Dwelling in the city: Socio-spatial dynamics of gendered and religious embodiment of young Muslim women in Delhi, India.

This paper examines the intimate relationship among gender, religion, and the urban with a special focus on Muslim women in Delhi, India. Drawing on interviews conducted with young, middle-class, unmarried Muslim women, this paper demonstrates that Muslim women's lived experiences of religion and gender are often complex and situated at the intersections of embodied spatial practices of religion, gender and urban-ness. Predominant understanding of Indian Muslim women focuses on their gendered religious enactments such as purdah (veiling), oppression by Muslim men, and their need to be 'rescued' from Islamic systems of oppression. However, these narratives do not fully capture the complexity of Muslim women's embodied experiences and encounters with the urban. In turn, this paper investigates how Muslim women's experiences of the urban unfold at the interstices of gendered and religious geographies of the self, families/faith community, and the city in everyday life and exceptional contexts. I argue that the intersection of gender, religion and the city is nuanced, ad-hoc, and paradoxically shift and change within the historical socio-spatial urban context of Delhi. • Muslim women's lived experiences of religion, gender and the city are complex and paradoxical. • Muslim women's experiences of the urban unfold at the interstices of public and private geographies of the self, families/faith community, and the city itself in everyday life and in exceptional contexts. • The intersection among gender, religion and the city shift and change within the historical socio-spatial urban context wherein gender and religion are invoked. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]