The Politics of Modernity and Youthfulness: An Analysis of Kabita Chakraborty`s Young Muslim Women in India

Author: Shazma Faiz. 

This essay reflects upon the changing lives of young Muslim South-Asian women by exploring how they are impacted by globalization. We are living in a globalized world where as Mathew Arnold puts it “everywhere there is connection” as a result of one culture influences another. While discerning upon this notion of cultural “influence”, this essay tends to reflect upon Kabita Chakraborty`s research-based work Young Muslim Women in India: Bollywood, Identity and Changing Youth Culture which provides a detailed insights to the politics of exercising youthfulness that how these women from slum communities are influenced by West centered ‘modernity’, ‘globalization’ and film industry. Drawing upon the theoretical insights of Asef Bayat, this paper argues that cultural intersections through social media, entertainment industry and advertisements, young Muslim women from the slum areas influenced by the apparent promise of liberation through the Bollywood depiction of the Western cultural practices are not completely liberated from their cultural and patriarchal societal norms.

The contemporary advanced technology and social media play significant role in globalization. Edmunds and Turner use the term “e (electronic) generation” and “internet generation” for the contemporary youth. They are of the view that this platform provides “greater scope for mutual influence” (Herrara and Bayat 10). It can be said that the ‘e-generation’ uses social media not only for interacting with people across the globe but get, as Chasles calls it, “influence” from each other (Basnett 13). I argue that the third world Muslim countries, due to their decades of colonization and consequently stereotyping, consider the First World countries as superior because of their apparent liberating depiction of their culture and customs. On the basis of this developed, enlightened and tolerant representation of the West, young Muslims belonging to the Third World countries tend to associate themselves with the West by imitating their cultural norms in their humdrum life. In the recent immensely globalized world, youth interaction through entertainment industry, blogging, vlogging, social media networking, texting, twitter, YouTube, etc. is extending the ‘influence’ of West on the Muslim youth as a result of which they are found engaged in various ways of adopting and consuming Westen ways of life.

 Young Muslim women from the slum areas are equally participating in the realm of globalization and modernization by negotiating their way between modernity and Islam and global and local. They tend to create a “third space” where they go hand in hand with their modern and Muslim identities. Chakraborty`s young Muslim women from a slum area in India is an active example of how they incorporate modern Western culture depicted in Bollywood movies. For Asef Bayat and Linda Herrara, Muslim youth tends to adopt this cultural appropriate modern element in order to counter “the old and deeply held stereotypes” which associate them with “extremism and terrorism” (Herrara and Bayat 4).

Herrara and Bayat`s youthfulness embodies an essential claim to ‘defend’ and ‘extend’ selfhood i.e., carrying oneself in a way one wants to. Chakraborty`s young Muslim women exercise their youthfulness through various Bollywood inspired practices. It seems that they shift their identities between young “pragmatic Muslims” and a truly “modern” individual. They have a greater tendency for experimenting certain cultural practices to exercise their autonomy which in accordance with Bayat and Herrara are associated with the fact of “being young” (30). They challenge their old inherited customs including, but not limited to proper veiling, staying at home, limited role as housekeepers and child bearers and all other biding of the patriarchy.

Youth tend to present themselves as modern to create a space to express their individuality, resistance against hegemonic discourses. Chakraborty`s young Muslim women from ‘bastee’ are engaged in various consumption processes to claim their youthfulness. For instance, they watch both Hollywood and Bollywood movies, dance, use consumer products including whitening creams, prefer to dine at expensive cafes and have global (cake, coke, pizza, etc.), rather than local Indian food, wear Bollywood inspired clothes, etc. in order to shape their individual autonomous identities. For example, a Muslim woman Layla from this poor Muslim community prepares her burka in Prety Zenta's style (a Bollywood celebrity) in order to develop a resemblance to her, both in outlook and independence. They tend to idealize Bollywood movies thinking that following such trends might ensure their liberty and individualism. Through such practices, they tend to create a “third space” for themselves where they can carry their Muslim as well as Western (modern) identity at the same time (Homi Bhabha). In short, they tend to accommodate their youthful habits within Islam.

The traditional Indian society that Chakraborty has taken for her research, is a complex social structure which places women in a certain position where they live a suppressed and submissive life controlled and disciplined by their patriarchal society. The lives of unmarried women, in particular, is strictly controlled through different types of monitoring i.e., what they can wear, how they should look, where they can go, what they can listen to, and so on. According to Andre Mazawi, in such kind of scrutinized places, young people, here Muslim women in a slum area of India, tend to find “a growing space” under any foreign ‘secular schools’ (qtd by Herrara and Bayat). For him, the function of such kind of schooling is always politicized. It can rightly be claimed that the modernization of the local is a political act which seemingly appears as a liberating force but it shifts the center of surveillance from local to global. For instance, Chakraborty`s bastee women are not completely liberated despite following the West inspired Bollywood culture. Through the stories of bastee women, Chakraborty cautions the readers that modernity (neo-liberalism) is not egalitarian as it offers opportunities to young Muslim women from an underprivileged area but it also has its limitations. The stories of most of these women suggest that most of them were bound to give their earned money to husbands; some financially independent women were being forced to work at the place selected by their male counterparts; most of them were facing societal pressure; etc. In short, women cannot break free from their cultural and patriarchal backgrounds even though they autonomous and independent.

In a nutshell, it is concluded that although Chakraborty`s young Muslim women tend to assert their autonomy, individuality and youthfulness through various Bollywood inspired cultural by creating a “third space” for themselves where they experiment modern lifestyles but still cannot break free from the sociopolitical constrains of their societies. 

Work Cited

Basnett, Susan. Comparative Literature: A Critical Introduction: Comparative Companian, vol. 8, no. 9, 2013. Print.

Chakraborty, Kabita. Young Muslim Women in India: Bollywood, Identity and Changing Youth Culture. Routledge: 2016. Pdf.

Herrara, Linda and Asef Bayat. Being Young and Muslim: New Cultural Politics in the Global South and North. Oxford University Press: 2010. Pdf.