Why the hijab issue is a non-issue

Wafa Sultana Mohiddin

In 2012, exactly ten years ago, members of Karnataka Komu Sauharda Vedike (translated: Karnataka Communal Harmony Association) and I, stood in front of the taluk office in Udupi questioning unconstitutional objections by the principal of a college in Dakshin Kannada who forbid 50 Muslim female students wearing headscarves from attending classes claiming – “It made non-Muslim students uncomfortable”. As a student of law and also someone who had conscientiously committed to practicing the Islamic dress code from the age of 12 while attending high school and university classes with a headscarf in the coastal belt of Karnataka, I had thoroughly researched my case.

With a copy of Dr J.N. Pandey’s Constitutional Law of India highlighting Articles on freedom of religion, notes jotted down from an extraordinary academic paper on the distinctiveness of Indian secularism by Dr Rajeev Bhargava (lest I get the usual whatabouterys on hijab in France) and a copy of a brilliant judgement of a case popularly known as the National Anthem case (1986), my mother and I met with a local police officer who empathised with the Muslim students but said that there was little help he could offer as help mainly fearing the vigilantes. Just like the other authorities we approached. But that day I returned home with a thought-provoking question – why didn’t Hindu students attend classes with saffron shawls without Muslims wearing the hijabs first?

Until my generation, the concepts of conventional education and empowerment of women was irrelevant to our communities in the coastal belt. However, it was massive migrations to the GCC countries which also fared better than India in female adult literacy rate that got us breaking new grounds.

In the recent years, owing to social media, stories of several Muslim women achievers across the world have proven that hijab has neither been regressive nor a barrier to their aspirations. Hijab clad Indian Muslim women have also set exemplary examples in the past, like H.H. Begum Sultan Jahan for example and even in the present, like IAS Dr Rehana Bashir proving the same.

Growing up, I studied in Muslim, Christian and Hindu run educational institutions in Karnataka with a headscarf while also being part of the Christian choir, sung Hindu bhajans and participated in religious festivals celebrated on campuses. Large portraits or statues of different saints, gods and goddesses were always around me who I didn’t follow yet held deepest reverence for and sincerely read about, for my intellectual curiosity. This perhaps was the foundation of my ‘distinctive’ Indian constitutional secularism, which Professor Bhargava expounded had two important features. First, unlike the western model of secularism which is outdated and inapplicable in heterogenous societies of the globalized world today, the Indian secularism is not “anti-religious” but respects not one, but all religions.

Second, the Indian state maintains a “principled distance” from all religions, only intervening whenever there is communal disharmony, discrimination on religious grounds or intra-religious issue where members within a community are oppressed. Although the other students could come to campuses being visibly practicing of their respective faiths, their religious “add-ons” to uniforms were considered accessories but mine was often conflated either with geopolitics of the Middle East, extremist ideologies of Taliban while my reasons to wear a headscarf was a spiritual choice.

Most Muslim girls who removed (and still continue to) their headscarves or burkhas before entering classes bite the bullet to observe the unspoken protocol i.e., no headscarves on campus. None had precedents to follow, and for worse, none asked the “whys”. Why were only Muslim girls reminded of breaching uniforms while Sikh students wearing turbans weren’t? Why were hijab-clad Muslim girls called regressive while Christian nuns who came to campuses with their religious habits weren’t? Why were Muslim girls mindlessly policed about uniforms while downsides of uniforms include promoting culture of intolerance or limiting concepts of diversity on campus?

Ten years later, the police officer’s predictions have come true. When a group of Muslim girls in Udupi decided to exercise their personal liberties safeguarded by the Indian Constitution, by covering their heads with shawls of the same college uniform to observe their faith, the college raised objections. By doing so, the college has not only undermined the spirit of the Constitution but also conveyed a message to its youth that ostracising the ‘visibly’ Muslim was okay. In no time, the right-wing vigilantes seized the opportunity to mutate the “headscarf” matter from a person