ABSTRACT
This chapter lays the intellectual and methodological groundwork for this book by rethinking Muslim girls’ location within emerging post-feminist and developmental discourses around girlhoods while still being seen as disempowered subjects and secondary citizens. It also situates this research within the historically specific, sociopolitical, and educational context of Assam in post-colonial India. This chapter shows the simultaneous discursive positioning of ‘girls’ as idealised citizen subjects of the transnational developmental imagination and the historic discursive displacement of Muslim women within the nationalist imagination of India. It highlights the peculiar intersection of discourses of empowerment and disempowerment around Muslim girls within the historic context of identity politics in Assam and the ‘field’ of Nagaon. The chapter concludes with a discussion on ‘feminist’ research methods including sampling, negotiation of access to respondents, ethics, and the question of researcher’s positionality within the field.
