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Discipline and Nurture: Living in a girls’ madrasa, living in community
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 September 2018
Abstract
This article presents an ethnography of a contemporary residential madrasa for teenage Muslim girls in a North Indian town undertaken by a team of two researchers. We focused on different aspects of the overall study, with Sanyal conducting participant observation within the madrasa and Farah interviewing a select number of graduates and former students in their home environments. The result is a comprehensive picture of the madrasa's transformative role in the socio-religious lives of its students, which highlights the importance of the connections between the madrasa and the home.
Of significance are the religious and denominational orientation of the madrasa—Barelwi Sunni Muslim—as well as the working-class status of the girls and their parents’ low level of education. With limited resources, the madrasa inculcates in the students, and by extension their neighbourhoods and wider communities, a new awareness of religious duties and mutual obligations, and gives its students confidence and a voice within both their families and communities. The long-term potential impact of madrasas such as this one appears to be significant in contemporary North India.
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- Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018
Footnotes
We thank, first, the students, administrators, and teachers of the madrasa for their willingness to talk to us and allow us to ask probing questions. Without their cooperation, this research would not have been possible. We have protected the teachers’ and students’ identities by using pseudonyms. Usha Sanyal thanks the American Institute of Indian Studies for the Senior Short Term Research Fellowship in 2012–2013, which allowed her to begin the fieldwork on which this article is based. We also thank the readers of the initial draft of this article which Sanyal presented at the South Asia Conference in Madison, Wisconsin, in October 2015, particularly David Gilmartin and Margrit Pernau, and the audience members who offered comments at the time. Finally, we want to thank the three anonymous reviewers whose comments helped us to sharpen the article's arguments, and Norbert Peabody, the associate editor of MAS, for his careful review and comments.
References
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37 Other contemporary Sunni Muslim movements in South Asia do not agree on all these points. For details, see Metcalf, Islamic Revival in British India.
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43 However, Sayyid Ehsan Miyan has been on hajj twice and also travels extensively within India on a regular basis. Hence his life experience is far wider than the above description would suggest.
44 Sanyal, Eager to Learn and Become, forthcoming.
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46 The Indian secular educational equivalents given here are based on Kumar, The Politics of Gender.
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55 For similar observations about the Tablighi girls’ madrasa in Delhi she studied, see Winkelmann, ‘From Behind the Curtain’.
56 As Moosa points out, to translate din as religion is to equate it with private beliefs, which is a much narrower understanding of the term. Moosa, What is a Madrasa?, p. 194.
57 Gail Minault, ‘Sisterhood or separatism? The All-India Muslim Ladies’ Conference and the Nationalist Movement’, in Women and Political Participation, Minault (ed.), p. 102. Minault also notes that certain kinds of pardah actually made it easier for women to leave the home and gave them increased self-confidence.
58 However, we do not want to suggest that this is always the case, as it is not. One of the important male teachers at the madrasa, who teaches the senior students fiqh, is known as ‘Hazrat’ (lit., eminence), which is not a kinship term.
59 Gail Minault, ‘Introduction: The extended family as metaphor and the expansion of women's realm’, in Women and Political Participation, Minault (ed.), p. 4.
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61 Foucault, Discipline and Punish, p. 149.
62 A teacher was dismissed from the madrasa for having twice engaged in such punishment. She received a warning the first time, but was dismissed when she did it again. Sanyal, field notes, 2013.
63 For similar observations from the Tablighi madrasa in Delhi, see Winkelmann, ‘From Behind the Curtain’.
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65 Moosa, What is a Madrasa?, p. 193.
66 Ibid., p. 191.
67 Marcel Mauss, Sociology and Psychology. Essays, B. Brewster (trans.), Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1979.
68 In the Jami‘a Nur al-Shari‘at, many of these lessons were also conveyed by books written by Sayyid Ehsan Miyan on subjects such as Islamic etiquette (adab) and the need to keep one's focus on the afterlife rather than worldly gain; students read these works in their spare time. Also see Moosa, What is a Madrasa?, p. 192.
69 The example Mahmood gives is of a person submitting to the discipline required to become a virtuoso pianist. Mahmood, Politics of Piety, p. 29.
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81 This is an illustration of what Sanyal refers to as being a ‘teacher-learner’, that is, one who continually engages in further study through formal or informal means. Sanyal, Eager to Learn and Become.
82 Asad, Genealogies of Religion, p. 77.
83 Mahmood, Politics of Piety.
84 Since her interview with Farah, Nida has found another teaching job at a different madrasa in Bareilly.
85 Mahmood, Politics of Piety, p. 31.
86 Ibid.
87 See Usha Sanyal, ‘Changing concepts of the person in two Ahl-i Sunnat/Barelwi texts for women: The Sunni Bihishti Zewar and the Jannati Zewar’, in Muslim Voices, Sanyal, Gilmartin, and Freitag (eds).
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92 The BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) is a national right-wing political party in India known for its hostile stance towards minority communities, particularly Muslims. The Congress Party, on the other hand, has historically taken a more centre-left ideological position, though this is changing. Sayyid Sahib's claim must be understood in this context to underline his commitment to a national identity rather than a communal Muslim one.
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94 Sachar Commission Report, Chapter 2.
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