Bengaluru, India: The ban on hijab in colleges in the southern Indian state of Karnataka has triggered a major row amid growing concerns that the attacks on Muslim symbols and practices are part of the larger Hindu far-right agenda of imposing majoritarian values on minorities.
The country’s 200 million Muslim minority community fear the ban on hijab violates their religious freedom guaranteed under India’s constitution. The US ambassador-at-large for International Religious Freedom on Friday said the hijab ban would stigmatise and marginalise women and girls.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which runs governments in Karnataka as well as at the centre, has backed the discriminatory ban. The BJP has for decades campaigned for the application of a Uniform Civil Code (UCC), which minorities believe would be tantamount to the imposition of Hindu laws.
On Tuesday, hijab-wearing Muslim girl students were barred from entering schools and colleges across the state.
The visuals of Muslim girls removing their hijab outside their schools created a furore, with social media users calling it “humiliation”, while Sujatha Gidla, author of the book Ants Among Elephants, said it reminded of “the French police terrorising Muslim women in burkinis” in 2016.
“Around 13 of us were taken to a separate room because we were wearing a headscarf over the school uniform,” Aliya Meher, a student at Karnataka Public School in Shivamogga district, told Al Jazeera.
“They told us that we cannot write the pre-board exam if we don’t remove our hijab. We responded by saying: ‘In that case, we will not write the exam. We cannot compromise on the hijab.’”
“Suddenly, they are asking us to remove hijab.”
Reshma Banu, the mother of one of the students barred entry to the same school, said the hijab ban is “unacceptable”.
“The hijab is an integral part of our faith. We admitted our children here since we thought their rights would be respected,” she told Al Jazeera.
But Susheela V, the principal of Karnataka Public School, said her institution is “only abiding by government orders”.
“It’s just a pre-board examination and we can make arrangements for them to write it later,” she told Al Jazeera, adding that “we will implement necessary rules as per the court’s judgement”.
The situation escalated last week when a group of hijab-wearing Muslim girls camped outside a college in the state’s Udupi district after the authorities shut gates on them. As soon as the video of their protests surfaced on the internet, there was a wave of solidarity from across the country with activists asking for a repeal of the ban.
But the college and the government did not heed the demands and it instead had a ripple effect, with several other colleges in the district imposing a ban on hijab after opposition from Hindu students and activists who donned saffron – a colour associated with Hinduism – scarves and shawls.
The state’s high court, which is hearing two petitions against the ban, has restrained students from wearing “religious clothes”, including hijab, until it issues a ruling. The lawyers have criticised the restraining order saying it amounts to “suspension of fundamental rights”.
Earlier, sporadic incidents of violence were reported from different parts of the state as Hindu students clashed with police. In one episode, a student in hijab was heckled by a group of Hindu mob inside her college, sparking huge outrage.
What started as an issue of college dress code has turned into a Hindu-Muslim issue, with Hindu students starting to wear saffron scarves at colleges to oppose hijab.
According to social media posts on Twitter, Hindu supremacist groups in the northern states of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh have protested against hijab.
Hindutva (Hindu-ness), the ideology which defines Indian culture in terms of Hindu values, has inspired India’s Hindu supremacists for decades.
The issue around hijab first started in late December when a group of Muslim girl students were removed from their class in a government pre-university college in Udupi district for wearing headscarves that many Muslims wear.
Campus Front of India (CFI), a right-wing Muslim student group active in southern India, came out in their support, arguing that the college was violating their religious and educational rights.
Syed Sarfraz, a student activist associated with CFI, told Al Jazeera that the government was validating and provoking the response of Hindu nationalist groups to oppose hijab.
“Multiple videos have emerged from various districts where leaders of Hindu nationalist groups are among the anti-hijab protesters wearing saffron shawls,” Sarfraz added.
According to an investigation by The News Minute website, the anti-hijab protests were not spontaneous “but a calculated Hindutva plot that has built on years of communal polarisation in Karnataka to mobilise students”. Al Jazeera
