Karnataka hijab verdict

THE Karnataka High Court, upholding the state government’s ban on the wearing of the hijab in educational institutions, has concluded that the hijab is not an essential religious practice in Islam, and that educational institutions have the right to prescribe uniforms for students. A three-member Bench of the High Court also observed that the way the ‘hijab imbroglio unfolded’ suggests that ‘some unseen hands are at work to engineer social unrest and disharmony’. Quoting Dr BR Ambedkar, the judgment notes that ‘there is a lot of scope for the argument that insistence on wearing of purdah, veil or headgear in any community may hinder the process of emancipation of woman in general and Muslim woman in particular’. It cites court judgments from the past and opinions of religious scholars to reach the conclusion that ‘wearing of hijab by Muslim women does not form a part of essential religious practice in Islamic faith’.

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Though it has already been challenged in the Supreme Court, the verdict does provide a legal and religious foundation on which the argument for a truly secular educational system could be built. Reformists argue that for far too long, the female body has been a site of battles over cultural and religious norms, and that patriarchal practices conflate notions of purity and impurity with how women choose to dress. This, they insist, takes ‘choice’ out of the hands of women since they are indoctrinated with such notions right from infancy.

A blanket ban on modes of clothing, however, would violate the right of individuals to dress as they please. In the case of educational institutions, though, it makes sense for all students to wear uniform clothing; indeed, that’s the purpose of uniforms in schools — to inculcate the idea of parity of all, irrespective of religious creed, ideology or financial status. The law, similarly, must be equally blind — it must ensure that displaying markers of all religious or social groups is disallowed in educational institutions, including tilaks or rosaries worn over uniform. The law must not allow any government or institution to privilege the markers of any religious or social group over those of any other. True secular values must be treated more sacredly than religious values.