of darsparties, that is, Qur±ànic instruction is a reg-
ular feature of these gatherings, with sessions often
led by a woman who could be described as a female
equivalent of a mullah– a learned teacher of the
Qur±àn and ™adìth. The educated and wealthy
urban women have donated vast sums of money to
build or rent spacious halls and buildings in big
towns and cities across Pakistan where formal dars
or instructional classes in Qur±ànic exegesis are
held, where women can enroll for short or long
courses for a nominal fee. The atmosphere in pri-
vate homes has also become more religious, and
many women choose to hold similar dars-type
events in their homes that are also occasions for
social networking.
A Shì≠ìversion of a miladis known as a majlis.
These gatherings take place specifically during the
Islamic calendar month of Mu™arram, when the
Prophet Mu™ammad’s (pbuh) grandson £usayn
was brutally killed during battle in the seventh cen-
tury C.E. Shì≠ìMuslims the world over comme-
morate his martyrdom to this day by holding
mourning meetings every year throughout this
month which culminate in a frenzied night of self-
flagellation and blood-letting accompanied by
intense singing of devotional songs. While the most
extreme forms of these practices are reserved for
men, Shì≠ìwomen and girls also organize gatherings
at their homes and at devotional gathering-places
known as “imam baras,” in various neighbor-
hoods, and get together to sing mourning dirges,
cry, beat their chests, and listen to stories recited by
a female religious leader in praise of £usayn’s sac-
rifice for his people, as well as to listen and weep at
his sister Zaynab’s pure and abiding love for her
brother. These occasions serve as a way for the
women of this community to reassert their com-
monality and share their collective pain, and indeed,
are cathartic occasions where stories of spiritual
miracles pertaining to the martyrdom are ex-
changed in a spirit of religious bonding. Such occa-
sions also serve the secular function of providing
mothers an opportunity to survey the gathering for
prospective daughters-in-law.
While miladand majlisparties do take place in
some Muslim households in India, and somewhat
more frequently in Bangladesh, these practices are
not as widespread there as they seem to be in
Pakistan. Indeed, they appear to be more confined
to a lower socioeconomic stratum of Muslims. The
more educated women of the contemporary Mus-
lim elite in India tend to be more secular-minded,
and instead of milads, prefer to hold “kitty-par-
ties,” a practice which involves several women get-532 networks
ting together on a monthly basis after agreeing to
contribute a certain pre-agreed amount of money to
a kitty. Each month, the sum goes to one of the
women in the group. This large sum of money is
most often used by the winner of the kitty to pur-
chase big-ticket household items, and occasionally,
gold jewelry. Kitty-parties are fairly common prac-
tice across South Asia.
There are also potluck lunches held in mixed
communities in smaller towns in India such as
Benares, which provide educated middle- and upper-
class women of both Muslim and Hindu back-
grounds to mingle without their menfolk or
children present. The women present at these gen-
erally informal and often last-minute get-togethers
are relatives living in proximity to each other as
well as neighborhood women. These religiously
mixed or diverse neighborhoods tend to have a sim-
ilar class composition, whereas Muslim-concen-
trated neighborhoods or mu™allas tend to be much
more class-stratified. In such neighborhoods in
Lucknow and Benares, for example, there is not
much social intermingling between Muslim women
of different classes, save for an occasional conven-
tional greeting exchanged between a woman of a
higher socioeconomic class and a woman from a
lower class who might be standing at her doorstep
while the former walks past. The lower-class
woman will usually be illiterate and may visit the
upper-class woman’s home to have a letter read
from her village. Some of the educated women in
these neighborhoods start informal schools in their
homes to educate the female children of these
women, who may also be servants in their homes,
and this becomes another means of networking
between women of different class backgrounds.
Finally, there is a large and growing network of
women’s non-governmental organizations (NGOs)
across South Asia, which has arisen to fill the gap
left by governments that are largely non-responsive
to the educational and social welfare needs of their
poorest citizens, amongst whom the majority hap-
pen to be women. From the “do-good” volunteer
model, there are now the professionally run
women’s organizations, including theater groups
that mount educational plays and skits in the most
downtrodden communities and neighborhoods,
with women and girls comprising the bulk of the
audience. Here is an example of a social network-
ing that turns into an opportunity for education
and empowerment for social change. Other types of
NGOs, such as the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh,
provide women with increased financial viability
which also encourages new forms of networking,