Beyond Margins: Muslim Women, Performative Resistance, and the Politics of Citizenship in India

This paper explores the intersections of minority politics, the gendering of nationalism, and citizenship through the framework of everyday governmentality, focusing on Muslim women’s participation in the anti-Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) protests in India (2019–2020). Situating these protests within the broader trajectory of Muslim women’s politics in contemporary India, the study interrogates how the movement at Shaheen Bagh—a predominantly Muslim neighbourhood—redefined feminist praxis and reclaimed public space amidst the exclusionary logic of the state. The Shaheen Bagh sit-ins challenged entrenched patriarchal norms such as chaar-deewari (domestic confinement) while also confronting the state’s gendered disciplining of minority identities. This paper argues that these protests, led primarily by Muslim women, disrupted nationalist frameworks that render minorities, particularly Muslim women, as passive subjects of marginalisation. Within this context, women’s bodies emerged as key sites of resistance, engaging in what can be understood through the gender bargain—negotiations that contest patriarchal norms within their communities while resisting state-imposed exclusions. Recent developments in Muslim women’s politics, however, underscore the complexity of this resistance. Strict identity-related legislations, such as anti-hijab policies, alongside heightened social media surveillance of Muslim identity markers, have amplified Muslim women’s sensitivities and subjectivities. These developments have also exposed fault lines within broader feminist movements in India, where communal fractures hinder solidarity. The distancing of Muslim women from these movements further complicates their political agency, particularly when juxtaposed with trans-Islamic identity assertion movements that challenge hegemonic understandings of gender within Muslim communities. Through qualitative methodologies, including interviews conducted in 2019-20, and 2023-24, this study traces the evolving political consciousness of Muslim women and men involved in the protests. It explores how the Shaheen Bagh movement catalysed overlapping consensus within the Muslim community, while also highlighting the difficulties Muslim women face in extending or receiving solidarity beyond communal boundaries. This paper argues that Shaheen Bagh represents a critical juncture in minority resistance, where Muslim women navigate a precarious space between asserting constitutional promises of citizenship and resisting their othering within the hegemonic framework of Hindu nationalist discourse. Simultaneously, their political agency is shaped by exclusion from broader feminist movements and the complexities of trans-Islamic solidarity efforts, reflecting the multi-layered struggles of minority identity assertion. By framing these protests as sites of intersectional resistance, the study not only contributes to scholarship on gendered citizenship, representation, and the reconfiguration of public spaces but also opens critical debates on re-examining citizenship within the secular framework of the Indian Constitution. It highlights how the concept of secularism, historically moulded and remoulded through court judgements and legislative actions, demands a renewed interrogation in light of the systemic marginalisation of Muslim identities. Moreover, this paper raises essential questions about the broader contributions of Muslim women in negotiating their positionality—either within their community or as a minority under a Hindutva-driven national framework—thereby offering deeper insights into the politics of marginalisation, performative resistance, and agency in a contested democratic space.