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Alain RoussillonSouth AsiaIntroduction
South Asia is home to over 400 million of the
world’s Muslim population of whom the majority
reside in Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan. While
Bangladesh and Pakistan have elected women
prime ministers, a survey of the national political
scene in these three countries indicates limited par-
ticipation by women in the political process.
In Bangladesh, even though the heads of the two
major parties (Awami League and the Bangladesh
Nationalist Party, BNP) are women, the 2002 elec-
tions led to success for only 6 women candidates (of
the 32 fielded). In India, women have a limited
presence in the lower house (8.8 percent) and the
upper house (10.3 percent) and Muslim women are
even less well represented with only one Muslim
woman in each house. In Pakistan until the 2002
electoral reforms, which led to reservation of 33
percent of seats for women, there were only 6
female members in the 217-member national as-
sembly and 2 women out of 83 senate members.
After the reforms went into effect Pakistani women
ended up with 21.6 percent of seats in the lower
house and 17 percent of seats in the upper house.
These numbers are reflective of the challenges
posed by the politicization of religion and the inter-
play between class and identity politics as Muslim
women seek to mobilize and participate in political
activities in the South Asian region.
Politicization of religion
The 1980s and 1990s saw dramatic changes in
the relationship between states and religious forces
in the South Asian region. The Iranian Revolution
and the growth of “fundamentalism” in the Middle
East, the Salman Rushdie affair, and the Gulf War
of 1991 led to heightened polarization along reli-
gious lines in Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan.
bangladesh
In Bangladesh the government of General Ershad
made Islam the state religion in 1988. After his
departure in1991, the two major political parties,
south asia 559the Awami League led by Sheikh Hasina and the
BNP led by Begum Khaleda Zia have had to con-
tend with the growing strength of conservative
Islamic forces represented by the Jamaat-e-Islami.
The alliance between the BNP and the Jamaat-e-
Islami in the 1991 elections pushed the BNP gov-
ernment to arrest a young doctor turned author,
Taslima Nasreen, for alleged blasphemy in her novel
Lajja. The Jamaat for its part used protests and
demonstrations to try to get Nasreen executed. In
the years that followed the process of Islamization
has been pushed even further as the competition
between the Awami League and the BNP has inten-
sified with the two parties taking alternate control
of the state. In the 2001 elections, the BNP-Jamaat
alliance won 215 of the 300 seats in parliament.
However despite the presence of a prime minister
and an opposition leader who is female, women’s
participation in national politics and in govern-
ment is limited.pakistan
In Pakistan, the Islamization begun by General
Zia ul-Haq was briefly halted by his death in 1988.
In the elections that followed, the Pakistan People’s
Party (PPP) led by Benazir Bhutto came to office.
Her tenure was fraught with difficulties because of
resistance from the military and religious leadership
who were opposed to a woman running an Islamic
republic. The PPP government was dismissed after
18 months, plunging Pakistan into a series of short-
lived governments until the 1999 military coup led
by General Pervez Musharraf who allied himself
with Islamic parties represented by the Muttahida
Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) in his quest for legitimacy.
International and domestic pressure to return
Pakistan to a democracy subsided in the wake of the
11 September 2001 attacks as Pakistan became a
partner in the United States war on terrorism. In the
elections held in 2002, the share of anti-United
States and pro-Islamic parties went from 5 to 17
percent of the vote especially in key areas like the
North West Frontier Province. However, the Musha-
raff government did institute the promised 33 per-
cent reservation of seats for women, which has led
to the largest ever influx of women politicians into
the Pakistani parliament. The fact that these women
politicians were not directly elected evoked mixed
responses from women’s groups who fear that they
will do a better job of representing their families
than representing the concerns of women.india
In India, the Congress Party sought to halt its
declining public support by pandering to communal