Whoever had planned to kick up a shindy over the hijab at Udupi in Karnataka seems to have succeeded in their sinister attempt. When the colleges reopened on Wednesday, the authorities concerned in not only Udupi but elsewhere too, prevented girls wearing the headdress from entering the college premises. In those colleges where they were allowed to enter, they were forced to sit in a separate room and while away their time. Some students who had to appear for examinations had to skip them for the authorities concerned strictly followed the relevant orders. However, a strict reading of the orders issued by the government and the high court suggests that the ban on headdress is applicable only to undergraduate colleges, where students have to follow a dress code known as uniform. Uniforms are, generally speaking, not prescribed in graduate colleges. The court’s order says specifically that till it gives its final order, students are not allowed to wear any dress that reveals their religious identity. What about the bindi, the turban, the tilak and the kada (steel bangle) that some students wear? Are they not part of the dress that reveals the religious identity of the students concerned?
The state home minister has given a stern warning to the students wearing the hijab that the government will henceforth be strict in enforcing its ban. Nobody questions his determination to prevent girls from wearing the hijab. Many people think that the hijab and the burqa are the same. They are as different as chalk and cheese. The hijab is used to cover only the head and the neck. It is the government which has ordered every person to wear a mask to fight the pandemic. A combination of the hijab and the mask may give the impression of the burqa but it is not the wearer’s fault. The point is that not only Muslims but also conservative Hindu women in states like Haryana use their sari-end to cover their head and even face. The Constitution gives the citizen the right to wear any dress of his or her choice. When Mahatma Gandhi was asked to remove his Gujarati turban while entering a court in South Africa, he resisted it on the advice of his Muslim employer, as mentioned in his autobiography, My Experiments with Truth. Gandhiji was well within his rights in South Africa as are the girls in question in Karnataka!
