ABSTRACT
By reflecting on theoretical conundrums of doing research on Muslim women and girls in Muslim-minority contexts, this chapter proposes a hybrid theoretical framework. These conundrums relate to (i) simultaneously accounting for socio-economic and cultural/symbolic injustices in the lives of school-going Muslim girls, (ii) accounting for injustices within and outside the Muslim community (iii) factoring in multiple axes of identity and (iv) understanding Muslim girls’ narratives of ‘self’ outside the binary of agency and victimhood. The framework proposed in the chapter draws upon a Third-world feminist appropriation of the scholarships of Nancy Fraser and Pierre Bourdieu, along with insights from Anita Harris, Amy Shields, Bev Skeggs, Saba Mahmood, and Smitha Radhakrishnan. It contributes towards strengthening the transformative politics of economic redistribution, while being attentive to the contextual historic nuances of India’s, specifically Assam’s, post-colonial location this chapter concludes by making a case for non-identiterian explanations of Muslim girls’ continued educational deprivation in India.
