Thinking Reproductive Politics and Racial Justice Together: Muslim Women's Movement, Rights and Ethnonationalism in Contemporary India

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Recent literature on reproductive justice by ecologically-concerned, anti-racist feminist scholars, in their efforts to question contemporary feminism's tacit pronatalism, have emphasised the need to address the world population question, i.e. the question of the urgent need to reduce human numbers, thereby giving birth to a world where babies will be welcome but rare (Haraway and Clarke 2018). However, the contemporary Indian State apparatus has reduced this crucial population question to a mere Hindu ethnonationalist fear of the 'demographic expansion' of the 'non-entrepreneurial' religious minority (i.e. the Muslims). This fellowship, building upon my PhD, will help me publish two key journal articles. The first article - to be submitted to the 'International Feminist Journal of Politics' - will trace the historical foundations of the contemporary ethnonationalist efforts at 'Saving the Daughter' from the 'demographically aggressive' Muslim. The existing literature traces its roots exclusively in theocratic discourses (Ahmad 1998, R. Guha 2017). Instead, I argue that the foundation of this ethnonationalist phobia lies in a non-theocratic moment, when politico-legal and academic discourses in India asserted that the female foetus/ future girl child's 'Right to Life' will be grounded solely on her 'capability' to become a homo economicus, a utility-maximising, cost-benefit calculating, entrepreneurial subject, or producers of the same (Foucault 2008).The second journal article - to be submitted to 'Signs' - enhances my PhD by adding a new perspective from the 'objects' of the legal regimes themselves, i.e. minoritarian women whose bodies are most impacted by these regimes. The Indian State currently suggests that while a Citizenship Amendment Act (2019), indirectly outlawing Muslims arriving in India from three Muslim-majority nations, will reduce the entry of the 'illegal immigrant', a new 'Two-Child Norm' and an anti-miscegenetic legal regime preventing interfaith marriages will strengthen the objectives of this Act by curbing the birth-rate of the ones who have - albeit 'illegally' - already entered. The Muslims are 'scientifically' produced as a demographic category that is 'unfit' to accept the 'modernity' of reproductive rights. This study - through interviews, social media analysis and a close reading of speeches and slogans - will demonstrate the ways in which a non-violent Muslim women's movement in India can show us how to resist this unprecedented liaison between the citizenship-amendment laws and the new demographic policies. Drawing on research on multi-species reproductive justice, I will show how this crucial postcolonial feminist movement is thereby making the question of racial justice central to feminist assertions on gender justice in general and reproductive justice in particular (Ruha Benjamin in Haraway and Clarke 2018).In addition to the articles that will help in establishing my track record and therefore in working towards being competitive for future research funding, the project has two impact-oriented goals. First, it will include the organisation of a virtual symposium with stakeholders from varied walks of life who are directly invested in showing how the discourse of protection of women's (human) rights are routinely used as an alibi for deploying the legal apparatus to persecute religious minorities in India. This symposium will also give me and others an opportunity to share our work and develop solidarity networks with individuals from different professions working on the racialisation of India's demographic laws. Second, I will disseminate the symposium's and the articles' summaries via a journalistic interview-based article or an audio podcast, a newspaper article, and seminar presentations at Goldsmiths College in London and at the University of Sussex. These events are aimed at extending the reach of the research to other universities, and also to extra-academic audiences.