Showkat Ahmad Mir &
Waseem Khaliq
From being labelled as katt mullas, mullas, kattu, miyan to being addressed as Babur ki aulad and other such distasteful terms reflects the precarious condition of Indian Muslims. From snatching a burqa from a Muslim woman to calling them brainwashed can be seen under the guise of the larger framework of what HubertBlalock calls majority-minority dynamics. According to which minority groups are perceived as a threat to the social and political hierarchy. The majority group perceives a threat to its hold on economic, political, and cultural resources when a minority group’s size or influence increases.This perceived threat can lead to increased prejudice and discriminatory actions to protect the existing social hierarchy.
A majority-minority dynamics provides a strong base to understand this interplay of stagmizing minority traditions. The externalization of this dynamics manifests in the stereotyping of Muslim men and women. For that, Muslim men and women are usually labelled by distasteful terms. Not only this, these groups are always represented in popular culture as inherently violent and harmful to the majority cultural norms.
Power and politics, annexed with masculinity, historically shaped social relations across the globe. Human evolution from being gatherers and hunters to the settled communities has witnessed glimpses of this annexation. And with social and political evolution, this annexation got manifested in an even more Frankenstein design. The design has severely affected the minority groups across the globe. India also could not escape this Frankenstein order. In India during the Vedic times, which according to historians falls from 1500 BCE to the early 500 BCE, the reflections are not pleasing about the condition of women. The gender relations, by some how egalitarian, changed unexpectedly after the early Vedic period, from where women were largely perceived through restrictive domestic roles and pushed to subordination by people in power. They were subjected to male authority and control within the household even after the later Vedic period. These restrictive social rules by priestly groups and groups with power, structured and normalized hierarchy and legitimized women’s subordination in the Indian subcontinent. The references can be seen in the ManuSmriti and other stories of Sujata, where women’s domestic roles and subordination get structurally normalized in the Indian context.
Patriarchy exists across cultures, strengthened by religious groups, and Muslims are not an exception.With time, male dominance across cultures has not disappeared, but rather manifested in other forms. In contemporary India, the patriarchal attitudes intersect with identity politics and communal narratives.The annexation of these dimensions gets reinforced through selective cultural symbolism appropriating communal agendas.
Wearing a burqa and hijab by Muslim women is often considered as imposed, and a result of male chauvinism. Let’s take this as true for the sake of argument. Does it imply that women belonging to other religions or sects are free from the patriarchal chains? Are they able to exercise free will and personal choice? Are their rights protected absolutely without any male interference? The answer undoubtedly is No. Wearing sindoor, a ghoonghat, and a mangalsutra, observing Karva Chauth, or performing kanyadaan, though manifesting deep-rooted patriarchy, are often considered part of social customs in majoritarian discourses. Still, the social practice of wearing a burqa gets politicized and framed as only a cultural symbol to be attacked. Thus, what is endorsed as a symbol of pride and identity of women in the majority culture is presented as a reflection of patriarchal oppression for minority women. The historical trajectories show women of minorities have always been under such targets; however,this time it is not Nangeli of Travancore but the Muslim woman in India. What used to be personal seems to become political and ideological in the course of time. The concern for Muslim women is just the exteriorization of the internalized prejudice and bias, which often gets reflected under various circumstances; hence, their identity and agency are questioned.
Societies may either challenge the male domination and patriarchal norms or reinforce them under the guise of tradition or culture. Some social practices are seen as preserving culture, while others are seen as lacking agency. Historically, dominant patriarchic practices often escaped scrutiny because of their privileged position within social hierarchies. With the result, certain forms of subjugation became internalised and normalised, while others are externalised and projected as cultural subjugation, often associated with minority groups.
Recently, famous lyricist Javed Akhtar, was asked a question by a Muslim woman about the choice of wearing a burqa. He replied that, ‘covering face is brain-washing, hence she is brainwashed’. Extrapolating his answer, yet other interesting questions arise: Are women wearing ghoonghat, mangalsutr and sindoor also brainwashed? Or this term suits only Muslim women. Every cultural practice comes under scrutiny. That further pushes us to understand how social realities are constructed? However,the brainwashing is increasingly used in current times for Muslim women who choose to wear hijab. The recent trends exhibit that only Muslim women and men are shown as oppressed and oppressors, respectively. This constrains one to argue that the majority mindset is prejudiced against a particular minority because of its religious identity and practices, shaped by various ideologies. Thus, taking us back to the core of this whole construction, i.e, Islamophobia. Burqa and Hijab,though being a form of veil, are now unjustly treated like the tools of threat and disharmony in the current socio-religious settings across the globe. This practice is often seen uncritically reducing complex social, cultural and personal choices to mere coercion, ignoring women’s agencies.The question of who will decide what women should wear can be seen as central to this debate. Is it the men, or the woman herself? Importantly, the unveiling of women is not a new phenomenon. In regions like Kashmir, women have often gone through such experiences under the pretext of security.
It is also important to mention that not all Muslim women wear burqa. Taking it as a universal practice in Muslim societies is not a rational approach to looking at such societies. However, internalisation of group bias and stereotypes among the majority population gets reinforced through popular media portrayals of minority groups in stereotypical depictions. Muslim women wearing a burqa are always shown as oppressed, and Muslim men are shown as inherently violent and harmful tosociety.
Finally, the controversy about women’s freedom is more about power and majority-minority dynamics. The veils of women become a symbol through which communal anxieties are expressed. Majoritarian discourse shapes the public psyche by projecting Muslim identity as in herently patriarchal, while overlooking similar dynamics elsewhere.
Women’s rights must be defended universally without selective outrage; whether the veil or not should be considered a matter of personal choice. Allowing more space for their expressions,it must not become an act of selective targeting. Thus religious belonging of a women should not become an impediment in acknowledging their right of choice and free will in choosing a veil, be it a Burqa or a Ghoonghat.
Showkat Ahmad Mir teaches Education at Govt. Degree College Majalta, Udhampur and Waseem Khaliq is pursuing PhD in Law at Aligarh Muslim University. They can be contacted at: showkat.cuhp@gmail.com, waseemkhaliqwk89@gmail.com
