Hijab-wearing students arrive to attend classes as a policewoman stands guard outside a government girls school after the recent hijab ban, in Udupi town in the southern state of Karnataka, India, on February 16, 2022. Reuters
Satya Prakash
New Delhi, February 21
The Karnataka Government on Monday insisted that the state high court must decide if hijab was an essential practice of Islam, saying it’s important to decide the issue as the petitioners have asserted it as a part of their right to religion.
“This controversy would not have arisen if petitioners would have come and said the college is not permitting us to wear hijab as a head scarf… But they want to wear this head scarf as a religious symbol,” Karnataka Advocate General Prabhuling Navadgi told a three-judge Bench led by Chief Justice RR Awasthiduring a live streamed proceeding.
Navadgi had on Friday asserted before that hijab was not an essential religious practice of Islam and the ban on wearing it in educational institutions didn’t violate the right to religion guaranteed under Article 25 of the Constitution. The practice should pass the test of constitutional morality, he had said.
At the very outset of the seventh day of the hearing on the controversial issue on Monday, Chief Justice Awasthi asked the Advocate General, “What’s your stand? Whether hijab can be permitted in institutions or not?”
As Navadgi said the operative portion of the government order left it to educational institutions, Justice Awasthi shot back, “If institutions permit hijab, do you have objections?...You have to take a stand.”
Referring to the petitioners’ submissions, the CJ said, “It is argued that they may be permitted to wear the same colour headdress as permitted in uniform prescribed by the college. We want to know the stand of the state? Suppose if they are wearing a dupatta which is part of the uniform, can it be allowed?”
“The order gives complete autonomy to institutions to decide uniform. Whether students should be allowed to wear a dress which could be a symbol of religion, the stand of the state is that the element of introducing religious dress should not be there in uniform. As a matter of principle, the answer in the preamble of Karnataka Education Act which is to foster secular environment”, the Advocate General submitted.
Navadgi said it was for the petitioners to prove that hijab was an essential practice of Islam.
The hearing would resume on Tuesday.
Several Muslim girls have challenged the Karnataka government’s February 5 order restricting students from wearing clothes that could disturb peace, harmony and law and order.
The Karnataka High Court had on February 10 restrained students from going to educational institutions wearing religious dress. The Supreme Court had refused to intervene in the Karnataka hijab controversy even as it asserted that it will protect the constitutional rights of everyone and will take up the matter at the appropriate time.
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