Citizenship is often presented in legal and constitutional discourse as a neutral, universal status granted by the state. Yet feminist scholars have long challenged this universalized narrative, arguing that citizenship has never been neutral or uniform. Iris Mariam Young (1990) conceptualizes citizenship as a set of practices embedded in social structures that determine inclusion and exclusion: Nira Yuval Davis (1999) places citizenship at an intersection of gender, ethnicity and cultural affiliation, and Seyla Benhabib (2002) emphasizes the importance of recognizing plural identities within democracies. Given this framework, the case of Mostari Banu v. The Election Commission of India emerges as a pivotal moment in redefining citizenship in India, asserting that citizenship is not a legally static status but is gendered and culturally mediated. The aim is to analyze how feminism in India begins not in the upper echelons of the elite or the bourgeoisie, but at the periphery – asserting legal and moral authority over bureaucratic and state practices.
The Challenge of Mostari Banu: A Rural Muslim Woman’s Viewpoint
Mostari Banu, a 44-year-old history graduate student and housewife from a small village in Bhagwangola in Murshidabad district of West Bengal, approached the Supreme Court in November 2025 challenging the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the ECI’s electoral rolls. Long before the interventions of prominent political figures like Mamata Banerjee, Banu’s petition brought to the fore the everyday concerns of marginalized voters. Her legal challenge challenged the assumption that democratic resistance comes from political elites and illustrated how feminist agency can emerge at the peripheries, with an ordinary Muslim woman setting the moral and legal agenda that political elites later follow.
Mostari Banu. Photo credit: The Wire
Banus petition The focus was on the ECI’s requirement that voters attach passport size photographs with their SIR forms. For many Muslim women, such policies clashed with cultural norms of modesty and parda, creating a direct tension between democratic participation and cultural practices. As Banu herself argued, compulsory photographs placed Muslim women in the position of choosing between civil rights and personal dignity, highlighting how bureaucratic procedures, even when presented as neutral, can produce a system based on exclusion and constitute a greater share of administrative and bureaucratic violence.
Given this framework, the case of Mostari Banu v. The Election Commission of India emerges as a pivotal moment in redefining citizenship in India, asserting that citizenship is not a legally static status but is gendered and culturally mediated.
This legal intervention is in line with previous landmark cases primarily involving Muslim women Shah Bano v. Union of India(1985), who challenged patriarchal norms within Islam in order to secure maintenance rights. While Shah Bano faced constraints within religious norms, the Mostari Banu case questions the homogenizing tendencies and impulses of the modern Indian state. While the two cases are very contradictory in nature, with the former being about the assertion of legal rights and the latter about the assertion of cultural rights, the Muslim women in both cases demonstrate the fact that their social and political agency is not based on passivity but on an active challenge to the power dynamics of both religion and politics that are subordinate to them. Muslim women therefore actively negotiate power to ensure recognition, privacy and justice.
Banu’s case also illustrates the structural dimensions of administrative exclusion. The SIR procedures categorized voters based on documents such as age verification and proof of citizenship through birth certificates and required repeat appearances for alleged discrepancies. Banu herself, despite having been registered as a voter since 2002, received a summons questioning age differences with her father. Rural voters, migrant workers and marginalized women faced significant challenges in complying with bureaucratic requirements. Young (1990) stressed that democratic participation requires the removal of barriers that prevent the excluded from exercising their rights. Banu’s intervention highlighted the disproportionate burden these procedures place on marginalized sectors and highlighted how formalist approaches to democracy can disenfranchise the very groups they purport to include. The same logic applies to the Matua community in West Bengal, which has been disenfranchised en masse due to lack of required documents.
Discrimination based on caste and religion
The focus was on highlighting the interface between gender, religion and rural marginality as “multi-layered citizenship”. Yuval Davis (1999). Banu’s case was not just about a Muslim woman, but about an educated rural Muslim woman constrained by modesty norms, societal expectations and bureaucratic invisibility. Their exclusion was not simply bureaucratic or religious, but a product of multiple intersecting social hierarchies. For Benhabib (2002), SIR would be considered an assimilist norm that disregards the autonomy and dignity of the community. Banu’s petition reflects Benhabib’s ethical argument that democratic states must yield to homogenizing tendencies and uphold cultural rights to ensure that the marginalized are not marginalized. From a postcolonial perspective, feminism’s claims to grandeur as a monolithic global movement stand naked, as Banu’s activism also plays a central role in rationalizing the arguments of postcolonial feminists: that oppression is multilayered and intersecting, and that a feminist practice must engage not only with gender but also with other marginalized identities. This is necessary in the Indian context as gender discrimination runs parallel to caste and religious discrimination, particularly against Dalits and Muslims.
Banu’s intervention had a broader impact than the Supreme Court in January 2026 allowed Class 10 admit cards are considered valid proof of age and may be submitted through authorized representatives. This also exacerbates another key criticism of postcolonial feminists: bureaucratic measures must be brought into line with cultural realities. While senior political leaders increased criticism of the SIR, Banu’s activism is notable for being grounded in everyday experiences of Muslim women’s marginalization and precarity. At a time when, as Mohanty argues, post-colonial states have entered a phase of forced homogenization after the 1990s, Banu’s practice focused on the lived realities of marginalized women rather than political rhetoric.
Banu’s intervention had a broader impact than the Supreme Court in January 2026 allowed Class 10 admit cards are considered valid proof of age and may be submitted through authorized representatives.
Their legal challenge redefined citizenship as a process of active negotiation with the state: the ability to enforce cultural rights, oppose arbitrary procedures, and insist on dignity is essential to democratic participation. By foregrounding Muslim women, Banu’s intervention is a practice of postcolonial feminism: it insists on incorporating the cultural and ethical dimensions of inclusion, and is a powerful reminder that democracy is not just a table of laws and elections, but also the lived reality of those who are often silenced. By asserting her rights, Banu is not only challenging SIR but also loosely carrying the flame of the anti-CAA-NRC protests in which Muslim women played a role dominant role in agitations against the discriminatory act. This argument is more valid for two other reasons: (i) Critics have described the current SIR process as “Backdoor NRC“, and (ii) the Depiction The number of Muslim women in Lok Sabha points to precarity as only 18 of them have been elected since 1952. Through her activism, Mostari Banu brings Muslim women into the contemporary democratic process in India.
