Muslim Feminists Resist Hindutva Fascism in India: Sharing Strategies, Building Solidarities

Day 2 11am 2 hours English, Hindi, Kannada, Bengali

Feminist and progressive politics in India are facing a period of sustained assault. For women on the peripheries such as Muslim women, a dominant-caste, hyper-masculine, Hindu-supremacist authoritarian ideology has had a serious impact on their lives.

It has seeded fear and hypervigilance amongst their communities. It has increased self and community restrictions on their mobility, which in turn have impacted their education, livelihoods, access to public spaces, worsening the restrictions on what they wear, what they eat, what spaces they occupy, who they love and so on.

This workshop will reflect on the strategies employed by Muslim women’s rights organisations and networks such as Bebaak Collective to claim their rights in this restricted context. It will draw on numerous examples including legal and creative strategies, as well as allyship and solidarity with dalit, queer and class based feminist struggles to stimulate and engender reflections by participants from feminist groups and movements from across the region on the strategies and solidarities they rely on to deal with similar authoritarianism and supremacist ideologies and contexts.