Feminist counter-authoritarian political agency: Muslim girls re-generating politics in India

Drawing on ‘voices’ of Muslim girls reported in a purposive sample of media, this research presents Muslim girls' responses to the impossible choice between right to education and vs. religion, following the hijab ban in the colleges in Karnataka, India. Their narratives do not fit conventional understandings of ‘being’ political or ‘doing’ politics. Instead, they are situated in a continuum of new-forms of political protest and agency emerging among young Muslim women in India following nation-wide Muslim women-led protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (2020). Muslim girls' voices in this research suggest their attempts to regenerate democracy by offering an alternative political vision of India to the authoritarian vision currently in power. This paper suggests that to understand Muslim girls' political agency in authoritarian and Hindu majoritarian India there is a need to recalibrate our understanding of politics and political agency.