This volume challenges the assumption that Muslims in India constitute a homogeneous community, with specific characteristics deriving from Islam.

Introduction: Contextualising Gender and Identity in Contemporary India -- Reading and Writing about Muslim Women in British India -- Gender and the Politics of Space: the movement for women's reform, 1857-1900* -- Defining Women through Legislation -- Minority Identity, State Policy and the Political Process -- Identity Politics, Secularism and Women: a South Asian perspective -- The Constitution and Muslim Personal Law -- Between Community and State: the question of women's rights and personal laws -- Education, Money, and the Role of Women in Maintaining Minority Identity -- Preserving Identity: a case study of Palitpur1 -- Communal Property/Sexual Property: on representations of Muslim women in a Hindu nationalist discourse1 -- Muslim Socials and the Female Protagonist: seeing a dominant discourse at work -- Urdu, Awadh and the Tawaif: the Islamicate roots of Hindi cinema