypical conceptualization of madrasa education as a religio-cultural constraint on women. This is reflected in the everyday lives of the girls. The transitions or junctures identified in the work can be seen as potential points of policy intervention to further facilitate the entry of madrasa students and Muslim women into public spaces (as is already happening) and to create common spaces for women’s participation irrespective of religion. The special importance accorded to the ‘educational empowerment’ of Muslims in planning documents such as the 12th Five Year Plan Document, 2012–17 (Planning Commission 2013: 250) would gain much if the dominant policy paradigms—such as madrasa modernization and Muslim women’s empowerment—are framed within a more nuanced understanding of community processes. Operating in a larger landscape marked by socio-economic marginalization, increasing communalization, and spatial ghettoization, the Muslim community initiatives invoke Islam in an attempt to band together the Muslim communities. Motifs associated with Muslim identity



Coda

269

and culture, such as mosques, madrasas, the Urdu language, and purdah, are used to promote Muslim-run networks for basic services— education, health, employment, and housing. Yet, the act of invoking Islamic concepts does not necessarily imply that solely traditional Islamic practices are followed. As demonstrated in this book, there is a discernible impulse towards change; a quiet churning is taking place in Muslim families and communities about embracing modern education especially for women, with religious frameworks being extended to incorporate the changing nature of educational demands emanating from within the community. Rather than viewing community initiatives like madrasas as traditions in need of modernization, there is a need for a more nuanced view anchored in emerging ground realities. Gender, religion, and madrasas are constantly changing and adapting. In such a scenario, policy prescriptions like madrasa modernization and Muslim women’s empowerment framed without understanding the everyday lives of madrasa students and their families risk remaining empty phrases. The challenge for researchers and policy makers alike is to engage and change the top-down policy culture. An inclusive and effective policy on madrasa education would require further research on the prevailing madrasa system of education, an understanding of the specificities and variations in madrasas in different states, and engagement with madrasas and their students.

Appendix 1 Madrasa Syllabus

Beginner’s Course (Darja Ibtidayyah)

Subjects

Books

1

Recitation and Correct Pronunciation of Quran (Nazira and Tajweed)

Noorani Qaida

2

Basics of Islam (Diniyat)

Dini Talim ka Risala (Primer of Islam)

3

History of Islam (Tarikh)

Tarikh-e-Islam Vol. I, II, III

4

Arabic Literature (Adab-e-Arabi)

Miftah-ul-Arabia (Foundation course in reading and writing)

5

Persian (Farsi)

Farsi ka asan Qaidah and Farsi Ki Pehli (Fundamentals of Persian)

6

English

Class 6 NCERT

7

Mathematics

Class 4 NCERT

8

Calligraphy (Khushkhati)

Asan Khushkhati (Easy Calligraphy)

9

Compulsory Reading (Mutala)

Adab ul Muta-allimin (Principles or rules of conduct for learners)

10

Islamic Jurisprudence (Fiqh)

Talimul Islam (Perfect Islamic Teachings)



Appendix 1

272

11

Persian Literature

Chahal Sabaq (4th part of Persian)

Grade 1 (Darja Awwal)

Subjects

Books

1

Rules of recitation, correct pronunciation and repetition

Mueen-ut-Tajweed (Useful books for students along with phonetics)

2

Basics of Islam (Diniyat)

Dini Talim ka Risala (Primer of Islam)

3

Islamic Jurisprudence (Fiqh)

Bahishti Zewar

4

Arabic literature (Adabe-Arabi)

Qasas-un-Nabiyeen (Stories of the Prophet)

5

Arabic Syntax

Ilm an-nahw

6

Arabic Morphology

Ilm us-sarf

7

Persian (Farsi)

Chahal Sabaq (4th part of Persian)

8

English

Class 7 NCERT

9

Mathematics

Class 5 NCERT

10

Urdu

Mother Tongue Books (Madari zaban)

11

Compulsory Reading (Mutala)

Adab ul Muta- allimin  (Principles or rules of conduct for learners)

Grade 2 (Darja Dom)

Subjects

Books

1

Rules of recitation, correct pronunciation and repetition.

Mufeed al-atfaal with the application of hadar (a style of recitation)

2

Translation of parts of the 16–30 Parts of the Quran Quran (Tarjuma) with translation, exegesis, and the application of the rules of Arabic syntax and morphology

3

Islamic Jurisprudence (Fiqh)

Al Fiqhul Muyassar Masail-ul Quduri (Cont’d)

Appendix 1

273

Appendix 1  (Cont’d) 4

Arabic Literature

Al Qira-at ur Raashida Qasas-un-Nabiyeen (Stories of the Prophet)

5

Prose Writing (Insha)

Sharh Miat Amil Arabi ka Muallim

6

Arabic Syntax

Ilm un-nahw

7

Arabic Morphology

Ilm us-sarf

8

Islamic concept (Aqida)

Taqwiat-ul-Iman Risalatut-Tauhid

9

English

Class 8 NCERT

10

Mathematics

Riyazi NCERT

11

Urdu Literature

Mother Tongue Books (Madari zaban)

12

Kharji Mutala

Adab-ul-Muasharat (Social Etiquette)

Grade 3 (Darja Som)

Subjects

Books

1

Translation of parts of the Translation of parts Quran (Tarjuma) 1–15 of the Quran with exegesis and Aqeeda-e-Tahawiyah

2

Hadith

Selected chapters from Mishkat-ul-Masabih

3

Islamic Jurisprudence (Fiqh)

Hidayah Vol. I

4

Principles of Islamic Jusrisprudence (Usoolfiqh)

Mabadi al-usool Usool al-shashi

5

Arabic Literature

Nafkhatul Arab

6

Prose Writing (Insha)

Arabi ka Muallim

7

Arabic Syntax

Hidayat un-Nahw

8

Arabic Morphology

Ilmus seegha



Appendix 1

274

9

Logic and Philosophy

Tawdhih al-mantiq Mabadi al Falsafa

10

English

Class 9 NCERT

11

Mathematics

Class 7 NCERT

12

Muta’la

Khulafa e Rashidin (History of the Caliphs)

13

Home Sciences, viz. stitching, embroidery, sanitation, etc.

Stitching and embroidery sanitation

14

Computers

DTP (Compulsory)

Grade 4 Subjects (Darja Chaharum)

Books

1

Exegesis (Tafseer)

Al-Jalalain

2

Principles of Exegesis (UsoolTafseer)

Fauzul Kabir

3

Hadith

Mishkat-ul-Masabih

4

Principles of Hadith

Maruf Muqaddama Mishkat (Collection of Hadith)

5

Islamic Jurisprudence (Fiqh)

Hidayah Vol. II

6

Arabic Literature

Mukhtarat 1 & 2

7

Balaghah (Correct Style)

Chapter of ‘Durus-ulBalaghah’

8

Laws of Inheritance

Al-Siraji fil Mirath

9

English

Class 10 NCERT

10

Mathematics

Class 8 NCERT

11

Mutala

Ummat ki Misali Maaen wa Asahh-us-Siyar

12

Home Sciences, viz. stitching, embroidery, sanitation, etc.

Stitching and embroidery sanitation

13

Computers

DTP Compulsory (Cont’d)

Appendix 1

275

Appendix 1  (Cont’d) Grade 5 (Darja Panjum)

Subjects

Books

1

Hadis

Sahih-ul-Bukhari, Sahih Muslim, Sunan An-Nasai, Sunan Abu Dawud, Sunan Tirmizi, Sunan Ibn Majah, Muwatta’ Imam Malik, Muwatta’ Imam Muhammad, Sharah Ma’ani-ul AAsr (Selected chapters on last five books)

2

Mutala

Adab-ul -Muallimeen (Conduct of teachers)

Note: Syllabus reconstructed from interviews and conversations with the teachers and students and syllabus mentioned in the brochure.

Appendix 2 Timeline for Madrasa Modernization

Year

Policy/ Scheme

Recommendation

1968

National Policy on Education, 1968

Under ‘Education for Minorities’, Policy document calls for protecting the rights of minorities and promoting their educational interests (1992: 44).

1983

Report on Minorities of High Power Panel on Minorities, Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Weaker Sections appointed by Ministry of Home Affairs under the Chairmanship of Dr. Gopal Singh

States that the ‘problem of educational backwardness of minorities particularly Muslims and Neo Buddhists is really serious and deserves attention at the highest level’ (1983: 26). Makes long-term and short-term recommendations. Short-term recommendations emphasize the role of madrasas. States that ‘Maktabs and Madrasas managed by Muslims can play a useful role in imparting general and elementary technical education to their students’ (1983: 28). Cautions that in light of constitutional provisions it is difficult for government to suggest changes in curriculum. Therefore recommends that community leaders themselves alter curriculum to incorporate general courses, improved production technology, handicrafts and other technical skills (1983: 28). (Cont’d)

Appendix 2

277

Appendix 2  (Cont’d) Recommends Bihar model of madrasa education to other states. In this model the government offers substantial grants to pay madrasa teachers’ salaries, link madrasas with Arabic and Persian studies and madrasas on their part include secular education (1983: 28). May 1983 The 15-Point Programme for Minorities, 1983

Emphasizes the need to focus on the welfare of minorities in light of the escalation of communalism. In the educational domain, calls for initiating coaching classes in minority educational institutions to train persons for competitive examinations; focus on learning of technical skills; and setting up of polytechnics in predominantly minority areas.

1986

The National Policy The policy document emphasizes on Education (1986) ‘education for equality’. With specific reference to minorities, included under ‘Other educationally backward sections and areas’, it states the following: ‘some minority groups are educationally backward or deprived. Greater attention will be paid to the education of these groups in the interest of equality and social justice. This will naturally include the constitutional guarantees given to them to establish and administer their own educational institutions, and protection to their languages and culture. Simultaneously, objectivity will be reflected in the preparation of textbooks and in all school activities, and all possible measures will be taken to promote integration based on appreciation of common national goals and ideas, in conformity with the core curriculum’ (1992: 10).

1992

The Revised Plan of Action (1992) of National Policy on Education (1986)

The revised POA contains a section on education of minorities (1992: 9–16), which suggests short-term, mediumterm, and long-term measures for the upliftment of education of minorities.



Appendix 2

278

In medium-term measures (1992: 14) it recommends the following: Centrally sponsored scheme based on an area approach for ‘Area Intensive Programme for Educationally Backward Minorities’ (1992: 14). ‘Centrally sponsored scheme of modernization of Madrasa Education by introduction of science, mathematics and English/Hindi in traditional madrasas and maktabs on a voluntary basis’ (1992: 14). ‘State Governments should be encouraged to establish madrasa boards to look after the education of the minorities. Effective administration of these boards to be achieved through adequate resources’ (1992: 14). 1993–94

Scheme for Modernization of Madrasa Education

1997–98

Annual Report of the National Commission for Minorities1

The Commission recommends the expansion of facilities available under the Madrasa Modernization Scheme ‘to provide greater opportunities of modern education in madrasas’. Recommends that Madrasa Education Boards should be set up in all the States and Union Territories on the pattern of such Boards created by law in Bihar and West Bengal’ (Chapter X Para No. C-II (c) (4) 53)

1998–99

Annual Report of the National Commission for Minorities

The Commission recommends that ‘a statutory Central Madrasa Education Board be established to properly streamline, uniformly organize and scientifically develop madrasa education all over India’ (Chapter-VIII Para No. 7(b) (5)).

Provides for financial assistance to madrasas for addition of English, science, mathematics and Hindi subjects in its curriculum on a voluntary basis. Scheme of Area Intensive Programme Provides assistance to State Governments and voluntary organisations for taking up for Educationally Backward Minorities programmes for educationally backward minorities, not covered by the ongoing programmes.

(Cont’d)

Appendix 2

279

Appendix 2  (Cont’d) Also recommends ‘launch of special schemes and programmes for social, educational and economic upliftment of Muslim women’ (Chapter-VIII Para No. 7(b) (6)). 2002

Area Intensive Madrasa Modernization Programme (AIMM) through merger of two schemes, i.e. Scheme of Area Intensive programme for Educationally Backward Minorities and the Scheme of Financial Assistance for Modernization of Madrasa Education into a single scheme in the Tenth Five Year Plan (2002–07)

The main components of AIMM are infrastructural development and madrasa modernisation. Madrasa modernization aims at inclusion of ‘modern subjects’ in the madrasa system, to link madrasa students with the ‘mainstream education system’ in the country. The scheme includes payment of teachers’ salaries, and grants for purchase of science kits and setting up of book banks.

2004

National Monitoring Committee for Minorities Education (NMCME) Expert Committee on Madrasas

The NMCME was reconstituted in August 2004. It instituted an Expert Committee to look into the modernization of madrasas. This Expert Committee suggested linkages with the National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS) for accreditation of madrasa degrees, improvement in quality of education, infrastructural support and strengthening of State Madrasa Boards.

2004

Setting up of National Commission for Minority Educational Institutions (NCMEI).

NCMEI was set up in 2004 to advise the Centre and state governments on any matter regarding the education of minorities as also to establish and administer educational institutions of their choice. The National Minority Educational Institutions Commission Act, 2004, allows for direct affiliation of minority educational institutions to central universities.



Appendix 2

280

2004–05

Annual Report of the National Commission for Minorities

The Commission recommends encouraging science education as part of madrasa modernization. Recommends encouraging schooling for Muslim girls.

2005–06

Annual Report of the National Commission for Minorities

The Commission recommends focusing on the educational needs of Muslim girls through distance education, science education, opening government and private schools for girls in high Muslim concentration districts.

2005–06

Annual Report National Commission for Minorities Educational Institutions (NCMEI)

Includes case study on Central Madrasa Board. Discusses initiative to evolve a nationwide consensus among Muslims, to set up a Central Madrasa Board to standardize, mainstream and modernize madrasa education. Report states that ‘education provided through Madrasas remains anchored in the past and is irrelevant to the needs and opportunities of today’ (2006b: 61). Further, ‘products of Madrasa education remain isolated from the national mainstream. Relevance is the key to empowerment and integration’ (2006b: 61).

June 2006 Prime Minister’s New 15-Point Programmes for the Welfare of Minorities

This programme includes Madrasa Modernization under the head of ‘Enhancing Opportunities for Education’; states that the Central Plan Scheme of Area Intensive and Madrasa Modernisation Programme will be substantially strengthened and effectively implemented.

November Prime Minister’s 2006 High Level Committee under the Chairmanship of Justice Rajinder Sachar Report on Social, Economic

Recommendations detailed under the head ‘Madrasas and Mainstream Education’ (2006d: 249): • Highlights that only 4% of Muslim children attend madrasas; • Terms madrasas as important initiative of the community to improve education; (Cont’d)

Appendix 2

281

Appendix 2  (Cont’d) and Educational • Refers to the trend of madrasas Status of the Muslim embracing modern curriculum; Community of India • Maintains that modernized madrasas ‘unlikely to satisfy educational demand of the community’ and urges state to build more schools; • Argues that madrasas ‘should not to be looked upon as alternatives to the regular school, but a complement’. Recommendations: Work out mechanisms whereby madrasas can be linked with a higher secondary school board so that students who want to shift to a regular/mainstream education can do so after having passed out from a madrasa. Provision of ‘equivalence’ to madrasa certificates/degrees for subsequent admission into institutions of higher education. Recognition of the degrees from madrasas for eligibility in competitive examinations such as the Civil Services, Banks, Defense Services and other such examinations. Review and revamp of the scheme for modernization of madrasas in light of deficiencies (for example, choice of subjects, quality of teachers, accommodation of modern subjects in a timetable intensely packed with traditional subjects) before embarking on its expansion. 2006

Creation of Minority Cell in National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS)

Minority Cell is a major instrument of policy intervention of the government to bring out-of-school Muslim children within the fold of education through alternative schooling through the accreditation of maktabs and madrasas. The Minority Cell of NIOS grants accreditation on relaxed norms to help link traditional educational institutions of Muslims like madrasas, maktabs and Darul-Ul-Uloom into mainstream education.

April 2007 Recommendations for introducing Modern Education in Madrasas and for setting up a Central Madrasa Board. Report of the National Commission for Minorities Educational Institutions (NCMEI) to Ministry of HRD

Appendix 2

282

1. Describes ‘Role of madrasas’ as ‘centers of free education’, ‘bastions of social service’, and ‘nucleus of the cultural and educational life of Muslims’, with an important role in spreading literacy about the marginalized within the Muslim communities. It also discusses their role in promoting languages like Arabic and Persian. The Report argues that: ‘Madrasas form a parallel education system which completely blocks the roads of economic growth and prosperity of the Muslims’ who participate in it. ‘[S]ome clerics want Madrasas to flourish on account of their vested interests.’ ‘Madrasas have had the lamentable effect of keeping the down-trodden segment of the Muslim community ignorant and exploited by the privileged.’ In the majority of madrasas students have no access to modern secular education which breeds a sense of alienation and isolates them. 2. Under the head of ‘Caricaturing madrasas’, it describes attempts to discredit madrasas by associating them with unproved charges of breeding terrorism. Discusses how madrasas fill the ‘vacuum created by the inability or unwillingness of the State to provide educational facilities commensurate with the needs of the community. This is compounded by the stepmotherly treatment to Urdu. Argues that anxiety about madrasas is best dealt with by community adopting change. Opines that the ‘problem is not so much with the Madrasa education per se; the problem is that it has remained (Cont’d)

283

Appendix 2

Appendix 2  (Cont’d) anchored in the dim and distant past, developing a crisis of relevance in respect of the tools and skills relevant to the society in which we live.’ 3. States that madrasas are facing a ‘Crisis of Relevance’ in the following ways: • Lack of uniform or scientific curriculum for madrasas. • Lack of basic infrastructure including proper building and teaching equipment. • Madrasas subsist on small donations and charities and are cashstrapped at all times. • Madrasas have outdated systems of examination and evaluation. Recommends Madrasa Reform, which combines the universal spiritual vision of Islam with the constitutional mandate to propagate and consolidate secular, democratic culture and be responsive to the challenges and opportunities of a globalizing world. Also argues that madrasa reform would help mitigate the identity-induced burden of handicap that the girls in the community face. Argues for standardization, up-gradation and modernization of the madrasa system for its integrated development and mainstreaming. The Commission recommends to the Government the establishment of a Central Madrasa Board as an autonomous body, through an Act of Parliament, duly insulated against governmental interference. The main purpose of the Board would be the co-ordination and standardization of the madrasa system of education, its integrated development and mainstreaming. Notes that affiliation to the Central Madrasa Board would be purely voluntary and affiliation could be withdrawn at any time. Also, the Central Madrasa Board



Appendix 2

284

would not dictate the theological content of madrasa education. Discusses organization of National Consultation on the establishment of a Central Madrasa Board where majority have endorsed the move. Also discusses infrastructural upgradation, remuneration of teachers and financial implications under modernisation of madrasas. May 2007 National Commission for Religious and Linguistic Minorities under Justice Ranganath Misra

The Report offers the following recommendations (2007b: 151): ‘The Madrasa Modernisation Scheme of the government should be suitably revised, strengthened and provided with more funds so that it can provide finances and necessary paraphernalia either (a) for provision of modern education up to Standard X within those madrasas which are at present imparting only religious education or alternatively, (b) to enable the students of such madrasas to receive such education simultaneously in the general schools in their neighbourhood. The Madrasa Modernisation Scheme may, for all these purposes, be operated through a central agency like the Central Wakf Council or the proposed Central Madrasa Education Board’ (2007b: 151).

2007–08

Annual Report of the National Commission for Minorities

The Commission recommended that the madrasa education system should be restructured without hurting Muslim sentiments and brought in line with formal education infrastructure with more emphasis on skill education (2008a: 52, Para No. 11.7).

2007–08

Annual Report of the Discusses (2008b: 127–28) NCMEI Standardization of Madrasa System and mainstreaming of madrasa education. (Cont’d)

Appendix 2

285

Appendix 2  (Cont’d) Talks of sensitising madrasa managers about the role of education in conflict resolution and peace building, inculcating a spirit of inquiry among students, promoting plurality. Reiterates Commission’s earlier recommendation to the Central Government to establish a Central Madrasa Board and calls for its implementation at the earliest. 2008

The Area Intensive and Madrasa Modernization Programme was recast as two schemes, namely, the

2008–09

Annual Report of the Discusses (2009: 127) the relevance NCMEI of madrasas as centres of free education but terms their education as outdated. Argues for introduction of modern education, standardization and mainstreaming of madrasa education. Reiterates Commission’s earlier recommendation to the Central Government to establish a Central Madrasa Board and calls for its implementation at the earliest

SPQEM provides financial assistance in the form of teachers’ honorariums to the madrasas, which introduce modern subjects, i.e. science, mathematics, social studies, Hindi and English in their curriculum so that academic proficiency in classes I-XII is attainable for children 1. Scheme for Providing Quality studying in these institutions. Financial assistance is provided for science/maths Education kits, for setting up of nook banks and in Madrasa Science/ Computer labs. Financial assis(SPQEM), and tance will be provided to meet registra2. Infrastructure Development of tion fees, examination fees and cost of study materials supplied by the National Private Aided/ Unaided Minority Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS) up to 100% for each student opting to Institutions study through NIOS at Secondary and (IDMI). Senior Secondary levels. Madrasas can also opt for vocational courses offered by NIOS after fulfilling norms and standards set by NIOS. IDMI strengthens school infrastructure in Minority Institutions (elementary/secondary/senior secondary schools).



Appendix 2

286

2010-11

Annual Report of the Highlights (2011: 20) the lack of educaNCMEI tional facilities for girls from the Muslim community and advises the government to formulate innovative schemes for empowering Muslim women through education.

2011–12

Annual Report of the The Report (2012a: 16) records that the NCMEI Commission helped National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS) to identify the madrasas for recognition by NIOS. Discusses the Symposium (2012) organized on ‘Introduction of Modern Education in Madrasas’.

December Report & 2012 Recommendations on Minority Girls’ Education by Committee on Girls’ Education of National Commission for Minority Educational Institutions January 2015

Mentions girls’ madrasas in its ‘educational innovations’ section (2012: 123) and its recommendations call for the SPQEM programme to prioritize girls’ madrasas (2012b: 138).

New National Policy The Ministry of Human Resource on Education Development has identified 33 themes towards formulating a new National Policy on Education and sought public feedback. These themes have been divided into school education (13 themes) and higher education (20 themes). Some of the key themes for education of Muslims are: • Accelerating rural literacy with special reference on women, SC’s, ST’s and Minorities through adult education and National Open schooling systems • Enabling inclusive Education—education of girls, SCs, STs and Minorities and children with special; needs. • Bridging gender and social gaps.

Note:  The National Commission for Minorities was set up in 1978 to look into the rights of minorities and given statutory status in 1992.

Glossary

As appears/used Literary Urdu in the text rendition with diacritical marks Apa

Āpa or Āpī

It is used to address an elder sister. In the madrasas the girls endearingly also used the term āpī in the same sense.

Adab

Adāb

Norms for good conduct or manners.

Akhirat

Āḳhirat

In Islamic belief the word refers to the hereafter or the world of thereafter where one goes upon death.

Akhlaq

Aḳhlāq

Morally appropriate conduct.

Alim

ʿAl īm

Learned men, in particular one trained in Islamic studies. Also a course in madrasas is called the ʿal īm course.

Alima

‘Al īmā

Learned Muslim woman. It is generally used to refer to women who are learned in Islamic studies. Girls who graduate from the madrasa are called ālīmā.

Allah ki raza

Allāh kī razā

Common expression which means ‘to gain gods acceptance’.

Amal

ʿAmal

It literally refers to deeds or practice. In the madrasa it was used to refer to actual practice of piety.

Glossary

288

Amli tajurba

ʿAmlī Tjraba

Gaining experience in the practice of piety.

Amanat

Amānat

Connotes the notion of guardianship and trust.

Asal khatun

Aṣal ḳhātūn

Literally translates into ‘a real lady’; the term has connotations of incorporating behaviour of women belonging to nobility.

Ashraf

Ašhraf

High status or of noble birth.

Aurat

ʿAurat

Woman

Azan

Āẕan

The call to ritual prayer from the Mosque, amongst Muslims.

Ba adab

Ba-ādab

With ādab or etiquettes.

Ba amal

Ba-ʿamal

One who practices knowledge of faith.

Ba amal alima

Ba-ʿamal ‘alīmā

Practicing female Islamic scholar.

Be adab

Be- ādab

Antonym of ba-ādab which means without ādab or etiquettes.

Be pardgi

Be pardgī

Literally implies not following the practice of purdah or unveiled, used to imply lack of modesty.

Bidat

Bidʿat

In Islamic doctrine refers to unwarranted innovations, beliefs or, practices for which there was no precedent at the time of Prophet and therefore are best avoided.

Biradri

Birādrī

Muslims, especially in India, are stratified into birādrī or zat, regarded as similar to the caste system. It is usually employed to denote a particular community, for example marriages happen within a biradarī.

Burqa

Burqa

An enveloping outer garment worn by women to cover their bodies when in public to protect modesty.

Burqewali

Burqewalī

Colloquial term for those who wear burqa.



Glossary

289

Chacha

Chacha

Paternal uncle.

Dars- i -Nizami

Dars- i-Nizami

Syllabus taught in Indian madrasas since the eighteenth century.

Darul Uloom Deoband

Darul Uloom Deoband

An institution of higher Islamic learning established at Deoband in 1867.

Dawah

Da’wah

Literally call or invitation to Islam. It is generally used to refer to activities that urge fellow Muslims to greater piety.

Din

Dīn

Faith usually refers to Islam.

Din Phelana

Dīn Phelānā

Spreading the message of Islam.

Dindar Ghar

Dīndar ghar

Pious Household.

Dini line

Dīnī line

Dini line is popularly used to refer to the religious domain such as religious teaching, running a madrasa, etc. ‘Line’ is often colloquially used to denote the broad occupational domain a person is associated with, such as ‘medical line’, ‘education line’.

Dini Talim

Dīnī Ta’līm

Religious education.

Dozanu

Dozānū

A formal form of sitting on the haunches.

Dua

Duʿā

Form of supplication and prayers.

Duniya

Duniyā

World.

Duniyavi Talim

Duniyāvi Ta’līm

Worldly education.

Dupatta

Dupatta

A long scarf worn along with a long, loose-fitting tunic paired with long, loose-fitting pants (Shalwar Kamiz). It is used by the girls in the madrasa as a headscarf.

Farmanbardari

Farmāṅbārdārī

Obedience.

Farz

Farẓ

Duty.

Faidah

Fāidah

Advantage or use.

Fazila

Fāẓilā

Learned women, in particular one trained in Islamic studies. Also a course in madrasas called fāẓil course.

Glossary

290

Fiqh

Fiqh

Islamic Jurisprudence.

Fitna

Fitna

Literally the word implies temptations. It is generally used to describe forces that cause scandal, chaos, and crisis within the Muslim community.

Ghair Mahram

Ġhāyer Maḥram

Refers to a man who may be a potential marriage partner. Also called Na- Maḥram.

Hadis

Ḥadīṡ

The saying of Prophet Muhammad based on the authority of a chain of transmitters.

Hafiza

Hāfizah

A person who has memorized the Quran.

Halal

Halal

That which is permissible and legal.

Halqa

Ḥalqā

Group learning generally used to refer to the practice of sitting in a circle around a person who is teaching on religious doctrines. In madrasas often assumes the form of peer group learning.

Haram

Haram

That which is forbidden and unlawful.

Haya

Ḥayā

Modesty, shyness, diffidence, timidity.

Hijab

Ḥijāb

Veiling; used to refer to the head covering of a Muslim woman.

Hudud

Ḥudūd

Boundaries or limits; generally used to refer to gendered boundaries.

Huquq

Ḥuqūq

Rights includes notions of respecting others rights over oneself.

Ibadat

ʿIbādat

Acts of worship, in sharia terms refers to religious observances.

Imam

Imām

Religious leader usually the worship leader of the mosque.

Izzat

ʿIzzat

Respect.

Jahil

Jāhil

Ignorant or Illiterate person. Often used to denote lack of religious knowledge.



Glossary

291

Janati

Janatī

One bound to paradise.

Janat

Janat

Paradise.

Jat- pat

Jāt-pāt

Colloquial term for Casteism.

Jihad

Jihād

Struggle within oneself against evil or a legitimate war against nonMuslims.

Jihalat

Jihālat

Ignorance.

Jinn

Jinn

In Islamic theology jinn are regarded as creatures made from smokeless fire. The term jināt kā Asr refers to situations when jinn possess the mind and body of another person.

Kamil Momina

Kāmil momina

The word kamil comes from mukammal, which means complete. In the context of my field it has elements of perfection and ideal. I use it to capture an ideal woman of faith who is also a preacher.

Khala

Khāla

Maternal aunt.

Khandan

Ḳhāndān

Family, including extended family.

Khidmat

Ḳhidmat

Service.

Libas

Libās

Dress.

Madrase wali

Madrase wālī

Colloquial term for madrasa students.

Mahaul

Māḥaul

Ambience, used to denote larger ethos.

Maktab

Maktab

A mosque school where basics of religion are taught to young children.

Maslak

Maslak

A denomination or religious orientation.

Maulvi

Maulvi

Maulvi is a learned teacher or scholar of Islamic law—used especially in India as a respectful address for a learned Muslim.

Mehfuz

Meḥfūẕ

Secure, safe.

Millat

Millat

Religious community.

Glossary

292

Mashara

Mʿāšhara

Society used in the sense of Islamic society.

Mulaqat

Mulāqāt

Meeting.

Naat

Naat

Songs in praise of the Prophet.

Niqab

Niqāb

Veiling; generally used to refer to the cloth covering the face as a part of the hijab.

Niyam

Niyam

Rules.

Pabandi

Pābandī

Restrictions.

Padhalikha/ Padhilikhi

Paḍẖālikẖā/ Paḍẖīlikẖī

Literate man/woman.

Panjum

Panjum

Class 5.

Purdah

Purdah

Refers to seclusion of women from public observation. In India this implies a range of practices from gender segregation to veiling.

Rishta

Rišhta

Colloquial term for matrimonial alliances.

Ruksati

Ruḳhṣatī

Ceremony associated with the consummation of marriage.

Sadgi

Sādgī

Simplicity.

Sabr

Ṣabr

Patience, fortitude.

Salat or Namaz

Salāt̤ or Namāz

Islamic Prayer ritual considered obligatory within the sharia.

Shalwar Kamiz

Shalwar Kamiz

A common traditional dress worn in India, which resembles a long, loose-fitting tunic paired with long, loose-fitting pants. It is worn with a long scarf (dupatta) which is used by the girls in the madrasa as a headscarf.

Sawab

Ṡawāb

Religious merit.

Shadi

Šhādī

Marriage.

Shaitan

Šhaīt̤ān

Devil.

Sharam

Šharam

Modesty.

Sharia

Sharia

Islamic law or morality, historically not codified.



Glossary

293

Sharif

Šharif

Noble, cultivated.

Shirk

Shirk

Worship of multiple gods; polytheism.

Sakun

Sakun

Peace, usually used to refer to an idyllic state of being at complete peace with oneself.

Tablighi

Tablīghī

Member or supported of the Tablīghī Jammāʿat who engages in missionary work.

Talim

Ta’lim

Education. In the madrasa also shorthand for teaching of religious precepts.

Taqrir

Taqrīr

Speech.

Ulama

ʿUlamā

Religiously learned men.

Ummah

Ummah

Universal Muslim Community.

Walidain

Wālidain

Parents.

Wudu

Wuḍū (spoken as Wuzu)

Ritual ablutions before prayers.

Yatem

Yatem

Orphan.

Zat

Zāt

Caste.

Zehan

Zehan

Intellect.

Bibliography

Abidi, A. 2009. ‘Social Exclusion and Marginalization of Muslims of Delhi: A Sociological Study’, in K.M. Ziyauddin and E. Kasi (eds), Dimensions of Social Exclusion: Ethnographic Explorations, pp. 23–38. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars. . Mapping Cultural Mindscapes: A Sociological Study of Okhla Muslim Ghetto (Unpublished). Abu-Lughod, L. 1986. Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society. Berkeley: University of California Press. . 1993. Writing Women’s Worlds: Bedouin Stories. Berkeley: University of California Press. Agar, M. 1980. The Professional Stranger: An Informal Introduction to Ethnography. New York: Academic Press. Ahmad, I. 1980. ‘The Problem of Muslim Educational Backwardness in Contemporary India: An Inferential Analysis’, Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs Journal, 2 (2): 55–71. . 2002. ‘Urdu and Madrasa Education’. Economic and Political Weekly,’ 37 (24): 2285–7. . 2010. Islamism and Democracy in India: The Transformation of Jamaat-e-Islami. New Delhi: Permanent Black. Ahmed, L. 1992. Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate. London: Yale University Press. Akhtar, N. and M. Narula. 2010. ‘The Role of Indian Madrasahs in Providing Access to Mainstream Education for Muslim Minority Students: A West Bengal Experience’, Journal of International Migration and Integration, 11 (1): 91–107. Alam, A. 2003. ‘Understanding Madrasas’, Economic and Political Weekly, 38 (22): 2123–6. . 2006. ‘Understanding Deoband Locally: Interrogating Madarsa Diya al-ulum’, in J. Hartung and H. Reifeld (eds), Islamic Education, Diversity



Bibliography

295

and National Identity: Dīnī Madāris in India post 9/11. New Delhi: SAGE, pp. 175–95. . 2007. ‘Modernising Madrasa Education’. Outlook Magazine. 23 April 2007. . 2011a. Inside a Madrasa: Knowledge, Power and Islamic Identity in India. New York: Routledge. . 2011b. ‘Exempted Futures’. Outlook Magazine. 11 August 2011. . 2013a. ‘Controlling Minds, Disciplining Bodies: Life Inside a Madrasa’, in G.B. Nambissan and S. Rao (eds), Sociology of Education in India: Changing Contours and Emerging Concerns, pp. 224–44. Oxford: Oxford University Press. . 2013b. ‘Madrasas and Educational Conditions of Muslims’, in Council for Social Development (India), Z. Hasan and M. Hasan (eds), IndiaSocial Development Report 2012: Minorities at the Margins. pp. 212–21. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Alam, M.S. 2013. ‘Education and Exclusion of Muslims’, in  Council for Social Development (India). Z. Hasan and M. Hasan (eds), India-Social Development Report 2012: Minorities at the Margins, pp. 196–211. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Aleaz, B. 2005. ‘Madrasa Education, State and Community Consciousness: Muslims in West Bengal’, Economic and Political Weekly, 40 (6): 555–64. . 2009. ‘The State, the Community and their Women: Vignettes of Islamic Groups in West Bengal’, Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 29 (2): 261–76. Anand, A.S. 2014. ‘Ethical Selfhood and the Status of the Secular: Muslim Identity in Mumbai’, Culture and Religion, 15 (4): 377–98. Anderson, B. 1991. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso. Angrosino, M.V. 2007. Doing Ethnographic and Observational Research (Book 3 of the Sage Qualitative Research Kit), 2nd ed. London: SAGE. ANI. 2017. ‘UP, MP ask Madrasas to Videograph Independence Day Events, recite Anthem’. [Online]. Business Standard, 12, August. Available from: http://www.business-standard.com/article/current-affairs/up-mp-askmadrasas-to-videograph-independence-day-events-recite-anthem117081101933_1.html (Accessed 15.08.2017). Ansari, I.A., ed. 1989.  The Muslim Situation in India. London: Oriental University Press. Appadurai, A. 1996. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. . 2004.  ‘The Capacity to Aspire: Culture and the Terms of Recognition’, in V. Rao and M. Walton (eds), Culture and Public Action, pp. 59–84. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

296

Bibliography

. 2013. The Future as Cultural Fact: Essays on the Global Condition. New York: Verso. Ara, A. 2006. ‘Reinterpreting Madrasas’,  Economic and Political Weekly, 40 (6): 2544–7. Asad, T. 1993. Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. . 2003. Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Azim, S. 1997. Muslim Women: Emerging Identity. Delhi: Rawat Publications. Badran, M. 2005. ‘Between Secular and Islamic Feminism/s: Reflections on the Middle East and Beyond’, Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, 1 (1): 6–28. Bandyopadhyay, D. 2002. ‘Madrasa Education and the Condition of Indian Muslims’, Economic and Political Weekly, 37 (16): 1481–4. Banerjee, M., ed. 2008. Muslim Portraits: Everyday Lives in India. New Delhi: Yoda Press. Bangstad, S. 2011. ‘Saba Mahmood and Anthropological Feminism after Virtue’, Theory, Culture & Society, 28 (3): 28–54. Bano, M. 2009. ‘Empowering Women: More Than One Way?’, HAGAR: Studies in Culture, Polity & Identities, 9 (1): 5–23. . 2010. ‘Madrasas as Partners in Education Provision: The South Asian Experience’, Development in Practice, 20 (4–5): 554–66. . 2011. ‘Co-Producing with FBOs: Lessons from State–Madrasa Engagement in the Middle East and South Asia’, Third World Quarterly, 32 (7): 1273–89. . 2012. The Rational Believer: Choices and Decisions in the Madrasas of Pakistan. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Barker, J., J. Lindquist, T. Boellstorff, C. Brown, A. Danusiri, D. Darmadi, S. Gibbings, J. Grayman, J. Hoesterey, and C. Jones. 2009. ‘Figures of Indonesian Modernity’, Indonesia, 87: 35–72. Basant, R. 2012. Education and Employment among Muslims in India: An Analysis of Patterns and Trends. Working Paper, ed. Ahmedabad: Indian Institute of Management. Basu, A. 1974. The Growth of Education and Political Development in India, 1898–1920. Delhi: Oxford University Press. . 1982. Essays in the History of Indian Education. New Delhi: Concept. Basu, T., P. Datta, S. Sarkar, T. Sarkar, and S. Sen, eds. 1993. Khaki Shorts and Saffron Flags: A Critique of the Hindu Right. New Delhi: Orient Longman. Bautista, J. 2008. ‘The Meta-Theory of Piety: Reflections on the Work of Saba Mahmood’, Contemporary Islam, 2 (1): 75–83.



Bibliography

297

Begum, M. and H. Kabir. 2012. ‘Reflections on the Deobandi Reformist Agenda in a Female Quomi Madrasah in Bangladesh’, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 35 (2): 353–80. Benei, V. 2008. Schooling Passions: Nation, History, and Language in Contemporary Western India. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Bhakto, A. 2015. ‘Branding Madrasas as Non-Schools is Illegal’. [Online]. The Sunday Guardian, 11 July. Available from: http://www.sunday-guardian.com/ news/branding-madrasas-as-non-schools-is-illegal (Accessed 13.07.2015). Boddy, J. 1989. Wombs and Alien Spirits: Women, Men, and the Zar Cult in Northern Sudan. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Boutieri, C. 2013. ‘Liberalization’s Children: Gender, Youth, and Consumer Citizenship in Globalizing India’, American Anthropologist, 115 (2): 341–2. Brenner, S. 1996. ‘Reconstructing Self and Society: Javanese Muslim Women and “the Veil”’. American Ethnologist, 23 (4): 673–97. Bruner, E.M. 1986. ‘Experience and Its Expressions’, in V.W. Turner and E.M. Bruner (eds), The Anthropology of Experience, pp. 3–30. Chicago: University of Illinois. Chatterjee, A.V. 2005. ‘Plural Society and Schooling: Urdu Medium Schools in Delhi’, in R. Chopra and P. Jeffery (eds), Educational Regimes in Contemporary India, pp. 99–118. New Delhi: SAGE. Chatterjee, P. 1993. The Nation and its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Chhachhi, A. 1991. ‘Forced Identities: The State, Communalism, Fundamentalism and Women in India’, in  D. Kandiyoti (ed.), Women, Islam and the State, pp. 144–75. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Chopra, R. and P. Jeffery, eds. 2005. Educational Regimes in Contemporary India. New Delhi: SAGE. Choudhury, R.N. 2017. ‘Outrage in MP over Madrasa Order on Independence Day Celebrations’. [Online]. The Asian Age, 13 August. Available from: http:// www.asianage.com/india/all-india/130817/outrage-in-mp-over-madrasaorder-on-independence-day-celebrations.html (Accessed 15.08.2017). Ciotti, M. 2006. ‘In the past we were a bit “Chamar”: Education as a Self‐And Community Engineering Process in Northern India’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 12 (4): 899–916. Corbridge, S., J. Harriss, C. Jeffrey, and H. Barbara. 2013. India Today: Economy, Politics and Society. Cambridge: Polity. Dalrymple, W. 2006.  The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi 1857. London: Bloomsbury. De Certeau, M. 1988. The Practice of Everyday Life. 1st ed. Berkeley, California: University of California Press.

298

Bibliography

Deeb, L. 2006. An Enchanted Modern: Gender and Public Piety in Shi’ite Lebanon. Oxford: Princeton University Press. Deeb, L. and M. Harb. 2013.  Leisurely Islam: Negotiating Geography and Morality in Shi’ite South Beirut. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Devji, F.F. 1991. ‘Gender and the Politics of Space: The Movement for Women’s Reform in Muslim India, 1857–1900’, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 14 (1): 141–53. Douglas, M. 2005. Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. London: Routledge. Dwyer, C. 1999. ‘Veiled Meanings: Young British Muslim Women and the Negotiation of Differences’, Gender, Place and Culture, 6 (1): 5–26. . 2000. ‘Negotiating Diasporic Identities: Young British South Asian Muslim Women’, Women’s Studies International Forum, 23 (4): 475–86. Dyson,  J.  2010.  ‘Friendship in Practice: Girls’ Work in the Indian Himalayas’, American Ethnologist, 37 (3): 472–98. . 2014.  Working Childhoods: Youth, Agency and the Working Environment in India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Eickelman, D.F. 1992. ‘Mass Higher Education and the Religious Imagination in Contemporary Arab Societies’, American Ethnologist, 19 (4): 643–55. Eickelman, D.F. and J. Piscatori. 1996. Muslim Politics. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Emerson, R.M. 1983. ‘Introduction’ in R.M. Emerson (ed.), Contemporary Field Research: A Collection of Readings, pp. 1–16. Illinois: Waveland Press. Emerson, R.M., R.I. Fretz, and L.L. Shaw. 1995. Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. . 2001. ‘Participant Observation and Fieldnotes’, in P. Atkinson et al. (ed.), Handbook of Ethnography, pp. 352–68. London: SAGE. Engineer, A.A. 2001. ‘Muslims and Education’, Economic and Political Weekly, 36 (34): 3221–2. . 2004. ‘A Handy Tool for Anti-Minorityism’,  Economic and Political Weekly, 39 (39): 4304–5. Ewing, K.P. 1990. ‘The illusion of Wholeness: Culture, Self and the Experience of Inconsistency’, Ethos, 18 (3): 251–78. . 2008. Stolen Honor: Stigmatizing Muslim Men in Berlin. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Express News Service. 2014. ‘Would like to see computer in one hand, Quran in other’. [Online]. The Indian Express, 14 July. Available from: http://indianexpress.com/article/cities/delhi/would-like-to-see-computer-in-onehand-quran-in-other/#sthash.vBQfFQMU.dpuf (Accessed 17.01.2015). . 2015. ‘Maharashtra govt triggers fresh controversy, says madrasas without formal subjects are not schools’. [Online]. The Indian Express, 7 July. Available from: http://indianexpress.com/article/india/maharashtra/



Bibliography

299

madrasas-de-recognised-in-maharashtra-classified-as-non-schools/ (Accessed 15.07.2015). Fadil, N. 2008. Submission to God, Submitting to the Self: Secular and Religious Trajectories of Second Generation Maghrebi in Belgium. PhD, Onderzoekseenheid: Centrum voor Sociologisch Onderzoek [CeSO], KU Leuven. . 2009. ‘Managing Affects and Sensibilities: The Case of Nothandshaking and Not-fasting’, Social Anthropology, 17 (4): 439–54. . 2011. ‘Not-unveiling as an Ethical Practice’, Feminist Review, 98 (1): 83–109. Farooq, M. 2013. ‘Disciplining the Feminism: Girls’ Madrasa Education in Pakistan’, The Historian, 3 (2): 64–88. Faruqi, A. 2006. Redefining Urdu Politics in India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Fazal, T. 2013.  Millennium Development Goals and Muslims of India.  New Delhi: Oxfam. Fazal, T. and R. Kumar. 2013. ‘Muslims in India: A Study of ­Socio-economic and Educational Levels in Four Focus States’, in Council for Social Development (India). Z. Hasan and M. Hasan (eds), India-Social Development Report 2012: Minorities at the Margins, pp. 179–95. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Feldman, M.S., J. Bell, and M.T. Berger. 2003. Gaining Access: A Practical and Theoretical Guide for Qualitative Researchers. Oxford: Alta Mira Press. Firstpost. 2013.  ‘Clerics bat for education of girls in Madhya Pradesh’. [Online]. First Post, 21 January. Available from: http://www.firstpost.com/ india/clerics-bat-for-education-of-girls-in-madhya-pradesh-595859.html (Accessed 02.06.2014). Foley, D. 2010. ‘The Rise of Class Culture Theory in Educational Anthropology’, Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 41 (3): 215–27. Forsey, M. 2008. ‘Ethnographic Interviewing: From Conversation to Published Text’, in G. Walford (ed.), How to do Educational Ethnography, pp. 57–71. London: Tufnell Press. . 2010. ‘Ethnography as Participant Listening’, Ethnography, 11 (4): 558–72. Foucault, M. 1995. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. 2nd ed. New York: Vintage Books. Frisk, S. 2009. Submitting to God: Women and Islam in Urban Malaysia. Copenhangen: NIAS Press. Froerer, P. 2011. ‘Education, Inequality and Social Mobility in Central India’, European Journal of Development Research, 23 (5): 695–711. Fuller, C. 2011. ‘Timepass and Boredom in Modern India’. Anthropology of This Century 1, LSE Research Online. [Online]. Available from: http:// aotcpress.com/articles/timepass-boredom (Accessed 11.12.2012).

300

Bibliography

Gayer, L. 2012. ‘Safe and Sound: Searching for a “Good Environment” in Abul Fazl Enclave, Delhi’, in L. Gayer and C. Jaffrelot (eds), Muslims in Indian Cities: Trajectories of Marginalisation, pp. 213–36. Noida: Harper Collins Publishers India. Gayer, L. and C. Jaffrelot, eds. 2012. Muslims in Indian Cities: Trajectories of Marginalization. Noida: Harper Collins Publishers. Geertz, C. 1973. ‘Religion as a Cultural System’, in C. Geertz (ed.), The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays, pp. 87–125. New York: Basic Books. Gilbertson, A. 2014. ‘A Fine Balance: Negotiating Fashion and Respectable Femininity in Middle-Class Hyderabad, India’, Modern Asian Studies, 48 (1): 120–58. Godbole, M. 2001. ‘Madrasas: Need for a Fresh Look’, Economic and Political Weekly, 36 (41): 3889–90. Goffman, E. 1968. Asylums. Harmondsworth: Penguin. . 1970. Strategic Interaction. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Gole, N. 1996. The Forbidden Modern: Civilization and Veiling. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. . 2002. ‘Islam in Public: New Visibilities and New Imaginaries’, Public Culture, 14 (1): 173–90. Government of India. 1983. Report on Minorities by High Power Panel under Chairperson, Gopal Singh. Delhi: Ministry of Home Affairs. . 1992. National Policy on Education, 1986 (as modified in 1992) with National Policy on Education, 1968. New Delhi: Department of Education, Ministry of Human Resource Development. . 1998. Recommendation made in Annual Report-Period 1997–98 and action taken Report. New Delhi: National Commission for Minorities. . 1999. Recommendations made in Annual Report-Period 1998–99 and action taken Report. New Delhi: National Commission for Minorities. . 2002. Scheme of Area Intensive Programme for Educationally Backward Minorities. National Portal Content Management Team. [Online]. Available from: http://www.archive.india.gov.in/sectors/education/index. php?id=18 (Accessed 13.05.2015). . 2004. 11th Plan Working Group Report. New Delhi: Government of India, Ministry of Human Resource Development. . 2005a. The National Commission for Minority Educational Institutions Act, 2004. New Delhi: Gazetteer of India. . 2005b. Recommendations made in Annual Report-Period 2004–2005 and action taken Report. New Delhi: National Commission for Minorities. . 2006a. Recommendation made in Annual Report-Period 2005–2006. New Delhi: National Commission for Minorities. . 2006b. Annual Report 2005–06. New Delhi: National Commission for Minority Educational Institutions.



Bibliography

301

Government of India. 2006c. Guideline for implementation of Prime Minister’s New 15 Point Programme for the Welfare of Minorities. New Delhi: Department of Minority Affairs, Government of India. . 2006d. Report of Prime Minister’s High Level Committee on Social, Economic and Educational Status of the Muslim Community of India under Chairperson Justice R. Sachar. New Delhi: Government of India. . 2006e. NIOS Minority Cell. [Online] Available from: http://www.nos. org/departmentsunits/minority-cell.aspx (Accessed 14.11.2014). . 2007a. Recommendations for Introducing Modern Education in Madarsas and for Setting up a Central Madarsa Board. New Delhi: National Commission for Minority Educational Institutions. . 2007b. Report of the National Commission for Religious and Linguistic Minorities under Chairperson Justice Ranganath Misra. New Delhi: Ministry of Minority Affairs, Government of India. . 2008a. Recommendation made in Annual Report-Period 2007–2008. New Delhi: National Commission for Minorities. . 2008b. Annual Report 2007–08. New Delhi: National Commission for Minority Educational Institutions. . 2008c. Guidelines for Central Sponsored Scheme for Providing Quality Education in Madarsa. New Delhi: Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India. . 2009. Annual Report 2008–09. New Delhi: National Commission for Minority Educational Institutions. . 2011. Annual Report 2010–11. New Delhi: National Commission for Minority Educational Institutions. . 2012a. Annual Report 2011–12. New Delhi: National Commission for Minority Educational Institutions. . 2012b. Report and Recommendations on Minority Girls Education by Committee on Girls Education. New Delhi: National Commission for Minority Educational Institutions. . 2012c. Minutes of Meeting of the National Monitoring Committee for Minorities’ Education (NMCME). New Delhi: Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India. . 2013. Report of the Standing Committee of the National Monitoring Committee for Minorities’ Education (NMCME). New Delhi: Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India. . 2014. Report of the Post Sachar Evaluation Committee under the Chairperson Amitabh Kundu. New Delhi: Ministry of Minority Affairs, Government of India. . 2015. Consultation on New National Policy on Education. Available from: http://mhrd.gov.in/nep-new (Accessed 23.01.2015).

302

Bibliography

Gupta, N. 2009. Reading with Allah: Madrasas in West Bengal. New Delhi: Routledge. Hameed, S. 2012. ‘Multi-layered Deprivations of Muslim Women’. [Online]. Infochange Agenda, December. Available from: http://infochangeindia. org/agenda/gender-bias/multi-layered-deprivations-of-muslim-women. html (Accessed 01.05.2015). Hameed, S.S. 2000. Voice of the Voiceless: Status of Muslim Women in India.  New Delhi: National Commission for Women, Government of India. Hansen, T.B. 1999. The Saffron Wave: Democracy and Hindu Nationalism in Modern India. Princeton: Princeton University Press. . 2007. ‘The India That Does Not Shine’, ISIM Review, 19 (1): 50–1. Harper, I. 2014. ‘Ethics’, in N. Konopinski (ed.), Doing Anthropological Research: A Practical Guide, pp. 91–102. London: Routledge. Hartung, J. 2006. ‘Towards a Reform of the Indian Madrasa? An Introduction’, in J. Hartung and H. Reifeld (eds),  Islamic Education, Diversity and National Identity: Dīnī madāris in India post 9/11, pp. 11–36. New Delhi: SAGE Publications. Hartung, J. and H. Reifeld, eds. 2006. Islamic Education, Diversity and National Identity: Dīnī Madāris in India post 9/11. New Delhi: SAGE. Hasan, Z. 1994. ‘Minority Identity, State Policy and the Political Process’, in Z. Hasan (ed.), Forging Identities: Gender, Communities and the State in India, pp. 59–73. New Delhi: Kali for Women. . 1998. ‘Gender Politics Legal Reform and the Muslim Community in India’, in P. Jeffery and A. Basu (eds), Appropriating Gender: Women’s Activism and Politicized Religion in South Asia, pp. 71–88. London: Routledge. . 2009. Politics of Inclusion: Castes, Minorities, and Affirmative Action. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Hasan, Z. and M. Hasan. 2013. ‘Assessing UPA Government’s Response to Muslim Deprivation’, in Council for Social Development (India). Z. Hasan and M. Hasan (eds), India-Social Development Report 2012: Minorities at the Margins, pp. 242–9. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Hasan, Z. and R. Menon. 2004. Unequal Citizens: A Study of Muslim Women in India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. . 2005. Educating Muslim Girls: A Comparison of Five Indian Cities. New Delhi: Women Unlimited. Hashmi, S., H. Mander, and R. Puniyani, eds. 2007. In Defense of Democracy: Concept, Research & Coordination. New Delhi: ANHAD. Hassan, R. 2006. ‘Globalisation’s Challenge to the Islamic Ummah’, Asian Journal of Social Science, 34 (2): 311–23. Hefner, R.W. and M.Q. Zaman, eds. 2007.  Schooling Islam: The Culture and Politics of Modern Muslim Education. Princeton: Princeton University Press.



Bibliography

303

Hegland, M.E. 1998. ‘Flagellation and Fundamentalism: (Trans)forming Meaning, Identity, and Gender through Pakistani Women’s Rituals of Mourning’, American Ethnologist, 25 (2): 240–66. Heyl, B.S. 2001. ‘Ethnographic Interviewing’, in P. Atkinson (ed.), Handbook of Ethnography, pp. 369–83. London: Sage. IANS. 2009. ‘Hindus Outnumber Muslims in WB Madrasas’. [Online]. Al Jazeera, 20 January. Available from: http://www.sify.com/news/hindusoutnumber-muslims-in-wb-madrasas-news-national-jegtpOfbjigsi.html (Accessed 13.08.2014). Jacobsen, C.M. 2011a. ‘Troublesome Threesome: Feminism, Anthropology and Muslim Women’s Piety’, Feminist Review, 98 (1): 65–82. . 2011b. Islamic Traditions and Muslim Youth in Norway. Leiden: Brill. Jacobson, Doranne. 1970. Hidden  Faces:  Hindu  and Muslim Purdah in a Central Indian Village. PhD diss., Columbia University.  Jacobson, J. 1997. ‘Religion and Ethnicity: Dual and Alternative Sources of Identity among Young British Pakistanis’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 20 (2): 238–56. . 1998. Islam in Transition: Religion and Identity among British Pakistani Youth. New York: Routledge. Jaffrelot, C. 1996. The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics-1925 to the 1990’s: Strategies of Identity Building, Implantation and Mobilisation. London: Hurst. Jaffrelot, C. and M. Maheshwari. 2011. ‘Paradigm Shifts by the RSS? Lessons from Aseemanand’s Confession’,  Economic and Political Weekly,  46 (6): 42–6. Jeffrey, C. 2008. ‘Karate, Computers and the Quran Sharif: Zamir’, in M. Banerjee (ed.), Muslim Portraits: Everyday Lives in India, pp. 69–80. New Delhi: Yoda Press. . 2010.  Timepass: Youth, Class and the Politics of Waiting in India. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Jeffery, P. 1979. Frogs in a Well: Indian Women in Purdah. London: Zed Press. Jeffery, P. and A. Basu, eds. 1998. Appropriating Gender: Women’s Activism and Politicized Religion in South Asia. London: Routledge. Jeffery, P., R. Jeffery, and C. Jeffery. 2004. ‘Islamization, Gentrification and Domestication: “Girls’ Islamic Course” and Rural Muslims in Western Uttar Pradesh’, Modern Asian Studies, 38 (1): 1–54. Jeffery, P., R. Jeffery, and C. Jeffery. 2005. ‘The Mother’s Lap and the Civilizing Mission: Madrasa Education and the Rural Muslim Girls in Western Uttar Pradesh’, in Z. Hasan and R. Menon (eds), In a Minority: Essays on Muslim Women in India, pp. 109–48. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. . 2006. ‘The First Madrasa: Learned Mawlawis and the Educated Mother’, in J. Hartung and H. Reifeld (eds), Islamic Education, Diversity

304

Bibliography

and National Identity: Dīnī madāris in India post 9/11, pp. 227–51. New Delhi: Sage Publications. Jeffery, P., R. 2008. ‘Aisha, the Madrasah Teacher’, in M. Banerjee (ed.), Muslim Portraits: Everyday Lives in India, pp. 56–68. New Delhi: Yoda Press. . 2012. ‘Leading by Example? Women Madrasah Teachers in Rural North India’, in M. Bano and H. Kalmbach (eds), Women, Leadership and Mosques: Changes in Contemporary Islamic Authority, pp. 192–216. Boston: Brill. Jha, G. 2014. ‘Bihar Madrasa Bans Admission for Girls, Citing Co-education “Un-Islamic”’. [Online]. India Today, 15 October. Available from: http:// indiatoday.intoday.in/story/bihar-madrasa-bans-girls-madarsa-aziziaco-education-un-islamic/1/395786.html (Accessed 05.01.2015). Jha, J. and D. Jhingaran. 2005. Elementary Education for the Poorest and Other Deprived Groups: The Real Challenge of Universalization. New Delhi: Manohar. Jhingaran, D. and D. Sankar. 2009. ‘Measuring Educational Development and Disparities’, in P. Rustagi (ed.), Concerns, Conflicts, and Cohesions: Universalization of Elementary Education in India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 72–96. Jhingran, S. 2005. ‘Madrasa Modernisation Programme: An Assessment’, Economic and Political Weekly, 40 (53): 5540–2. . 2010.  Madrasa Education in Modern India: A Study.  New Delhi: Manohar Publishers. Kabeer, N. 1999. ‘Resources, Agency, Achievements: Reflections on the Measurement of Women’s Empowerment’, Development and Change, 30 (3): 435–64. Kandiyoti, D. 1991. ‘Islam and Patriarchy: A Comparative Perspective’, in N.R. Keddie and B. Baron (eds), Women in Middle Eastern History: Shifting Boundaries in Sex and Gender, pp. 23–42. New Haven: Yale University Press. . 1996. Gendering the Middle East: Emerging Perspectives. London: Tauris. Kaur, K. 1990. Madrasa Education in India: A Study of Its Past and Present. Chandigarh: Centre for Research in Rural and Industrial Development. Kaur, R., ed. 2005. Religion, Violence and Political Mobilisation in South Asia. London: SAGE. Khan, J.A. and P. Parvati. 2013. ‘Government’s Commitment towards Development of Muslims: A Post-Sachar Assessment by’, in Council for Social Development (India). Z. Hasan and M. Hasan (eds), India-Social Development Report 2012: Minorities at the Margins, pp. 250–62. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Khan, M.I. 2011. ‘Why many Hindu students study in Bihar’s madrasas’. [Online]. Rediff.com, 3 June. Available from: http://www.rediff.com/news/



Bibliography

305

report/why-many-hindu-students-study-in-bihars-madrasas/20110603. htm (Accessed 13.08.2014). Khan, S. 2007. ‘Negotiating the Mohalla: Exclusion, Identity and Muslim Women in Mumbai’, Economic and Political Weekly, 42 (17): 1527–33. Kirmani, N. 2008. ‘Constructing “The Other”: Narrating Religious Boundaries in Zakir Nagar’, Contemporary South Asia, 16 (4): 397–412. . 2009. ‘Deconstructing and Reconstructing Muslim Women’ through Women’s Narratives’, Journal of Gender Studies, 18 (1): 47–62. . 2013. Questioning the Muslim Woman: Identity and Insecurity in an Urban Indian Locality. Delhi: Routledge. Kishwar, M. 1998. ‘Pro-Women or Anti-Muslim? The Shah Bano Controversy’, in  M. Kishwar (ed.), Religion at the Service of Nationalism and Other Essays, pp. 206–24. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Kumar, K. 2010. ‘Culture, State and Girls: An Educational Perspective’, Economic and Political Weekly, 45 (17): 75–84. Kumar, K. and L. Gupta. 2008. ‘What Is Missing in Girls’ Empowerment?’, Economic and Political Weekly, 48 (26–27): 19–24. Kumar, N. 2003. ‘History at the Madrasas’, Seminar, 522: 57–62. . 2010. ‘Review of V. Benei, Schooling Passions: Nation, History, and Language in Contemporary Western India’, The Journal of Asian Studies, 69 (1): 298–300. Lapidus, I.M. 1984. ‘Knowledge, Virtue, and Action: The Classical Muslim Conception of Adab and the Nature of Religious Fulfillment in Islam’, in B.D. Metcalf (ed.), Moral Conduct and Authority: The Place of Adab in South Asian Islam, pp. 38–61. Berkeley: University of California Press. Lateef, S. 1990. Muslim Women in India: Political & Private Realities, 1890s–1980s. London: Zed Books. Levinson, B.A. and D.C. Holland. 1996. ‘The Cultural Production of the Educated Person: An Introduction’, in B.A. Levinson, D.E. Foley, and D.C. Holland (eds), The Cultural Production of the Educated Person: Critical Ethnographies of Schooling and Local Practice, pp. 1–54. Albany: State University of New York Press. Lukose, R.A. 2009. Liberalization’s Children: Gender, Youth, and Consumer Citizenship in Globalizing India. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. Mahmood, S. 2001a. ‘Feminist Theory, Embodiment, and the Docile Agent: Some Reflections on the Egyptian Islamic Revival’, Cultural Anthropology, 16 (2): 202–36. . 2001b. ‘Rehearsed Spontaneity and the Conventionality of Ritual: Disciplines of Salat’, American Ethnologist, 28 (4): 827–53. . 2003. ‘Ethical Formation and Politics of Individual Autonomy in Contemporary Egypt’, Social Research, 70 (3): 837–66.

306

Bibliography

Mahmood, S. 2005. Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject. Princeton: University Press. . 2009. ‘Religious Reason and Secular Affect: An Incommensurable Divide?’, in T. Asad, J. Butler, S. Mahmood, and W. Brown (eds), Is Critique Secular?-Blasphemy, Injury and Free Speech, pp. 64–100. Berkeley: University of California Press. . 2012. ‘Preface to the 2012 Edition’, in S. Mahmood (ed.), Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject, New ed., pp. ix-xix. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Malik, J. 2007. Madrasas in South Asia: Teaching Terror? London: Routledge. Mandaville, P. 2001. Transnational Muslim Politics: Reimagining the Umma. London: Routledge. . 2011. ‘Transnational Muslim Solidarities and Everyday Life’, Nations and Nationalisms: Journal of the Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism, 17 (1): 7–24. Mandelbaum, D.G. 1988. Women’s Seclusion and Men’s Honor: Sex Roles in North India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan.  Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Mander, H. 2009.  Fear and Forgiveness: The  Aftermath of  Massacre.  Delhi: Penguin. Marsden, M. 2007a. ‘Love and Elopement in Northern Pakistan’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 13 (1): 91–108. . 2007b. ‘All-male Sonic Gatherings, Islamic Reform, and Masculinity in Northern Pakistan’, American Ethnologist, 34 (3): 473–90. . 2010. ‘A Tour Not So Grand: Mobile Muslims in Northern Pakistan’, in F. Osella and B. Soares (eds), Islam, Politics, Anthropology, pp. 54–71. Malden: Wiley Blackwell. Masud, M.K. 2000. Introduction. In M. K. Masud (ed.), Travellers in Faith: Studies of the Tablighi Jama`at as a Transnational Islamic Movement for Faith Renewal. Leiden: Brill, pp. xiii -lviii. Matsumoto, M. and A. Shimbo. 2011. ‘Islamic Education in China: Triple Discrimination and the Challenge of Hui Women’s Madrasas’, in K. Sakurai and F. Adelkhah (eds), The Moral Economy of the Madras: Islam and Education Today, pp. 85–102. New York: Routledge. McGuire, M.B. 2008. Lived Religion: Faith and Practice in Everyday Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press. McNay, L. 1992. Foucault and Feminism: Power, Gender and the Self. Cambridge: Polity Press. Mernissi, F. 1992. The Veil and the Male Elite: A Feminist Interpretation of Women’s Rights in Islam. Cambridge: Persus Books. Merton, R.K. 1957. Social Theory and Social Structure. Revised ed. Glencoe: Free Press.



Bibliography

307

Metcalf, B. 1984. ‘Introduction’, in B. Metcalf (ed.), Moral Conduct and Authority: The Place of Adab in South Asian Islam, Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 1–20. . 1990.  Perfecting Women: Maulana Ashraf ʿAli Thanawi’s Bihishti Zewar (a partial translation with commentary).  Berkeley: University of California Press. . 2000. ‘Tablighi Jama`at and Women. In M.K. Masud (ed.), Travellers In Faith: Studies of the Tablighi Jama`at as a Transnational Islamic Movement for Faith Renewal., ed. Leiden: Brill, pp. 44–58. . 2007. ‘Madrasas and Minorities in Secular India’, in R.W. Hefner and M.Q. Zaman (eds), Schooling Islam: the Culture and Politics of Modern Muslim Education, pp. 87–106. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Mills, D. and H. Borker. (Unpublished)  ‘Educational Portraits and Their Anthropological Readers: Ethnography and Analytical “Double Vision”’. Mills, D. and M. Morton. 2013. Ethnography in Education. London: SAGE. Minault, G. 1999. Secluded Scholars: Women’s Education and Muslim Social Reform in Colonial India. Delhi: Oxford University Press. . 2009.  Gender, Language, and Learning: Essays in Indo-Muslim Cultural History. Ranikhet: Permanent Black. Mir‐Hosseini, Z. 2006. ‘Muslim Women’s Quest for Equality: Between Islamic Law and Feminism’, Critical Inquiry, 32 (4): 629–45. Moghadam, V.M. 1994. Identity Politics and Women: Cultural Reassertions and Feminisms in International Perspective. Oxford: Westview. Mohanty, C.T. 1988. ‘Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses’, Feminist Review, 30 (1): 61–88. Moosa, E. 2015. What is a Madrasa? Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Murphy, E. and R. Dingwall. 2001. ‘The Ethics of Ethnography’, in P. Atkinson and et al. (eds), Handbook of Ethnography, pp. 339–51. London: SAGE. Nahar, S. 2006. ‘Hindus outnumber Muslims in WB madrasas’. [Online]. BBC News, 31 March. Available from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/ south_asia/4829140.stm (Accessed 13.08.2014). Nair, P. 2009. The State and Madrasas in India (Working Paper 15). Birmingham: DFID Religion and Development Project, University of Birmingham. Narain, V. 2001. Gender and Community: Muslim Women’s Rights in India. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Nasir, R. 2014.  ‘Muslim Self-exclusion and Public Health Services in Delhi’, South Asia Research, 34 (1): 65–86. National Consultative Committee for Scheme for Providing Quality Education in Madrasas (SPQEM). 2013.  Minutes of the Second Meeting of the National Consultative Committee for Scheme for Providing Quality

308

Bibliography

Education in Madrasas (SPQEM) on 13th December, 2013.  New Delhi: Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India. National University of Educational Planning and Administration. 2013. Annual Report 2012–13. Delhi: National University of Educational Planning and Administration. Nayar, U. 2011. Education of Muslim Women and Girls in India. Delhi: The Women Press. NCERT. 2005a. National Curriculum Framework 2005. New Delhi: Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India. . 2005b. Seventh All India Survey Report 2005. New Delhi: Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India. Niazi, S. 2012. ‘India Madrassahs Attract Hindu Kids’. [Online]. On Islam, 25   Feburary. Available from: http://www.onislam.net/english/news/ asia-pacific/483355-india-madrassahs-teach-hindu-kids.html (Accessed 03.08.2012) Nieuwenhuijze, C. A. O. 1959. ‘The Ummah: An Analytical Approach’, Studia Islamica, 10: 5–22. Nisbett, N. 2007. ‘Friendship, Consumption, Morality: Practicing Identity, Negotiating Hierarchy in Middle Class Bangalore’,  Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 13 (4): 935–50. Noor, F.A., Y. Sikand, and M.V. Bruinessen, eds. 2008. The Madrasa in Asia: Political Activism and Transnational Linkages. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Nuna, A. 2003.  Education of Muslim Girls: A Study of the Area Intensive Programme.  New Delhi: Department of Women’s Studies, National Council of Educational Research and Training. Nurullah, S. and J.P. Naik. 1951. A History of Education in India During the British Period. 2nd ed. Bombay: Macmillan. O’Reilly, K. 2012. Ethnographic Methods. 2nd ed. London: Routledge. Ortner, S.B. (2005). ‘Subjectivity and Cultural Critique’. Anthropological Theory, 5 (1): 31–52. Osella, C. 2012. ‘Desires under Reform: Contemporary Reconfigurations of Family, Marriage, Love and Gendering in a Transnational South Indian Matrilineal Muslim Community’, Culture and Religion, 13 (2): 241–64. Osella, C. and F. Osella. 1998. ‘Friendship and Flirting: Micro-Politics in Kerala, South India’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 4 (2): 189–206. . 2007. ‘Muslim Style in South India’,  Fashion Theory,  11 (2–3): 233–52. Osella, F. and C. Osella. 2008a. ‘Introduction: Islamic Reformism in South Asia’, Modern Asian Studies, 42 (2–3): 247–57.



Bibliography

309

Osella, F. and C. Osella. 2008b. ‘Islamism and Social Reform in Kerala, South India’, Modern Asian Studies, 42 (2–3): 317–46. Osella, F. 2010. ‘Muslim Entrepreneurs in Public Life between India and the Gulf: Making Good and Doing Good’, in F. Osella and B. Soares (eds), Islam, Politics, Anthropology, pp. 194–212. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell. Osella, F. and B.F. Soares. eds. 2010.  Islam, Politics, Anthropology. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell and Royal Anthropological Institute. Panjabi, K., K. Bandopadhyay, and B. Gangopadhyay. 2002. The Next Generation: In the Wake of the Genocide; A Report on the Impact of the Gujarat Pogrom on Children and the Young. Ahmedabad: Citizen’s Initiative. Papanek, H. 1971. ‘Purdah in Pakistan: Seclusion and Modern Occupations for Women’, Journal of Marriage and Family, 33 (3): 517–30. Papanek, H. and G. Minault, eds. 1982. Separate Worlds: Studies of Purdah in South Asia. Delhi: Chanakya Publications. Parliament Library and Reference, Research, Documentation and Information Service. 2013. Minority Education Reference Note No. 32/ RN/Ref./December/2013. [Online]. Available from: http://164.100.47.134/ intranet/Minority_Education.pdf (Accessed 01.09.2015) Parry, J. P. 1999. ‘Lords of Labour: Working and Shirking in Bhilai’, Contributions to Indian Sociology, 33 (1–2): 107–40. Patel, R. 2009. ‘Indian Muslim Women, Politics of Muslim Personal Law and Struggle for Life with Dignity and Justice’,  Economic and Political Weekly, 44 (44): 44–9. Phadke, S. 2005. ‘“You Can Be Lonely in a Crowd”: The Production of Safety in Mumbai’, Indian Journal of Gender Studies, 12 (1): 41–62. Phadnis, S. 2015. ‘Maharashtra dubs madrassas “non-schools”’. [Online] Times of India, 2 July. Available from: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/ india/Maharashtra-dubs-madrassas-non-schools/articleshow/47902687. cms (Accessed 15.07.2015). Planning Commission. 2008.  Eleventh Five Year Plan (2007–2012) Social Sector (Vol. II). New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Planning Commission. 2013.  Twelfth Five Year Plan (2012–2017) Social Sectors (Vol. III). New Delhi: Sage Publications India Ltd. PROBE Team, Delhi School of Economics and Centre for Development Economics. 1999. Public Report on Basic Education in India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. PTI. 2014a. ‘My government will work for development of Muslims, says Modi’. [Online]. The Hindu, 11 June. Available from: http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/my-government-will-work-for-developmentof-muslims-says-modi/article6104657.ece (Accessed 17.09.2014).

310

Bibliography

PTI. 2014b. ‘Madrassas give “education of terrorism”: BJP MP Sakshi Maharaj’. [Online]. Live Mint, 14 September. Available from: http://www.livemint.com/Politics/z4QCa842F272RJmEMvVvgM/ Madrassas-give-education-of-terrorism-BJP-MP-Sakshi-Mahar.html (Accessed 17.09.2014). PTI. 2014a. 2015. ‘We seek to empower madrasa students with education, skill development: Najma Heptulla’. [Online]. The Economic Times, 2 July. Available from: http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes. com/2015-08-23/news/65769663_1_skill-development-prime-ministernarendra-modi-najma-heptulla (Accessed 23.07.2015). . 2017. ‘Portal launched for online registration of madrasas in UP’. [Online]. Hindustan Times, 18 August. Available from: http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/portal-launched-for-online-registrationof-madrasas-in-up/story-CmsLd2BpI0Sa3HD5u6B6wM.html (Accessed 20.08.2017). Qadir, A. 2013. ‘Between Secularism/s: Islam and the Institutionalisation of Modern Higher Education in Mid-Nineteenth Century British India’, British Journal of Religious Education, 35 (2): 125–39. Qamaruddin, D. 1996. Hindustan Ki Dini Dargahen (Religious Schools in India). New Delhi: Hamdard Education Society. Radhakrishnan, S. 2011. Appropriately Indian: Gender and Culture in a New Transnational Class. Durham: Duke University Press. Radway, J.A. 1984.  Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Rahman, S.A. 2009. ‘Co-education ban is met with criticism across India’. [Online]. The National World, 15 March. Available from: http://www. thenational.ae/news/world/south-asia/co-education-ban-is-met-withcriticism-across-india (Accessed 01.03.2012). Rahman, S.A. 2013. ‘Madrassas in India attract Hindu students’. [Online]. Al Jazeera, 2 December. Available from: http://www.aljazeera.com/ indepth/spotlight/indiaonline/2013/11/madrassas-india-attract-hindustudents-2013111814457229891.html (Accessed 13.08.2014). Rajakumar, M. 2009. Haram in the Harem: Domestic Narratives in India and Algeria (Post Colonial Studies Volume 8). New York: Peter Lang. Rauf, T.A. 2011. ‘Violence Inflicted on Muslims: Direct, Cultural and Structural’, Economic and Political Weekly, 46 (23): 69–76. Ray, R. 2012. ‘The Politics of Knowledge: The Women’s Movement and Gender Scholarship in India’, in R. Ray (ed.), Handbook of Gender, pp. 1–26. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Razzak, A. and A. Gumber. 1999. Differentials in Human Development: A Case Study for Empowerment of Muslims in India. New Delhi: NCAER.



Bibliography

311

Registrar General of India. 2001. Census of India. New Delhi: Office of Registrar General of India. Riaz, A. 2008. Faithful Education: Madrassahs in South Asia. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Rinaldo, R. 2008. ‘Muslim Women, Middle Class Habitus, and Modernity in Indonesia’, Contemporary Islam, 2 (1): 23–39. . 2010a. ‘The Islamic Revival and Women’s Political Subjectivity in Indonesia’, Women’s Studies International Forum, 33 (4): 422–31. . 2010b. ‘Women and Piety Movements’, in B.S. Turner (ed.), The New Blackwell Companion to the Sociology of Religion, Part VI-Globalisation, pp. 563–83. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. . 2014. ‘Pious and Critical: Muslim Women Activists and the Question of Agency’, Gender & Society, 28 (6): 824–46. Robinson, F. 1997. ‘Religious Change and the Self in Muslim South Asia’. South Asia, 20(1): 1–15. . 1998. ‘The British Empire and Muslim Identity in South Asia’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Sixth Series, VIII (8): 271–89. Robinson, R. 2005. Tremors of Violence: Muslim Survivors of Ethnic Strife in Western India. London: SAGE. Rodrigues, V. 2011.  ‘In Search of an Anchor: Muslim Thought in Modern India’, Economic and Political Weekly, 46 (49): 43–58. Ruhela, S.P. 1998. ‘Religion, Social Class and Educational Opportunity: Case Studies of Eight Muslim Girls’, S.P. Ruhela (ed.), in Empowerment of the Indian Muslim Women, pp. 1–21. New Delhi: MD Publications. Said, E.W. 1978. Orientalism. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Saiyed, A.R. and M. Talib. 1985. ‘Institutions and Ideas: A Case Study in Islamic Learning’, in C.W. Troll (ed.), Islam in India: Studies and Commentaries, pp. 191–209. New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House. Schielke, J.S. and L. Debevec, eds. 2012. Ordinary Lives and Grand Schemes: An Anthropology of Everyday Religion. New York: Berghahn Books. Schielke, S. 2009a. ‘Being Good in Ramadan: Ambivalence, Fragmentation, and the Moral Self in the Lives of Young Egyptians’, in F. Osella and B. Soares (eds), Islam, Politics, Anthropology, pp. 23–38. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell. Schielke, S. 2009b. ‘Ambivalent Commitments: Troubles of Morality, Religiosity and Aspiration among Young Egyptians’, Journal of Religion in Africa, 39 (2): 158–85. . 2010. ‘Second Thoughts about the Anthropology of Islam, or How to Make Sense of Grand Schemes in Everyday Life’, Zentrum Moderner Orient Working Papers, 2, pp. 1–16.

312

Bibliography

Schielke, S. 2012. ‘Capitalist Ethics and the Spirit of Islamization in Egypt’, in S. Schielke and L. Debevec (eds), Ordinary Lives and Grand Schemes: An Anthropology of Everyday Religion, pp. 131–45. New York: Berghahn Books. Schmidt, G. 2002. ‘Dialectics of Authenticity: Examples of Ethnification of Islam among Young Muslims in Sweden and the United States’, The Muslim World, 92 (1–2): 1–17. . 2005. ‘The Transnational Umma-Myth or Reality? Examples from the Western Diasporas’, Muslim World, 95 (4): 575–86. Sen, M. C. 2012. ‘96% Muslim prisoners do not have terror or criminal connections’. [Online]. The Sunday Guardian, 1 October. Available from: http://www.sunday-guardian.com/investigation/96-muslim-prisonersdo-not-have-terror-or-criminal-connections (Accessed 13.08.2014). Seth, S. 2007.  Subject Lessons: The Western Education of Colonial India. Durham: Duke University Press. Sikand, Y. 1999. ‘Women and the Tablighi Jama’at’, Islam and Christian– Muslim Relations, 10 (1): 41–52. . 2005a. Bastions of the Believers: Madrasas and Islamic Education in India. New Delhi: Penguin Books India. . 2005b. ‘The Indian Madrassahs and the Agenda of Reform’, Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 25 (2): 219–48. . 2008a. Muslim Education in Contemporary India: A Classified and Annotated Bibliography. Gurgaon: Hope India Publications. . 2008b. ‘Reforming Traditional Muslim Education’, Economic and Political Weekly, 43 (29): 19–22. Simon, G.M. 2009. ‘The Soul Freed of Cares? Islamic Prayer, Subjectivity, and the Contradictions of Moral Selfhood in Minangkabau, Indonesia’, American Ethnologist, 36 (2): 258–75. Singh, S. S. 2012. ‘Madrasas throwing open doors to non-muslim students’. [Online]. The Hindu, 2 June. Available from: http://www.thehindu.com/ news/national/other-states/madrasas-throwing-open-doors-to-nonmuslim-students/article3480583.ece (Accessed 13.08.2012). Skinner, D. and D. Holland. 1996. ‘Schools and Cultural Production of the Educated Person in a Nepalese Hill Community’, in B.A. Levinson, D.E. Foley, D.C. Holland, and D.C. Clement (eds), The Cultural Production of the Educated Person: Critical Ethnographies of Schooling and Local Practice, pp. 273–99. Albany: State University of New York Press. Sökefeld, M. 1999. ‘Debating Self, Identity and Culture in Anthropology’, Current Anthropology, 40 (4): 417–47. Soman, Z. and N.S. Niaz. 2014.  Locating Muslim Women in Indian Policy; People at the Margins: Whose Budgets? Whose Rights?  Delhi: Ford



Bibliography

313

Foundation, UN Women and Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan Publication. Spivak, G.C. 1993. Outside in the Teaching Machine. London: Routledge. SPQEM (Scheme for Providing Quality Education in Madrasas) Evaluation Report, 2013. Delhi: Dr. K.R. Narayanan Centre for Dalit and Minorities Studies, Jamia Millia Islamia. Srivastava, K. 2013. ‘Only 11 in 100 Muslims take up higher education’. [Online]. DNA E-Paper, 5 February. Available from: http://www.dnaindia. com/mumbai/report-only-11-in-100-muslims-take-up-higher-education-1796343 (Accessed 02.07.2013). Srivastava, P. 2014a.  ‘Darul Uloom questions Government’s plan to modernise madrasas’.  [Online] Mail Today, 13 July. Available from: http:// www.dailymail.co.uk/indiahome/indianews/article-2690705/DarulUloom-questions-Governments-plan-modernise-madrasas.html (Accessed 07.08.2014). . 2014b.  ‘BJP MP claims Madrasas “teach youths to be terrorists”. [Online] Mail Today, 14 September. Available from: http://www.dailymail. co.uk/indiahome/indianews/article-2755661/BJP-MP-claims-Madrasasteach-youths-terrorists.html#ixzz3nIPfMvav (Accessed 07.08.2014). Starrett, G. 1998. Putting Islam to Work: Education, Politics, and Religious Transformation in Egypt. London: University of California Press. Still, C. 2011. ‘Spoiled Brides and the Fear of Education: Honour and Social Mobility among Dalits in South India’, Modern Asian Studies, 45 (5): 1119–46. Talib, M. 2010. Writing Labour: Stone Quarry Workers in Delhi. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. . 2014. ‘Studying Ummah Anthropologically: Some Critical Reflections’. Paper presented at The Ummah in an Era of Globalisation, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, December 10–11.   Thakur, M.K. 2013. ‘Democracy, Pluralism and the Religious Minorities: The Muslim Question in India’, Social Change, 43 (4): 581–94. Thorat, S. and P. Attewell. 2007. ‘The Legacy of Social Exclusion’, Economic and Political Weekly, 42 (41): 4141–45. Trivedi, P.K. 2013. ‘Rural Power Structure, State Initiatives, and the Muslims: Divergent Experiences in Four States,’ in  Council for Social Development (India). Z. Hasan and M. Hasan (eds), India-Social Development Report 2012: Minorities at the Margins, pp. 222–41. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (2015) Promising Education for All Practises, India, Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan: Case Study. Available from: http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0023/002330/ 233008E.pdf (Accessed 02.07.2015).

314

Bibliography

USCIRF. 2013.  Annual Report of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom: Country Chapter on India. Washington: United States Commission on International Religious Freedom. Van der Veer, P. 2008. ‘Embodiment, Materiality, and Power: A Review Essay’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 50 (3): 809–18. Verma, L. 2017. ‘UP govt asks madrasas to host cultural events on Independence Day’. [Online]. The Indian Express, 11 August. Available from: http://indianexpress.com/article/india/up-govt-asks-madrasas-to-hostcultural-events-on-independence-day-4791382/ (Accessed 15.08.2017). Vreede-de Stuers, C. 1968. Parda: A Study of Muslim Women’s Life in Northern India. New York: Humanities Press. Walford, G. 2008. ‘The Nature of Educational Ethnography’, in How to Do Educational Ethnography., ed. G. Walford, pp. 1–15. London: Tufnell Press. Wikan, U. 1991. Behind the Veil in Arabia: Women in Oman. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Winkelmann, M.J. 2005. ‘From Behind the Curtain’: A Study of Girls’ Madrasa in India. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. . 2006. ‘Muslim Reactions to the Post-9/11: Media Discourse on the Indian Madaris’, in J. Hartung and H. Reifeld (eds), Islamic Education, Diversity and National Identity: Dīnī Madāris in India post 9/11, pp. 252–68. New Delhi: SAGE. . 2008. ‘“Inside and Outside’ in a Girls” Madrasa in New Delhi’, in F.A. Noor, Y. Sikand, and M.V. Bruinessen (eds), The Madrasa in Asia: Political Activism and Transnational Linkages, pp. 105–22. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Yuval-Davis, N., F. Anthias, and J. Campling. 1989. Woman-Nation-State. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Zaman, M.Q. 1999. ‘Religious Education and the Rhetoric of Reform: The Madrasa in British India and Pakistan’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 41 (2): 294–323. . 2007. ‘Madrasas and Minorities in Secular India’, in R.W. Hefner and M.Q. Zaman (eds), Schooling Islam: The Culture and Politics of Modern Muslim Education, pp. 61–86. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Index

Abu-Lughod, L .6, 52, 55 activities anti-national 11 classroom 13 mundane 164 peer group 204 peer 153 performing routine 190 religious 2 self-employed 115 tablighi 176 terrorist 97 adab and akhlaq 162, 168, 186, 188 teaching of 177, 186 adab 133–4, 144, 157, 161–63 advocacy position 23 Adivasis 48, 92 affiliation 260 organizational 264 afterlife 171–2, 175, 207 Agar, M. 17 agency structure paradigm 22 agency 6–7, 22, 53, 173, 195 embedded 6 embodied 6, 53, 195 women’s 6, 53, 195 Ahl-e-Hadith 89n3, 98,

Ahmad, I. x, 43–4, 89, 115–16, 128, 216n6 Ahmad, Shakeel x aided madrasas 253 Aisha (Hazrat), 168–9 akhirat (afterlife) 171–2, 175, 207 akhlaq 168, 172, 174–5, 177, 185–6, 188 Alam, A. x, 29, 34, 39, 44, 128 Alam, M.S. 7, 29, 44, 143 Aligarh movements 34 Aligarh Muslim University 34, 216 Aligarh Zenana Madrasa 40 alim 171 alima 2, 4, 10, 61–2, 65–7, 76–7, 81, 83, 118, 124, 131–2, 136, 156 alima course 2n4, 62, 76, 106, 118–9, 124, 215, 245 almiat 71, 83, 122 alimon ki 169 in the making 132 Alternative Integrated Education (AIE) 258 amal 171–2, 174–5, 186, 188, 196, 202 embodied 188 ambiguity of piety 247

316

Amin, Maulana Ibrahim Mohammad x Anderson, B. 4, 125–6, 245 Angrosino, M.V. 14 anthropological lens 17 literature 3, 247 research 28 scholarship 3, 54, 251 studies 39, 44, 52 work 6–7, 28, 51, 196, 204, 234, 247, 251 anthropology of education, Islam, and gender 244 anticipatory socialization 5 anti-Muslim/anti-Hindu 32 anti-national activities and terrorism 11 Appadurai, A. 3–4, 8, 28, 56–7, 126, 211–14, 224, 249, 251 Approach to Education 139 Arabic 108, 157, 159–60 classes 159 Department of the university 210 grammar 157 language 159 learning 27, 46, 73, 157, 159, 212, 224, 228, 242 lettering 37 level 228 literature 157 madrasa 233 root darasa 29 speaking 29 word 116 architecture 107, 144 closed 110, 144 madrasas 144 area bathing 107

Index

open 103 reception 105 urban 92–3 Area Intensive Madrasa Modernization Programme 257–8 arrangements 144, 160 residential 102 spatial 143–4 artisanal work 93 artist’s canvas/Every sight 102 aspirations 2–3, 7–9, 19, 25–6, 49, 51, 55–7, 59, 83, 85, 211–14, 217–21, 223, 225, 241, 243, 249, 251 changing 60, 82, 214, 244, 249 educational 57, 82, 219 everyday 3, 6, 19, 25, 44, 46, 54, 60, 70, 80, 99, 127, 172, 156, 211 gendered 2, 25 imagined 213 new 212, 214 worldly 212, 241 athletics 242–3 Attewell, P. 97n14 authority 100, 152–5 bureaucratic 143 male 144, 153–5 patriarchal 100 autonomy 261 recognized 267 religio-cultural 267 autotomised agency 53 awaz ka purdah (purdah of the voice) 14, 164, 189 BA Islamic Studies 218, 221 Bachelors in Unani Medicine and Surgery (BUMS) 176 backgrounds 113, 118 educational 112–13, 118, 120, 138

lower middle-class 112 poor 117–18 social-occupational 113 socio-economic 112, 120 Backward Classes and Scheduled Tribes 215 backward Muslim 32, 255, 261 banal 185–6 Bangstad, S. 7, 54 Bano, M. 45–6, 60, 84, 112–13, 128, 141, 250, 264, 268 Basu, A. 30–1 Basu, T. 95 behaviour 189, 191–2, 196, 202, 233–4, 237 appropriate 235 bad 233 deriding 235 patterns 192 permissible 177 pious 198, 202 respectable 232 right 176 uniform reverential 189 behavioural code 20 behavioural norms 20 beliefs 53, 56 gendered 42–3 un-Islamic 36 Below Poverty Line (BPL) 96 Benei, V. 7, 43, 50–1 binaries 28, 53, 98, 259 empowerment and disempowerment 55–6, 244 modern or traditional 31, 244, 252, 254, 262 social reproduction or empowerment 25, 28, 44 subordination or resistance 6, 53, 244 BJP 95n11, 96n12, 98, 258

Index

317

boards 106, 137, 147 educational 90 state madrasa 90–1 Boddy, J. 6, 52, 141 boundaries 10, 175–7, 193, 198 fluid 10, 194 ideological 10 personal 21 physical 10 Borker, Hem 9, 10–16, 17–18, 19–25, 130, 179, 210–11, 224, 228, 233, 238, 240–1, 249–52 Briant, Richard x British colonization 37 British Crown 31 British Parliament 30 British rule 31, 35 Bruinessen, M.V. 29, 88 burqa 12, 148, 150, 178, 210, 211, 230 Calcutta Madrasa 30 capacity to aspire 3, 8, 56, 212, 248 capacity 56–7 Ceremonial faraghat 122 Certeau, Michel de 5, 54, 57, 168, 198, 211, 213, 247–8 Charter Act 32 Chatterjee, A.V. 35–36, 43–4 Chatterjee, P. 35–36, 141 Chhachhi, A. 37, 100 Chhattisgarh, rural 48 children 48, 50–1 Ciotti M. 7, 48, 51 civilizational critique 35 civilizing mission 30 classes 1, 11, 13–14, 22, 24, 28, 30, 49–50 finished 2 junior 43

318

regular 16 separate 34 service 40 timetabled 11 co-education 81, 226, 230n10, 230n11 co-educational school 62, 139, 194, 231, 241 setting 83–4, 120, 138 madrasa 230 university 220, 223, 235, 239 colonial 32–3, 35 administrators 31 appendage 31 construction 35 definition 31 discourse 32 documents 40 education policy in India 30 encounter and Madrasa Education 29, 32 government 32 hostility 33 India 30, 33–6, 140, 246 interests 30 legacy 37 Madrasa education 32 measures 31 communal discourse, prevalent 267 communal violence 96–7, 99, 100 Babri Masjid demolition 96 Hindu nationalist violence, routinization of 96 intense and frenzied riots 96 violence against minorities 96 communalization of social space 52, 80–1, 88, 95–6, 101, 245, 268 communalization 52, 245 communalization, increasing 268

Index

communicators of sacred knowledge 4, 61, 65–7, 76, 80–1, 83, 89, 118, 124, 132, 170, 186, 245, 250 community 2–5, 8, 10, 22, 25, 36, 46–9, 51, 56, 214, 219–20, 235, 244–6, 251, 262–4, 267–9 backward 256 code 52 elders 221 global 51 ideal Muslim 4 ideals 248 imagined 3–4, 50, 126, 245 initiatives 43, 269 institution 223 largest minority 255 members 10, 220, 223 minority 8, 17, 255–6 moral 4, 25, 140–2 norms 8, 214, 219, 223, 244 processes 268 resources 264 sentiments 126 service 20 community-institutions, flexible 43 component homemakers 44, 47 comprehensive all-India survey 41 concerns of purdah. See awaz ka purdah constitutional obligations 264 constitutional rights 254 contexts 2, 5, 7, 14 larger 4, 8 larger socio-political 25 larger socio-religious 3 socio-economic 7 corrupt environment 181 crisis of relevance 259 culture 2, 35–6, 44, 81, 99, 192, 268–9

cultural authenticity 35, 141, 246 cumulative self-perfection 197 curriculum 258, 260, 264 custodians of religious education 245 dawah (also dawat) 63, 66, 98, 131, 160, 190, 195 Dalit 7, 48, 49, 51, 92, 97n14, 135, 137 Dalrymple, William 27–8 Darul Uloom Deoband xiii, 34n5, 261, 35n6 Darul Uloom Nadwatul Ulama xiii, 30 Deeb, L. 6, 52, 54–5, 195–6, 247, 251 degrees 216–17, 239 alima 215 fazila 215 dini line 66 dini talim 63–4, 76, 81–2, 156, 160 distance education forms 213 distance-mode forms 213 examination 15n10, 217, 263 docile subjects 45–6, 250 domain of sovereignty 36 domesticated femininity 45, 47, 250 dominated patriarchal readings, male 250 dress code of madrasa woman 18, 20, 62, 99, 100, 182 gender segregation (segregation of girls) 101 practice of purdah 150, 178, 182 rules of attire 182 rules pertaining to dress 67 symbolic shelter 184 dropout rates 219

Index

319

Durga Vahini 95 dynamics 8, 23, 46, 264 complex, 8 Dyson, J. x, 201, 204 East India Company 30 economic independence 22, 45, 250 economic marginalization 97 educated girls 232, 237–8 education 3–5, 7–8, 15, 17, 21–3, 25–6, 60, 64, 66, 70, 77, 80–5, 212, 216, 218, 219, 221–2, 224, 227, 231–2, 235, 238–39, 244–5, 247–9, 254–7, 259–69 boards 263 computer 260 courses 16, 73 elementary 258 female 81 for girls, right 83 inclusive 261 integrated 259 line 66 mission 3 modern 262, 269 Muslim women 37, 39, 266 primary 70, 80 prolonged 81 religious 245, 250, 259 secular 263, 265 students 218 terror of 86 worldly 82 educational background 9, 113–18 backwardness 124, 261 choices 43, 47, 63, 80, 112, 120, 123, 128, 134–5, 138, 245, 261

320

demands 269 deprivation of Muslims 259 empowerment 251, 254, 266–8 empowerment of Muslim women 251, 254, 267 institutions 256, 263 journeys 25, 60–1, 76, 243–5, 247, 249, 251 landscape 25, 29–31, 60, 80–1, 123, 138 marginalization of Muslims 94, 266 option 81 policy 32, 259, 267 programme 245–6 project 7, 246 regime 82, 245 in girls’ madrasas 144 in the madrasa 123, 164 routines 246 spaces 82, 266 vision of girls’ madrasas 125, 140 vision 246, 266 EGS (Education Guarantee Scheme) 258 Eickelman, D.F. 125 embodiment 46, 53, 82, 111, 160–4, 168, 173, 196, 208, 239, 246–50 Emerson, R.M. 10, 17 educational landscape 80–1 employment 45, 250, 259–62 economic independence 45, 250, 255, 259–62, 269 employment 255, 259–62, 269 empowerment 244, 250–1, 266–7 alternative 268 educational 251, 268 women’s 250, 255

Index

engagement 264, 269 central government’s 258 English 78, 237, 241 speaking 241 learning 160 enquiry, critical 266 entities, traditional 256 entry 260–1, 268 environment, scrutinized 248 equivalence 260 granted 260 ethical formation 53 ethnographic monograph 84 narratives 80 research 9, 16–17, 85, 195 study 6, 49 work 196, 244 ethos (mahaul ) 17, 112, 124, 133–4, 152 ethnographic writing and analysis 58 ethnographic portraits 59–60, 80, 240–4 everyday life 8, 38, 44, 46, 60, 85, 160, 196, 211, 213, 247–8 exchange of information 213 expansion, gradual 257 expenses, living 265 Express News Service 259 factors governing transnational interconnections 51 faith movement 10n6 familial obligations 241 family 62–3, 67–8, 70–1, 75, 79–84, 241, 269 Fancourt, Nigel x Farooq, M. 39, 143, 154

Fatima (Hazrat) 73, 75, 168–9 Fazal, T. x, 92 feminine identity 236 five namaz prayers 164 Five Year Plan Document 268 Foley, D. 49 food restrictions of haram and halal 194 formal curriculum 156 formal education textbooks 258 formal school-leaving certificate 259 Frisk, S. 6, 52, 195, 247 Froerer, P. 48 Fuller, C. 201 garrisoned spaces 11 Gathorne-Hardy, Alfred x Gayer, L. 91, 94, 97, 101, 102 Geertz, C. 127 gender 244–6, 249, 256, 266–7, 269 boundaries 249 equality 266–7 ideals 243 location 267 norms 245, 250–1 norms, conservative 267 understandings 244 gender-based family 244 gendered aspiration 2, 25 Gilbertson, A. 214, 234n13, 234–6, 249 Girls’ Education 266, 268, also see women’s education girls 263, 265, 267–8 prioritize 268 Girls’ madrasas 1, 4, 10–11, 20, 35–47, 58–60, 82–4, 125–8, 139–44, 245–52, 267 goalpost, imagined 245 Goffman, E. 143n5, 202

Index

321

Gole, N. 55 government 254, 256–8, 260–1, 263, 266, 268 aid 260–1, 264 central 258 flagship programme 258 madrasas 34, 90 government-sponsored Western education 32 ground realities, emerging 269 Gupta, L. 267 Gupta, N. 5, 32, 42–3, 89–91 Habibullah, Wajahat x Hamdard Education Society 42 Hameed, S.S. x, 11, 37 Hartog Committee 32 Hefner, R.W. 33 Hegland, M.E. 6 Heyl, B.S. 17 Hindu nationalism 7, 50, 95–6 Hindu Right 267 Hindutva movement 95 history of Islam 12, 126, 156 history of madrasa education 28, 34, 244 history of madrasas in India 34 Human Resource Development 260, 266 Hunter Education Commission 40 ideals of a madrasa student 1 imagined community 245. See ummah Indian madrasas 87, 255 Muslim identity 87 Indian Muslim community 141 Indian policy discourse 26

322

madrasa modernization 10, 216, 251, 254–9, 261–2, 264–5, 268–9 Women’s empowerment 45–6, 60, 250, 255 Infrastructure Development of Minority Institutions (IDMI) 258 Islamic domesticity 45, 84 identity 44, 99, 141 piety 2–7, 25, 51–2, 54, 130, 132, 173, 195–6, 213–16, 246–8 piety movements 51–2 prescriptions 7, 157 reform movements 38, 52, 88, 112, 245 reformism 98–99 reformist movements 25, 100 Revival 6, 10 studies 4, 16, 73, 76, 176, 212, 217, 224, 227, 231, 242 tradition 5, 32, 87–8 womanhood 2, 5–6, 25, 37, 45, 139, 143–4, 249, 268 Jamaat-e-Islami Hind 89n3, 98, 104 Jamia Millia Islamia 16, 89, 173, 210, 214–15, 217 Jung, Najeeb x kamil momina (ideal woman) 3n5, 4, 8, 25, 53, 122, 140, 143, 152, 164, 168, 174–5, 177, 185–6, 191, 194, 196–7, 211, 236, 239, 245–6, 248, 251 (see also Muslim woman) Kandiyoti, D. 6, 52 Khandhlawi, Maulana Muhammad Ilyas 10n6

Index

Kishwar, M. 37 Kumar, K. 30, 50 Kumar, N. 263 Kundu Committee Report 92, 94 Lapidus, I.M. 186 Lateef, S. 38 level of education 89, 94, 115, 219 Levinson, B.A. and D.C. Holland 50 Lukose, R.A. 7, 49, 51, 137, 204, 222, 234–6, 249 Lunt, Ingrid x madrasa curriculum 13, 82 dini talim (religious education) 33, 63, 76, 129–30, 156, 255 duniyavi talim (worldly education) 33, 63–4, 115, 128, 138, 157, 195, 241 madrasa education 2–9, 15, 25–35, 37–47, 51, 53, 60, 66, 77, 83–4, 87, 112–13, 120, 123–4, 127–35, 141–2, 153, 170–2, 191–4, 198, 211–14, 222–3, 227–38, 243–4, 246, 248–50, 255, 257, 260–9 madrasa education for girls 26, 39, 41–2, 244 docile subjects 45–6, 250 empowerment of women 26, 45–7, 60, 250 ethnographic portraits 59–60, 80, 250 feminization of madrasa enrolments 39, 41–2 formal c­ urriculum 45 influence of Islamic values 42 informal curriculum 44 marriage prospects 42, 120, 142

material conditions 42 medieval traditional institutions 35 madrasa graduates 16, 56, 60, 73, 76, 84, 208, 211, 216, 237, 239, 248, 259, 265 madrasa modernization 10, 216, 251, 254–9, 261–2, 264–5, 268–9, 278–9 madrasa syllabus 29n2, 154, 156–60, 271–5 madrasa’s vision 126–7, 177 madrasa-educated alima 84, 136 madrasa-educated girl 3 madrasas in colonial India 34 Madrasas in India 2, 11, 20, 25, 28, 34, 36–7, 39, 41–2, 44–5, 47, 88–91, 101, 127, 216n6 Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat 1–2, 9–11, 15, 18, 20–1, 25, 85, 88, 102–3, 106–7, 113, 118, 120, 123, 128, 139–40, 42, 144–5, 152–5, 161–2, 166–7, 182, 192, 195, 204–5, 209–10, 215, 217, 241, 244–6, 250 Madrasatul Uloom Musalmanane-Hind or Mohammedan AngloOriental College 34. See Aligarh Muslim University Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) 97n15 Mahmood, S. 3, 6–7, 28, 52–5, 168, 185, 195–7, 247 Maktabs primary level institutions 89 Marriage 3, 5, 8, 34, 42, 49, 80–1, 119–20, 133, 135–9, 211–2, 246–8 arranged 120 marriage market 120, 136

Index

323

marriageable age 119 mental peace (peace) see sukoon Merton, R.K. 5 Metcalf, B. xiii, 5, 34, 35n6, 36, 38, 44, 47, 88, 127, 162, 255, 264 Mid-Day Meals 258 Mills, D. ix, 14, 58, 60 Minault, G. 36, 39–40, 177 minority community 43, 255 Minority University 215 moral anchorage 246 Muhammadan Educational Conference 40 Muslim communities in India 88, 91, 98–9, 243–4, 249–50 Islamic reform movements, rise of 38, 52, 88, 91, 112, 245 Muslim marginalization 52, 88, 91–4, 100, 166 Muslim community 33, 40–1, 44, 92–3, 97, 100, 124–6, 264, 268 conservatives 142n4, 267 culture 2, 81, 102, 192 enclave 97, 101 marginality 45 marginalization 88, 91 minority institutions 255 neighbourhood 38, 97, 101–3 Parliamentarians 261 population 102, 114n32 reform movements 34, 255 reformers 28, 37, 141 woman 3–5, 24–5, 28, 36–7, 53, 59, 85, 99, 127, 140, 142, 160, 168, 170–1, 174–6, 178, 242, 244, 246, 248–9, 267–8 womanhood 4, 28, 37, 141–2 Muzammil, Mohammad x

324

Naidu, Sarojini 24 Nair, P. 33, 255–6, 264 National Eligibility Test (NET) 239 National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS) 257 navigational capacity 8, 56, 212–13, 249 navigational information 212, 249 Nayar, U. 5, 38 network of affiliated madrasas 34 new economy of India 115 non-school going 254n3 Noor F.A. 29, 88 Nurullah and Naik 30–1 Open School 64–5, 77, 138, 242, 257, 263 organizational and management structure of Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat, the 153 over educating 49, 120, 138 alternative empowerment 47, 84, 268 conservative family 83–4 madrasa background 73, 78, 83–4, 232, 238–9 Osella, Caroline x, 98, 180, 204, 236 Parry, J.P. 201 Patel, R. 37 Phadke, S. 214, 222–3, 235, 249, Phadnis, S. 254n3 pious self-fashioning 25, 28, 54, 168, 247, 251 Practice 3–6, 26, 34, 51–6, 133, 195, 204, 247 adab 135, 161–2 amal 82, 131, 134, 171, 174 bodily practices (see embodiment) 35, 43, 143–44

Index

haram and halal 63, 76, 171, 175, 194, 243 Policy 254–69, 276–86 Post Sachar Evaluation Committee 92–4, 219, 266. See Kundu Committee Report practice of Islamic strictures 155 practices of kamil momina 168 Prakash, Aseem ix pre-colonial India 30 pre-existing Islamic sciences 33 process of learning and unlearning 237, 251 proper Muslim 127 beliefs and practices, set of 127 Islamic etiquettes 139, 246 Islamic notions 25, 131 madrasa education, choice of 42, 120, 128 morals befitting 139 practice Islam the right way 130 understanding of Islam 127 Qadir, A. 30–2 Qamaruddin, D. 42 Quality Education in Madrasas (SPQEM) 42, 89, 258 Radhakrishnan, S. 214, 235–6 Radway, J.A. 202 Rahman, S.A. 91, 230n10 Rajakumar, M. 35 Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) 95n11 rational sciences 29 Rauf, T. 98 Ray, R. 35 reform programme 33, 259, 261–2

Rehmani, Maulana Wali x relative deprivation of Muslims 93 educational gap between Muslims and other ­communities 93 educational status, improvement in 93 field of education 93 literacy levels, trend of 93 rate of progress 93 socio-religious categories 93, 94n8, 218 religious customs and daily practices of the madrasa 20 religious educational institutions 33, 255 religious elite 34 religious sciences 29 Report of the National Commission for Religious and Linguistic Minorities. See Justice Ranganath Misra Commission Report reflexivity 16–25 Right to Education 80, 254 Rights of Women in Islam 175 Risk 43, 49, 195, 219, 269 education as risk 43, 81, 100–1, 135, 219–39 public space 25, 52, 101, 179m, 211, 222–3, 235–6, 239 Robinson, F. 35 Robinson, R. 96 Rodrigues, V. 10n6, 98n19 role of madrasas 39, 42n9, 44, 127 model of and model for 127 Sabiha 167, 179 Sachar Committee 41, 91, 100 Report 91–2, 95, 97n16, 101, 114n33, 216, 258, 261 Sachar, Rajinder x, 216

Index

325

Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) 258 Scheme for Providing Quality Education in Madrasas (SPQEM) 258 Schmidt, G. 4, 52 scholarship on Muslim 37 Seth, S. 32, 255 Shahbuddin, Syed x Shaw, L. 10, 17 Sikand, Y. 4, 5, 10n6, 29, 33, 38–9, 42–5, 47, 63n5, 84, 88–9, 112, 255 socio-economic marginalization 112, 245, 263, 268 spatial ghettoization 268 spiritual signs of femininity 36 Stambach, Amy x Still, C. 7, 49, 51, 81, 135, 137, 222 studying in Jamia 113, 211, 217 sukoon 65n10, 155, 202 Tabligh network 125–6, 132 Tablighi Jamaat 10, 63, 98, 106, 113, 117–18, 125, 132, 140 (see also transnational movement; faith movement) Talib, M. ix, 44, 51, 105, 126, 128, 265–6 talim 33, 63, 76, 81, 125, 128–30, 167, 172, 174, 192 Thanawi, Maulana Ashraf Ali 35n6, 40 Thorat, S. 97n14 theological conservatism 51 traditional Islamic learning 33–4, 255 Transnational 10, 51, 63, 125 IT workers 236 movement 10n6, 63n4 network 125 Trivedi, P.K. 43, 261n10

326

Ummah 50–51, 122, 140, 144, 174, 186, 245 consciousness 52 ideational ummah 52, 123–7 imagined moral community 245 pan Islamic 125 Ummul Momineen 157 United Progressive Alliance (UPA) 257 universal community of Muslim 245 Urdu 2, 13–4, 41, 44, 75, 176, 222, 224, 239 value of acceptance 66 Vidya Bharti 95 Vreede-de Stuers, C 37 Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) 95n11 Western education 31–2, 34 Western educational institutions 34 Western sciences 32

Index

western-liberal language 266 Wikan, U. 6, 52 Winkelmann, M.J. 5, 7, 35n6, 39, 43–7, 112, 125, 141, 143, 153, 250 women’s empowerment of madrasa girls 60–4 educational choices 43, 47, 63, 80, 112, 120, 123, 128, 134–5, 138, 245, 261 educational journeys 25, 61, 240, 243–5, 247, 249, 251 ideal Muslim woman’s actual practice 60–4 regular studies of madrasa 64n9 religious scholars 60, 255, 261 women’s organizations Durga Vahini 95 World Hindu Council 95n11 Yuval-Davis, N. 55 Zaman, M.Q. 29, 30n3, 31–4, 255

About the Author

Hem Borker is assistant professor at the Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. She earned her DPhil in Education from the University of Oxford on the Clarendon Scholarship. Her research interests include education, social exclusion, gender, and youth. She also holds an MA in social work from the University of Delhi, and a BA in history from St. Stephen’s College, University of Delhi.