Kitab Versus Hijab: Muslim Girls Regenerating Politics in India

This chapter looks at the recent hijab ban in the government-funded colleges of the South Indian state of Karnataka, through the lens of the Muslim girls’ voices, mediated by a purposive selection of mainstream news outlets. This research presents the Muslim girls’ narrative responses to the impossible kitab (books) versus hijab (veil) “choice” or the “choice” between the right to education and the right to religion presented to them. The narratives outlined in this chapter do not fit conventional understandings of “being” political or “doing” politics that rest largely on certain types of “actions” seen as resistive and/or related to formal political institutions. Instead, these narratives are situated in a continuum of a new form of political protest and agency among young Muslim women in India following the larger nationwide women-led protests of the Citizenship Amendment Act (2020). Muslim girls’ voices in this research suggest their attempts to regenerate democracy by offering an alternative political vision of India (and being Indian) to the authoritarian vision currently in power. Situated at the intersection of scholarly areas such as youth studies, Girlhood Studies, and gender studies, this chapter suggest that to understand Muslim girls’ political agency in authoritarian and Hindu majoritarian India, there is a need to recalibrate our understanding of politics and political agency. This has ramifications for understanding the women’s and girls’ political agency and actions specifically in oppressive authoritarian contexts.