Reversible Personhood: Bacha Posh, Marital Renaming, and Women's Parliamentary Recognition

Abstract

This article develops the concept of reversible personhood to explain the fragility of women’s political authority under quota regimes in patriarchal democracies. Drawing on Nadia Hashimi’s literary representations of bacha posh in The Pearl That Broke Its Shell and One Half from the East, alongside the practice of marital renaming in South Asia, the study argues that women’s identities are frequently granted instrumentally and revoked upon deviation from normative expectations. Integrating Feminist Institutionalism with Recognition Theory, the paper demonstrates that quota-based inclusion often operates within pre-existing cultural grammars that render women’s authority conditional rather than secure. Through comparative reference to Pakistan’s parliamentary quota system and India’s panchayat reforms, the analysis shows how descriptive representation can coexist with revocable legitimacy, informal veto practices, and patronage dependence. By operationalizing literature as Feminist Institutionalist empirics, the study identifies the pre-institutional recognition regimes that precede and shape parliamentary vulnerability. It concludes that durable substantive representation requires reforms that stabilize recognition—decoupling tenure from patronage, auditing informal institutional practices, protecting women’s caucuses, and addressing identity substitution mechanisms such as marital renaming. The framework offers a scalable analytical lens for understanding quota fragility and advancing participatory parity beyond numerical inclusion.