“State has completely hijacked the issues of Muslim women and polarised it”: Interview with feminist activist Hasina Khan, of Bebaak Collective
“This government is bringing in laws, and using language which has fostered an atmosphere of hatred. In such a situation, if you go to the State, the latter will use the issue of women to target the Muslim community.”
Asmita Basu
Published on: 15 March 2025, 10:14 am
LAST Saturday, we unveiled the Leaflet’s special issue on International Women’s Day, 2025. Our objective was to explore one phenomenon rigorously - the backlash against feminist organising in India. This backlash is a conglomeration of many phenomena, manifesting in myriad ways, and in response to diverse strands of feminist organising in the country. Women from the Muslim community have faced a particularly vigorous strand of backlash. As the majoritarian State instrumentalises the issues of Muslim women to intensify the structured oppression of minority communities, how does feminist assertion within the Muslim community navigate the complexity of challenges it confronts?
We sat down with Hasina Khan, an eminent feminist activist, and founder of the Bebaak Collective, a coalition of grassroots activists and autonomous women’s groups resisting discrimination, communalism, and patriarchal oppression, particularly against Muslim women in India. Hasina has been a strong voice for gender justice, legal reform, and the empowerment of marginalized women, challenging repressive practices. She was one of the most prominent petitioners campaigning against unilateral triple talaq in the Supreme Court of India. A long-time member of the Forum Against Oppression of Women, Hasina has dedicated decades to addressing the intersection of patriarchy, poverty, and socio-economic inequality, providing support to women in crisis while building spaces for education, employment, and joy.
Asmita Basu: Hasina, you have been involved with the Awaz-e-Niswan* for a very long time, you were part of the Shayara Bano case, you have strongly critiqued Triple Talaq. In your view, how has the legal framework in India evolved or failed to evolve in recognising and protecting the rights of Muslim women? How has this evolving framework either contributed to or reinforced backlash against Muslim women organising? Would you like to take us through the key legal developments in the last ten years, which have either reinforced the backlash, or protected the rights of Muslim women?
Hasina Khan: There was a phase when there was no space to talk about the struggles of Muslim women in India. Whenever we raised issues pertaining to the rights of Muslim women within the community, we were told - ‘Now is not the time’, or that the community is not ready and such.
At that time, we used to approach the State for problems faced by Muslim women. These were issues that a secular State, committed to constitutional rights would be obligated to take up. At least at that time, we had a space to talk about our constitutional rights.
Secondly, for Muslim women there is no one kind of identity that we occupy. Within the community, there are women in live-in relationships, women facing multiple realities. We tried to address the diversity of this identity and its associated struggles, and we got the strength and courage to talk about these diversities, while taking a stance against conservatism because the State was approachable, negotiable, and we had confidence in it.
