Aspiring Inside a Girls Madrasa: Gender,Negotiation and Change

Zooming In: Zainab

I first noticed Zainab when she walked into one of the English classes I was conducting with a group of teachers. The reason I noticed her was that she literally walked in, without knocking or seeking permission, an extremely rare occurrence in the madrasa where the students’ conduct is highly reverential to the teachers. The dupatta ² on Zainab’s head was loosely tied, quite unlike the other girls’ perfectly tied headscarves, and definitely unlike someone coming to talk to teachers in their room. Even at that time, I remember thinking it was rather unconventional because wearing the dupatta like a headscarf (in a way such that not a single strand of hair shows) is a dress code in the madrasa. This dress code is strictly enforced as a means of training the girls to follow the practice of purdah outside the madrasa. In fact, girls are taught that a proper dress code is one of the most important markers that communicates the modesty and chastity of an alima to an outsider.

Later I came to know that Zainab was the younger sister of Afifa, a teacher in the madrasa. Over the next few weeks, she would regularly hang around my classes with the teachers, coming into the room on one pretext or the other. Zainab intrigued me; there was something about her that set her apart from the rest of the girls. Yet at that point, I was still finding my feet in the madrasa and did not think that approaching Zainab or any other student individually was a good idea.

One day when I reached slightly earlier and sat waiting for the teachers in the library, Zainab walked in, greeted me with a quiet ‘assalam alaikum’ and introduced herself. That’s the first time we actually spoke, after almost two months of knowing who the other was. I told her I recognised her and knew her name and that she was Afifa’s younger sister. Zainab sat down beside me and looked straight into my eyes while talking. Even then I remember thinking it unusual because she did not ask me if she could sit, unlike all the other times in the madrasa where I would have to request the students to sit and they would just stand with a lowered gaze, as in the madrasa it was considered a mark of respect to stand while the ustad (teacher) was talking. If and when they would sit, it was always at a lower position or slightly further away if we were all on the floor. Telling myself this was not the time to think of all this, I turned my entire attention to what Zainab was saying. She was talking so quietly that even though she was right next to me I had to lean towards her to listen. ‘I want to ask you lots of questions’. ‘Ok’, I said, expecting a whole bunch of questions about my work in the madrasa. And then Zainab surprised me when she said, ‘about further studies and about what to do if I want to become a doctor’. I nodded, caught a little off guard, and before I could say anything a group of teachers entered the library. They looked questioningly at Zainab, who said that she happened to be in the library and was keeping me company while I waited for them. One of the teachers stiffly thanked Zainab and told her she could leave.

Over the next few months, Zainab and I had several ‘stolen’ conversations wherein I got to know her better. She was 17 years old, studying in chahrum (year four) in the madrasa. She had four sisters and three brothers. Her eldest sister, Afifa, had completed the Alima course from Jamiatul Mominat a year earlier and was now teaching Dom (year two) in the same madrasa. Zainab was two years younger than Afifa. She had two younger sisters (class six and class seven) both of whom were studying in a co-educational school along with two of their brothers (class four and class two). The youngest brother was just five years old and had recently been admitted to nursery.

Zainab’s father had migrated to Delhi as a child, along with the rest of his family from the neighbouring Mewat region. The family belonged to the Chaudhury zat (caste)—and I remember Zainab telling me this rather proudly—though they had long abandoned their ancestral linkages with land. When they shifted to Delhi her grandfather opened a small karkhana (workshop) on the outskirts of Delhi where automobiles were repaired. Her father and chachas ³ had expanded the business and each of the brothers now had a shop of his own. Zainab’s own impression was that her father, despite having studied only up to class four, had done the best amongst the brothers, transforming his small automobile repair workshop into a profitable second-hand car resale business. However, in several subsequent conversations, Zainab talked about a steep downturn in the family finances after her father’s return from Haj. ⁴ In Zainab’s timeline, soon after his return, he became an active member of the Tablighi Jamaat ⁵ and started ignoring his business, saying that the ‘family had enough to get by’. ⁶

Her father’s return from Haj and his becoming an active ‘Jamaati’ ⁷ repeatedly came up as a major milestone in Zainab’s conversations about her family. According to her, that was when their house changed from an ordinary ‘modern’ house to a dindaar ghar. ⁸ In many ways, Zainab’s father’s engagement with the Tablighi Jamaat created for him a space that brought up the need to educate his daughters in dini talim, ⁹ in an institutional setting. In one of our interactions, Zainab speculated about the reasons behind the educational choices that her father made for his daughters. As she narrated:

Abu ¹⁰ has very progressive thoughts on girls’ education but after joining the Jamaat he felt that duniyavi talim needs to be accompanied by dini talim. All of us had been admitted to St. Peter’s School, which is the most expensive private school in our area, but the school is only till class 8. That is why Afifa joined the government school for girls to do her class 9. But Abbu became very active in the Jamaat and they started saying that now Afifa knew quite a lot about regular studies so it was better to put her in the madrasa. That’s when Afifa came here. Then his friends started saying that Zainab is getting older, it doesn’t look nice that she goes to a school in a skirt … it is wrong for her to show her legs. I was very angry when Abu told me I had to leave school. I argued with him a lot so he agreed to let me complete the year. But then the school is till class 8 only. So they got me admitted here.

Several times Zainab told me how she initially despised the madrasa and for the first three years she would argue with her father every time she went back and stubbornly tell him she wanted to return to school. Her father did not agree and each time Zainab was reprimanded and sent back with the advice that she needed to emulate Afifa, who had taken to madrasa life so well. Recalling that time, Zainab said she would often cry and out of sheer obstinacy pay no attention in class for the first two years. Sometime in her third year, Afifa promised Zainab that if she were to pay attention in the madrasa she would try and convince their father about Zainab joining a regular school. In fact, in Zainab’s narrative, Afifa seemed like a guardian who helped her remember her dreams and played an active role in negotiating on Zainab’s behalf with their father.

Afifa managed to convince their father to allow Zainab to take her school exams for class nine through Open School. According to Zainab, everyone at home (other than Afifa) was sure she would never clear them because there were two months left before the exams and she had no one to help her. Zainab described this as the big turning point in her relationship with the madrasa. She talked about how girls in the madrasa who had done their schooling till class ten volunteered to help her and it was because of their help that she cleared the exam, much to the surprise of her father. In many ways, the support that Zainab received from her peer group in the madrasa provided her a bridge between her past and her aspired future.

A year later Zainab sat for her class ten board exams through Open School but did not manage to pass. ‘I sat for the 10th exam but I failed. I knew so little. It is difficult to pass these exams three years after leaving school with no one to guide’, she said.

‘What happened then?’ I asked Zainab.

‘So you’ve decided to stay in the madrasa on your own now?’ I asked. Zainab carefully reasoned,

I think studying here (in the madrasa) was in my kismat (destiny). Throughout the first three years I hated it. I thought it was like a jail.… But if you get to know this place it gives you lots of sukoon. ¹¹ I see the girls here, they are good at heart. They had no reason to help me in my school exams—I hardly knew them—but they did. When I failed no one made fun of me—in fact, they all prayed for my success.… Now that I have started paying attention in class the studies here are very good. It is not like school but it teaches you a lot … all things which are essential for a musalman … all things essential for a woman to know … about akhirat.

I think the words that Zainab wrote in her self-portrait capture how being in the madrasa has changed the way she thinks:

You asked me many months back what changes have happened after coming here (the madrasa). I think the biggest change that’s happened to me is I have learnt the value of sabr (patience). I fought with everyone to study and I kept fighting. Four years I have been fighting. Now finally my father has agreed to send me to school again. But I don’t feel as good about going to school now as I did then. I will of-course go. I am very happy I am going. I will finish 12th and become a doctor. But I also realise that this success if it happens or doesn’t will end here. In akhirat what will help me is the education received here. It was all Allah’s will, he wanted me to wait so that I realise the value of both.

(Extract from a self-portrait written by Zainab in Hindi)

On several other occasions, Zainab talked about the value of acceptance. Giving the example of her elder sister she said,

Afifa was admitted here just like me, but she never argued with my father about it. She taught in the madrasa and now she is married and her husband wants her to study in college with him so my father will have to get her admitted somehow.

However, this voicing of support for madrasa education and the values of patience and acceptance was also accompanied by a sense of disappointment with the manner in which the madrasa constrained its students. At a later point, Zainab told me,

I still obviously don’t like this place like Afifa and the others who all want to do talim. ¹² In the madrasa the teachers and everyone think that after graduating from here girls should just do religious preaching or dawa. ¹³ I don’t think so. But now I don’t go around telling everyone. I know so many of my father’s Jamaati friends, who come to our house, are totally immersed in the dini line ¹⁴ but they are lawyers and doctors. Here everyone thinks an alima can just be an alima … Women can be alima and other things too … I want to be an alima who is an MBBS doctor.

Over time, as Zainab and I got to know each other better, I stopped asking her questions because there were not many things left to ask. We would occasionally catch up about what was happening in each other’s lives. She would give me regular updates—what was happening at home and how her father was exploring schools to send her to; she would voice her anxieties, like if she heard from somewhere that being a madrasa student disqualified her from taking a certain exam; did I think she could become a doctor, etc. At times she would just pop out of nowhere when I was conducting interviews in the madrasa and start explaining things to girls I was interviewing, ‘Aapa is asking you …’, and I would chide her for it. Every few days she would ask me, ‘Has anyone told you yet that they want to become a doctor?’ I would always say ‘no’. And each time, Zainab would repeat the same sentence, ‘Aapa, just see, I will become the first alima of this madrasa who is a Doctor,’ and I would say, ‘Inshaallah. ¹⁵

Zooming Out: Intersecting Exclusions

Zainab’s portrait tells the story of a madrasa student trying to reconcile her personal aspirations with the expectations of her family and madrasa norms. Her educational journey is not simply a biographical account but is shaped in interaction with the social context in which it is unfolding (Mills, 1959). In contemporary India across communities and spatiality, the idea of educating girls has gained widespread acceptance and there is increasing visibility of girls’ education. National Family Health Survey, 2019–2020 (NFHS-5) ¹⁶ indicates that educational attainment has increased at the household level and there is an increase in the median number of years of schooling for girls from 4.4 years in 2015–2016 (NFHS-4) to 4.9 years in 2019–2020. Similarly, within Muslim communities in India, we see an increasing desire for girls schooling and accessibility to education. Muslims have witnessed a growth in enrolment in terms of gender ratio with the aggregate percentage of enrolment from primary to higher secondary being higher in case of females (14.8%).

This increase in demand for girls’ education is taking place in a context marked by rising socio-economic marginalisation of the Muslim communities which has a direct bearing on educational choices of the parents. Muslims are amongst the most impoverished communities in India. Findings of the Sachar Committee Report, 2006, ¹⁷ and the Kundu Committee Report (GoI, 2014) highlight how poverty levels among Muslims in rural areas are higher than the national average. The recent India Discrimination Report (2022) highlights discrimination as an important factor in economic marginalisation. For example, based on Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) found that only 15.6% of the 15 years plus population among Muslims are engaged in regular jobs while the corresponding figure among non-Muslims is 23.3%. Similarly, the report also points to lower earnings of Muslims vis-à-vis non-Muslims in casual wage work. A disproportionately high proportion of Muslims across rural and urban areas lack most of the basic services such as drinking water, ¹⁸ drainage, sanitation and housing ¹⁹ (GoI, 2014).

Intersecting with the changing educational landscape and socio-economic marginalisation is the rising communalisation of social spaces. Gayer and Jaffrelot (2012) highlight how across 11 cities and metros in India states economic deprivation and insecurity have led to rising socio-spatial segregation. The commmunalisation of social spaces includes educational settings (Benei, 2008; Erum, 2017; Sikand, 2005). This aggravates a sense of fear and insecurity amongst Muslims leading them to often embrace the safety net of community institutions for everyday services from housing, education to employment (Borker, 2018). Schooling is a crucial site where we see this manifesting in a preference for schools that are seen as within the boundaries of the community, especially for girls and young women—such as madrasas, community-run institutions and Urdu medium schools.

The fragility induced by these socio-economic and political conditions has contributed to a firmer affirmation of religion amongst some Muslim communities across India. This is seen in the increasing visibility of projects of Islamic reform (Osella & Osella, 2008) within Muslim communities in India, manifested in movements such as Tablighi Jamaat, Jamaat-e-Islami Hindand Ahl-e-Hadith. The Muslim woman occupies a central place in the imagination and rhetoric of the ‘new religiosity’ (Khan, 2007) promoted by these movements with much emphasis on the overt articulation and embodiment of Islamic piety through dress codes, comportment, and conduct. Girls’ education is a crucial site to implement these piety projects. Girls’ madrasas are directly implicated in this process (Sanyal, 2020) with a lot of emphasis on sending girls to madrasas that are affiliated with the maslak or sect that the family and /or community subscribes to. Recent scholarship (Menon, 2022) has highlighted how the embrace of Puritan Islamic practices also needs to be contextualised as a part of a larger process by which marginalised Muslims in India contending with the rise of majoritarianism seek to ‘make place’ by participating in transnational communities of belonging which advocate more puritan textual Islam, visible acts of piety and projection of a distinct religious identity unaffected by local cultural influences. Menon argues that these acts are not just acts of religious faith but also means to find acceptance, assert identity and presence, and politics of representation in a face of disavowals and Islamophobia. She argues by engaging in ‘very visible acts of piety Muslims assert their presence in India … and subvert efforts to make India Hindu’ (2022, p. xviii), thereby seeking to defy insular claims of the nation-state.

Thus Madrasa education emerges as a viable option due to these multiple forms of marginalisation intersecting with gendered beliefs that seek to limit the role of women’s education to the domestic and familial sphere. Madrasa education is perceived as more ‘appropriate’ (Winkelmann, 2005) for Muslim girls since it teaches them the basics of Islamic practice, prepares women for future domestic roles as wives and mothers (Sikand, 2005; Winkelmann, 2005). Girls’ madrasas offer a safe and affordable schooling option wherein Muslim girls can avail dini (religious) and duniyavi (worldly) education in a purdah institution, which is seen as an extension of family and community in terms of security. Further, girls’ madrasas unlike regular schools do not pose the danger of ‘over education’ (Still, 2011) and its attendant risk of moral corruption, pre-marital affairs and so on which would pose difficulties in finding respectable matches in the same biradari. On the contrary, for parents and Muslim communities, girls’ madrasas offer practical training to girls in Islamic etiquettes ‘and morals befitting pious Muslim girls (Borker, 2020). In interviews, parents often explained their choice of madrasa education for their daughters as opting for the ‘right kind of school’ that offered a combination of religious education and regular schooling in a mehfooz mahaul (safe environment), enjoyed religious sanction, schooled girls in the practice of gendered piety, aided arranged marriages and protected girls from fitna or moral corruption (Borker, 2018). This preference can also be gleaned from larger trend of rising feminisation of madrasa enrolments. ²⁰ A recent evaluation report of the centrally sponsored ‘Scheme for Providing Quality Education in Madrasas’ in 10,680 madrasas across four states (Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Tripura, Uttar Pradesh) found that girls’ enrolment is either equal or more than boys with the girls’ enrolment showing an increasing trend from 2014 to 2017 (NIEPA, 2018). Girls’ Madrasas thus are emerging as a popular gendered schooling option for parents and communities who want to educate girls but have certain notions about how girls ought to use their schooling to nurture familial futures.

Zooming In

The unfolding of Zainab’s life and educational journey reveals how intersecting forms of socio-economic, political marginalisation and gendered disadvantage shape everyday life. The family’s shift from Mewat to Delhi, moving from traditional caste-based agrarian occupation into the unorganised sector, self-employment in automobile repair and upward economic mobility—personify one of the many ways in which Muslims in India negotiate economic insecurity through participation in the informal sector. Statistics indicate how a disproportionately large number of Muslims tends to be concentrated in low-quality, family-based jobs mostly in the unorganised sector. The source of income for most Muslim households is low-paying self-employment in non-agricultural occupations, mainly artisanal work followed by agricultural work. In 2011–2012 the percentage of rural households living in self-employment among Muslims was 49%, while in urban areas it was 50% (GoI, 2014).

The move to the city, change in economic means and attitude towards education, lead Zainab’s father’s, a school dropout who has not completed primary schooling, to strongly the schooling of each of his six children education in private schools. However, his educational decision-making is impacted by a range of factors that go beyond affordability. His active participation in Tablighi Jamaat influences his notions of right and wrong with respect to business, family life and children’s education. This is compounded by gendered anxieties about appropriate dressing, safety and marriage. This leads him to shift his adolescent daughters Zainab and Afifa from private schooling to a girls’ madrasa in Class 9th.

While examining the educational patterns of lower middle-class Muslims, Imtiaz Ahmad (1980, pp. 64–66) notes how rise in economic prosperity increases the possibility of sending children to school. He argues that there is a strong possibility that children from lower middle-class families in the first flush of economic prosperity are more likely to favour religious education in Islamic schools vis-à-vis regular schools. According to him, this is due to two factors: One, the time that such families can allow their children to avail the luxury of education before they revert to traditional occupations is low. Further, he states that religious education may also satisfy the need for education, as the social context in which the families are seeking prestige and social enhancement is dominated by a predominance of religious values. Ahmad does not talk about any gender differentials in his ‘inferential analysis’. But we can speculate that the parents’ surplus income is the basis for sending their daughters to acquire education, and the choice of religious education in madrasas is motivated by similar concerns for symbolic capital in the form of social prestige along with satisfying gendered concerns regarding marriage, security and training to take up traditional familial roles (rather than engagement in occupations). Thus, the decision to send the daughters to a madrasa and creating social capital of an alima daughter offers the promise of mobility in both material and symbolic terms from agrarian farming roots.

Upon being pulled out from her earlier school and admitted into the madrasa, Zainab uses her alima education to negotiate with her family the chance of returning to a regular school. On the other hand, her own sibling, Afifa, subscribes to the model of an ideal student upheld in the madrasa. Afifa’s efforts are rewarded. She is offered a teaching post on graduating from the madrasa, a permissible vocation, making her the first alima and first working woman in the family. Both the sisters’ educational journeys are stories of change, considering they are the first women in the lifetime of their family to be educated in dini talim institutionally (outside the boundaries of family) to become trained alima, that is, bearers and communicators of sacred knowledge.

The Argument

The unfolding of Zainab’s educational journey is instructive. It highlights the relationship between gender and education as a negotiated reality. Tracing Zainab’s journey highlights three junctures—from home to madrasa, everyday life in the madrasa and opportunity to go back to school to pursue her dream of becoming a doctor. This draws attention to the often imperceptible processes of changing gender norms, a gradual reworking of acceptable gendered boundaries through everyday negotiations.

The first juncture constitutes how Zainab joins the madrasa at her father’s behest, following the footsteps of her elder sister Afifa. Like most of her other peers in the madrasa she is sent for her higher secondary education to a girls’ madrasa as it is seen as a safe space that would prepare the girls for pious conservative lives. The second juncture is the manner in which Zainab and Afifa’s aspirations are aided, abetted and strengthened in the madrasa, even though overtly the madrasa encourages girls to largely restrict themselves to religious activities and family life. The third juncture is the aspiration for further education and employment that madrasa education fosters, and the real-world opportunities it provides. Focusing on these three junctures allows an understanding of how education and gender coalesce.

Zainab’s educational journey is mediated at a micro level by individual familial circumstances; meso level by learning and friendship experiences in the madrasa and at a macro level by the larger reality of Muslim marginalisation in contemporary India. At each of the levels there is a discernible tension between—possibilities for fulfilling aspirations and exercising agency on one hand, and the structural constraints shaped by conservative gender norms. For example, in the rigid and constraining environment of the madrasa, girls cope by relying on the network of friends and family relationships within the madrasa, which provides a support structure. Anthropological work highlights the important role played by friendships in the negotiation of societal norms, be it around caste, class or gender (Dyson, 2014; Lukose, 2009; Nisbett, 2007; Osella & Osella, 1998). In the madrasa, friendship groups played a paradoxical role (Borker, 2018). On one hand, friendship groups played a crucial role in the disciplining process. It was the senior students who would mentor young girls during their initial days, teaching them everyday rules, conducting evening halqas and often assigning themselves the responsibility of policing the girls, especially when teachers were not around. The friendship groups also constituted an important coping strategy for the girls enabling a transition from home to the strict disciplining of the madrasa. Girls would often come together whether to do the mundane tasks such as washing; to finishing assigned homework or embroidery pieces taking on bigger tasks such as tutoring for open school exams, decoding certain tough library books on unfamiliar subjects, accessing and filling college and other forms. Further, the same friendship groups at times also created the space for girls to circumvent madrasa rules. The same senior girls who would reprimand the younger girls for not following madrasa rules would also initiate them into the ways and means of circumventing madrasa prescriptions. The most common manifestation of this was the smuggling of mobile phones into madrasa premises, singing and dancing in small groups. Thus, through the knowledge and opportunities that came with these unintended friendship groups and relationship networks, madrasa education provides alternative points of departing from the world known to the girls and their families by tradition. For instance, Afifa provides Zainab a ladder to aspire for something beyond her immediate context, taking on the role of a guardian guiding, representing, and negotiating on Zainab’s behalf. Similarly, the friends and seniors in the madrasa introduce her to the idea that she can pursue her school education parallelly in the open mode, they assist her in the preparation for the open examination encouraging and supporting her throughout the process. The picture that emerges is one of constant negotiation, enabling Zainab to avail certain opportunities which in turn nurtures other aspirations, allowing over time the possibility of refashioning certain gender ideals (such as appropriate education, marriage and career choices) without directly challenging gender norms.

Zainab’s journey especially her changing relationship with Islamic piety highlights how gendered subjectivities form. Zainab’s initial understanding of a Muslim girl is based on how ‘pious subjects’ (Mahmood, 2005) are envisaged by the education mission of the madrasa, and her own parents. Zainab reluctantly follows signifiers taught in the madrasa as essential to amal or piety. Zainab invokes madrasa norms but remains resentful about the pious disciplining she is subjected to. Over time she imbibes the madrasa norms valuing that she had learnt dini talim, found friendship and support in the relationships in the madrasa, and intrinsically felt peace (‘sukoon’). There is also a more pragmatic aspect to cultivating one’s identity as a madrasa-educated girl. It confers legitimacy and opens pathways—such as allowing Zainab the opportunity to return to mainstream school education and possibly pursue medicine. We also see the pious transformation in Zainab wherein she internalises and carries from some part of the notions of Islamic womanhood in the madrasa. This journey from invoking to imbibing to internalising pious norms tells us girls often submit ‘provisionally and critically’ to gender norms, changing the norms through their inhabitation (Butler, 2006).

Madrasa students like Zainab do not passively imbibe the notions of Islamic womanhood taught in the madrasa. Their aspirations and worldview have an inherent flexibility that allows them to legitimately express themselves as both pious women and educated within the larger socio-religious limitations. We see a shift in aspirational horizons as girls use the legitimacy that madrasa education confers on them to create/negotiate a wider space for themselves—to redefine social expectations around marriage, pursue further education and employment—but without directly challenging madrasa norms. Mapping madrasa students’ personal journeys of becoming educated while leading pious lives allows insights into how young women adopt a variety of ways—rebellion, self-submission, tactical manoeuvring—in the process reconfiguring notions of Islamic womanhood. The refashioned selves show agency, enabling girls to access more opportunities and demonstrate resilience, but as of yet not transform power structures that marginalise Muslim women in education. An attention to educational journeys of girls like Zainab challenges linear understandings of gender and agency, often drawn from aggregating experiences of subjects seen as frozen entities.