Many tennis fans in Bangalore were disappointed when Sania Mirza announced that she would not be playing in the forthcoming Bangalore Open. Citing the reason to be the controversies that follow her game, she said, “Every time I play in India, there is some problem or the other. It is becoming increasingly difficult to handle them.”

The most recent provocation for Mirza’s fit was the response to her supposed disregard of the national flag. This was the fifth time in the past few years when Mirza has evoked responses from the Indian public.

First, there was that unwarranted fatwa that deemed it unIslamic for her to play in her figure hugging tennis clothes as it left nothing to the imagination. The second time was when her ambiguous statements on premarital sex made some people vent their pent up libidos on her.

The third time was when she teamed up with an Israeli making several Muslims oppose this tacit recognition of Israel by Mirza. And finally, little must Mirza have thought that some Hyderabadi Muslims would lose it if she was filmed in the premises of the Mecca Masjid, but yes, they lost it rather badly.

Mirza evoked these responses because of three separate facets of her identity or a combination of any of the facets, – Indian, Muslim and woman – that define the boundary within which she can operate. So, an “Indian” cannot point his or her feet towards the national flag, a “Muslim” cannot partner an Israeli, a “Muslim woman” cannot wear short skirts or enter the premises of a mosque, and an “Indian woman” cannot condone premarital sex. To be a public figure in India is to conform to these aspects of one’s identity.

Mirza belongs to the liminal subset in the panoply of Indian identities – the “Indian Muslim woman”– representatives of whom we hardly encounter in public discourse. She is a member of a subset that is doubly invisible – first, as a member of the Muslim community in India (which remains the most backward as per the Gopal Singh Commission report of 1983 and reiterated by the Rajinder Sachar Committee report of 2006) and secondly, as an Indian woman (the relative backwardness of women compared to men in India does not need to be stated here).

Mirza, while not directly affecting the fortunes of the “Indian Muslim woman” in any way is important because of the constituency she represents. An Indian Muslim woman can be the best female tennis player in the country, she can be Asia’s number one etc. For a representative of this doubly invisible community to have taken such great strides is commendable but this doesn’t mean that we need to restrict her identity to this or that this is, in any way, an exclusive identity.

I do not ascribe this identity of “Muslim” to Mirza just because of her Muslim name but because she has claimed to be a Muslim in several interviews (In an interview with CNN she said, “I pray 5 times a day, and I read the Quran, and I do at least all the basic things that a Muslim is supposed to do”). Now, as a “Muslim woman”, Mirza becomes subject to the hudood (boundaries) of Islam.

Islam, essentially, is a faith that does not recognise the difference between a religious/ private sphere and a secular/ public sphere. Everything under the sun can be governed by Islam – the state, criminal law, business, how you eat, what clothes you buy – it is, in a way, a system for living life, but it is also an academic discipline of theology and like any academic system arguments are made and counter arguments can also be made based on evidence. In Mirza’s case the ulema (clergy) took it upon themselves to define the hudood for her. 

Mirza, unconsciously, brought the question of hudood for an Indian Muslim woman up for debate when she chose to continue playing tennis and also by choosing to assert her Islamic identity. Mirza knows she is a short-skirt wearing tennis playing Muslim, while some members of the clergy think that it is unIslamic. I don’t think there’s much room for debate here – Mirza wins, she is a Muslim because she believes she is one.

The question of hudood in Islamic praxis is a very delicate one but there are some articulate Muslim women trying to stretch and redefine the meaning of this boundary. Irshad Manji, a Canadian Muslim is one (trying to reconcile her homosexuality with Islam) and Asra Nomani, an American Muslim is another (she had a child out of wedlock).
In South Asian history, there have been women like Rokeya Sakhawat Hussain (who started a school for Muslim girls in 1909 in Bihar), Atiya Fyzee (who went unveiled and studied in England more than a century ago), Shah Bano (who wanted a decent alimony that could not be given to her under Muslim Personal Law) who have tried to extend their hudoods.

While Mirza certainly cannot be compared with these women, by boldly redefining her own hudood she has kept the issue alive in public discourse as to what it means to be an “Indian Muslim woman.” Having come so far and having braved so many furores, Mirza must have gone ahead and played at the Bangalore Open. It would have certainly delighted many of her fans in India and Bangalore in particular.