Abstract: In this paper, I look at how Muslim women’s discourses of piety coalesce, contradict, and co-exist with dominant discourses of Islam, religio-nationalism, and universal rights-based feminism in Pakistan. I argue that the normative secularity of knowledge production renders the epistemic dimension of pious subjectivities unintelligible and produces analytical foreclosures in how we understand the politics of piety. Drawing primarily on interviews and participatory observations with Pakistani women associated with two Sunni Muslim groups, Al-Huda International and the Jamaat-e-Islami, I examine how women comprehend and inhabit their piety in and through the spiritual, social, and political milieu of their everyday lives. I juxtapose Al-Huda and Jamaat women’s Islamic praxis with a discourse analysis of Pakistani religio-nationalism and rights-based Islamic feminism that also stake a claim on defining the relationship between Pakistani women and Islam. The discursive structures of Pakistani religio-nationalism and universal rights-based feminism anchor analyses of piety in secular epistemologies that render practices such as niqab, purdah and hijab (forms of veiling) or the qawwam (authoritative status) of men, for example, in secular terms. Such secular renderings work with scripts of piety that efface how some women give meaning to these practices through spiritual epistemologies. In other words, secular modes of knowledge production fail to consider how religiosity functions as a way knowing. Taking up the spiritual as epistemological not only unravels reductive analytical framings of Muslim women’s subjectivities, but it also permits an explication of their complicities with structures of power.

Abstract: As intersectional analyses of gender, race and class have been incorporated across a range of academic disciplines, questions have emerged about the framework’s institutionalization. In particular, what is the appropriate scope and application of intersectional analysis? In a recent essay, Jennifer Nash (2014) critiques the conceptualization of intersectionality as an “endlessly expansive analytic” that can encompass any and all possible forms of discrimination. This essay aims to connect this critique with a different issue raised by trans-national perspectives on feminist politics.That is, a consideration of non-Western contexts where questions about interlocking forms of oppression have been raised and the potential linkages across geographies of struggle. My essay explores how the relationship between caste, class and gender has been conceptualized in the political writings of Dalits (ex-untouchables) in India. The trajectory of Dalit struggles against caste discrimination illustrates a sustained engagement with questions of interlocking forms of oppression, as well as with the relationship between oppression and privilege. That theorizations of caste, class and gender have received little attention in debates about intersectionality reflects Shohat’s (2002) claim that the majority of women in the world remain marginal to North American curricula. Indeed, questions of caste inequality have largely been confined to area studies. This obscures the trans-national connections between caste and race, as seen in the historical engagement of Dalit activists with Black struggles against racial discrimination. By exploring these interconnected histories, I consider how the divide between area studies and racial/ethnic studies has shaped the trajectory of intersectionality.

Abstract: "The idea of reserved seats in parliament is based on the time laps theory, i.e., some groups or factions lag behind in comparison to others, need affirmative action to bring them in mainstream. In Pakistan where the democracy is still in transitional process, women just vanished away from parliament when women reserved seats expired in 1990s, while less than five ladies could be elected in four general elections. These seats were restored later in 2000 and increased to 17 per cent. Now it’s a debate that whether women elected on reserved seats, being low profile leaders, could really make their presence purposeful and effective or it’s just a cosmetic effect. Based on primary data collected from National Assembly proceedings, debates and legislative process along with in-depth interviews of women parliamentarians based on convenient sampling, this paper is focused on working of women parliamentarians in elected National Assembly of Pakistan (2008-2013). Its main question is how far they could justify their presence in National Assembly as representative of women folk and could contribute to the interests of their community. It would also examine that what were the challenges women parliamentarians had to face in parliament. This study concludes that there is a gradual positive change in the functioning of women parliamentarians compared to their previous tenure. This time they performed well."