Ahead of reopening of schools on Monday, the Karnataka government sent out a tough message – that students and groups with an agenda cannot take the government for a ride – by holding a flag march in Udupi, Chitradurga and Doddaballapura.
The flag march came soon after tension prevailed in Davanagere, where a Hindu man was thrashed by a group of people, believed to be Muslims, over a social media post. A case has been filed and four people have been arrested.
The schools are to open on Monday – the day the Karnataka High Court is scheduled to resume hearing petitions challenging the hijab restrictions.
Releasing details of the interim order on Friday, the court said no religious attire, whether shawls or hijab, will be allowed inside educational institutions.
The order will apply to all students regardless of their religion or faith; they have been restrained from wearing saffron shawls (bhagwa), scarfs, hijab, carrying religious flags or the like within classrooms until further orders on the petitions.
“This order is restricted such institutions wherein the College Development Committees have prescribed the student dress code/uniform,” the court clarified.
“Ours being a civilized society, no person in the name of religion, culture or the like can be permitted to indulge in any act that disturbs public peace and tranquility. Endless agitations and closure of educational institutions indefinitely are not happy things to happen,” the three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice Krishna S. Dixit has said.
“Firstly, we are pained by the ongoing agitations and closure of educational institutions for the past few days, especially when this court is seized of this matter and important issues of constitutional significance and of personal law are being seriously debated. It hardly needs to be mentioned that ours is a country of plural cultures, religions and languages. Being a secular State, it does not identify itself with any religion as its own,” the bench observed.
“Every citizen has the right to profess and practice any faith of choice, is true. However, such a right not being absolute, is susceptible to reasonable restrictions as provided by the Constitution of India. Whether wearing of hijab in the classroom is a part of essential religious practice of Islam in the light of constitutional guarantees, needs a deeper examination. Several decisions of the apex court and other High Courts are being pressed into service,” the court said.
The protests that began against a hijab ban in one government-run college in Udupi spread to many other institutions where girls wearing hijabs were not allowed entry. As saffron scarf-wearing students launched counter protests, violence at one college forced the police to fire teargas to control the flare-up.
