Re-making the self: Discourses of ideal Islamic womanhood in Kerala

ABSTRACT This paper explores the discursive construction of ideal Islamic womanhood and its associated gendered subjectivities in the South Indian state of Kerala. It outlines the articulation of ideal womanhood in and through intra-community debates between the principal Muslim groups (“traditionalists” and “reformists”) in Kerala regarding the status of women in Islam. It traces the making of a discourse on the cultivation of pious modern female subjecthood and situates it in the context of wider socio-political changes among Kerala’s Muslims, such as those wrought by nationwide debates on the prospect of personal law reform since the Shah Bano controversy of the mid-1980s. It shows how the traditionalist and reformist interventions in the field of Muslim women’s education, in particular, have converged in recent times with respect to propagating idealized conceptions of pious modern female subjecthood. In conclusion, the paper contextualizes ideal Islamic womanhood with respect to the making of modern Malayali identities and a dominant gender order that spans religious groups, castes, and communities in Kerala.