STEPS is a women’s organization founded in 1991 and registered under the Tamil Nadu Societies Act 1975, based in Pudukottai, Tamil Nadu, to work on the empowerment of all poor women, and particularly Muslim women in the region. It aims to bring about a change in the dominant perception – including among Muslim women themselves – about the rights of women in Islam. It believes that interpretation of the Qu’ran through a patriarchal lens resulted in discrimination against the women of the community and forced them to lead subjugated lives in a way that is not sanctioned in Islam.
It began with a simple research study which soon unearthed a very high level of violence against women in their homes, including depriving women of their inheritance rights, the custody of children and so on and so forth – issues that would be very familiar in Iran. One of the interesting violations they focused on was that while women were being oppressed by the most patriarchal interpretations of the Qu’ran and the Sharia, these same Muslim families were also practising dowry – the bain of Hindu society at all levels of caste and class much exacerbated with the rise of the neo-liberal economy and of consumerism, which has no basis at all in either he Qu’ran or the Sharia. Nevertheless, this was added to women's woes. As these women began to challenge male power, they found they had to overcome and confront threats, violence, excommunication, and slander campaigns by the traditional community council or Jamaat, sundry mullahs, and their own families and communities. They decided to organise their own “Women’s Jamaat”.
Srilatha Batliwala pauses here in her account to renew eye contact with her audience and assure herself that they fully understand the import of these words: “For those of you who come from regions and countries where you are familiar with the concept of Jamaat – you know how revolutionary it is for a group of women in Tamil Nadu to do this. In Islamic societies the Jamaat is very much a male preserve. In fact, the concept of a women’s Jamaat is a blasphemy and a travesty before you have even started. The very act of creating a Muslim Women’s Community Council that practises the kinds of customary functions and gives itself the sorts of powers usually reserved to the official male equivalent is a very powerful and provocative move.” The speaker is also scrupulous to give Indian democracy its due in this affair: "I don’t want to underplay the fact that the women have been able to mobilise around these violations because they do have rights of political association and public action and they are in that sense, though often in the breach, citizens of a democratic state."
Even so, what they have achieved against the odds is quite remarkable, above all for its brazen organisational ingenuity. In order to educate women about their rights under Sharia and the Indian Constitution, the Women’s Jamaat set up constituted legal aid cells to address cases of violence against women. This enabled them to support and champion single, abandoned, divorced, and widowed women. But it didn’t stop there. Soon, they were working with men to sensitize them on issues of violence against women and women’s bodily integrity. As they began to arbitrate in disputes (including cases relating to property, divorce, custody, maintenance) - families were turning to them for scrupulous decision-making rather than to the official Jamaat. They were obliged to network with male Jamaats, the legislature and judiciary at local, state and national level, and with media, civil society, academic, and other organizations on numerous issues concerning Muslim women. Today more families approach them for arbitration than the formal Jamaat.
Next, they set up a women’s mosque and trained themselves to call the Azaan. Most of the women involved were illiterate, economically impoverished and at some point or other have been victims of violence and sexual abuse. The Women’s Jamaat movement today is comprised of about 6000 card-holding members and has spread to ten districts in Tamil Nadu. Nearly 5000 of them are also members of micro-credit groups.
What have they achieved? They have, by Srilatha’s calculation, created a uniquely indigenous feminism that is vibrant, flexible, and constantly adapting to new challenges. They have forced political parties, local self-government bodies, and state legislature to engage with them on their own terms. This dramatically alters the mainstream discourse and stereotype of the oppressed, submissive Muslim woman. Not only this but by challenging the dowry, they have also confronted the fundamentalist agenda of the majority Hindu community whose reaction to this suffering when forced on their attention was to set out to punish the Muslim males whom they held responsible. This challenge to stereotypes and to enemy images reframes and claims citizenship for Muslim women in a profoundly democratic way. It has kicked off an ongoing search for equality and rights within the highly undemocratic and hierarchical institutions of family, community, and religion.
For the women themselves, it has made transparent and visible the abuses of power that have always been hidden. And best of all, Srilatha concludes, it has promoted a democratic counter-culture with its own membership that is percolating into households and into the larger community. This is deep democracy as transformation.
