The Jackson School recently sat down with Karishma Manglani, a 2022 alum of the South Asian Studies master’s program. In this Q&A, Manglani discussed her academic journey, the intersection of gender and public space in South Asia, and “Where Do Women Belong?: How India’s ‘Protector’ State Shapes Gender in Public Space,” her most recent piece for the website “Feminism In India.”
Can you explain your background and your connection to the Jackson School?
I attended Carnegie Mellon University for my undergraduate studies, where I studied Decision Science and minored in Chemistry. After that, I wanted to expand my knowledge more within the humanities — I had taken a U.S. women’s history class in my senior year of undergrad, and it sparked my interest in research related to South Asian women, which led me to apply to graduate schools in area studies. The Jackson School was the best fit for me, as the M.A. in South Asia Studies allowed me the flexibility to take an interdisciplinary approach to my graduate education. The program has a deep language focus as well, and I was able to fully explore my diverse research interests through the two paper thesis option. I got to work with some incredible professors in my program that really pushed the dimensions of my research.
You recently published “Where Do Women Belong;” the article references a conversation with a shopkeeper about women drivers and police officers. Did that moment spark the idea for this piece, and/or how did it shape your perspectives on the larger themes you explore?
Yes! The moment with the shopkeeper, plus the amount of time I was spending reading in graduate courses about similar topics definitely sparked the idea for the piece. It’s shaped my perspective in many ways — I overall have a deeper understanding of how public space and gender functions in South Asia. The ideas of state, gender, and space were definitely brewing in my head.
The first iteration of this piece actually came out of a writing seminar I took with [Jackson School] Professor Christian Novetzke (one I recommend!), and out of research I was doing for one of my thesis papers that explored how public spaces can be places for contestations of class, gender, caste, and sexuality — and in turn can show us how we can make our belonging in a city.
How do you think younger girls in India are being taught to navigate public spaces, and how might this affect their sense of belonging in the world around them?
I can’t speak for the entirety of India or certainly all Indian women, as how we get to exist in space is very class and caste dependent, but from my experience women’s belonging in South Asia is negotiated by community. That means younger women (in urban areas) are taught from a young age to be scared of members of another community attacking them — that the home is the safest place. To not go out at night in city streets, to dress a certain way etc. Other than that, general codes of family, and patriarchal-joint households definitely create this sense of women’s belonging being dictated by the men they are attached to in some form. It’s deeply entrenched in our culture. It’s in city streets walking, driving, on public transport, in public parks, in private and public space and what determines what space is private or public. Our ideas of gender are just, well everywhere.
You mention that to dismantle these constrictions, women need to claim cities as their own “without designation or purpose.” Have you seen any recent large-scale examples of this in India?
From my understanding of loitering, it’s meant to be unorganized and unplanned. For example, we have seen examples of groups of men just hanging out with each other somewhere – in the streets, without really being there for any reason. In terms of large-scale examples of activism in South Asia, the women of Shaheen Bagh during the anti CAA protests are a great example. More recently, there were protests post the horrific murder and rape of doctor in Calcutta, which men and women participated in.
From what I know of in Delhi, there are organized events, like women’s walking groups. This is not necessarily loitering, but a more everyday way in which women come together to occupy public space – but participation in these groups is definitely also shaped by class.
As an alum of the South Asia Studies program, how did your time at the Jackson School shape your understanding of the intersection of gender and power in South Asia?
My time at the South Asia Studies program shaped my understanding of gender greatly! Most obviously, I took a few courses with [Department of Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies] Professor Priti Ramamurthy which really opened my eyes to a lot of gender and power dynamics in South Asia. Even other classes, like Cricket Keating’s classes helped me understand how public spaces can function as places of everyday instances of resistance. Purnima Dhavan’s classes helped me with the historical understandings of how and why certain ideas of gender came to be in South Asia, and [South Asia Center Chair] Radhika Govindarajan’s class on Anthropological Methods actually helped me carry out the ethnographic practice.
I was also taking classes online for some part of my M.A. due to COVID-19 and I was in Delhi at the time, which helped me apply and see the things I was learning, which was especially interesting during a time where state interventions on city streets was more common.
What advice would you give to individuals considering a graduate degree at the Jackson School?
Be targeted in what you want to study, but open to what you want to research changing — that’s a big part of the process. Boundaries between fields are extremely porous, and you need to have an interdisciplinary lens to become a comprehensive academic researcher. Along the same lines, there’s so much to learn that even may seem not entirely relevant to your degree program, and it can lead you in some wonderful directions. For me, the best part of my master’s was learning I didn’t expect — I discovered a love of Urdu poetry, for example.
The views expressed in this Q&A do not necessarily reflect those of the University of Washington or the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies.
