Rethinking Gender and Agency : Educational Journeys of Madrasa students in India

Abstract

I focus on the unfolding of young women’s lives as they journey from home to madrasa to higher education in a university. Bringing together the analytical concepts of imagined community, piety and aspiration I highlight the fluidity of the ideal of the perfect Muslim woman. I capture the everyday tensions, negotiations and contradictions inherent in piety-as-practiced.  In attending to these ambiguities, I highlight how the girls’ journeys through madrasa education differ markedly from the expectations of parents, teachers and policymakers. In unanticipated ways madrasa education allows girls opportunities to reconfigure the gender boundaries it sought to concretize. The educational journeys of madrasa students in my research serve as a counter point to binaries of tradition vs modernity, empowerment vs. reproduction subordination vs. resistance conventionally applied to madrasas and Muslim women’s engagement with piety.