India’s Hindu groups want wider ban on hijab

NEW DELHI: Hindu supremacist groups are demanding restrictions on Muslim girls wearing hijab in classrooms in more Indian states after a court upheld a ban on the traditional headscarf in Karnataka state, worrying students who had protested against the ban, foreign media reported.

The Karnataka High Court’s decision on Tuesday, backing the southern state’s February ban on the hijab, has also been welcomed by top federal ministers from Prime Minister Narendr Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), who say students should avoid wearing religious clothing in class.

A female Muslim student has already appealed the verdict in the India’s Supreme Court, which could take up the matter later this month, her lawyer said on Twitter. “I believe it is a wrong interpretation of the law,” lawyer Anas Tanwir told a Middle Eastern media outlet on Tuesday.

“As far as essential religious practice is concerned, [that] should not have been the question. The question should have been whether the [authorities] had the power to pass such orders,” the lawyer said.

There is no national guideline on uniforms in India and states often leave it to schools to decide what their students should wear. Rishi Trivedi, president of the Hindu-first group Akhil Bharat Hindu Mahasabha, said: “We are a Hindu nation and we do not want to see any kind of religious outfit in educational institutes of the country.”

“We welcome the court verdict and want the same rule to be followed throughout the country.” The ban in BJP-ruled Karnataka had sparked protests by some Muslim students and parents, and counterprotests by Hindu students.

Critics of the ban say it is another way of marginalising the Muslim community, which accounts for about 14 percent of Hindu-majority India’s 1.35 billion people.

Leaders of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), an affiliate of BJP parent organisation Rashtriya Swayamsevvak Sangh (RSS), said they have asked for a hijab ban in Modi’s home state of Gujarat and would soon write to the country’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh.

The BJP is in power in both states. “The hijab is not allowed in the defence forces, police, and government offices, then why the insistence on hijab in schools and colleges?” said VHP’s Gujarat secretary, Ashok Raval. “It is an attempt to raise communal tensions.”

Ayesha Hajeera Almas – who had challenged the Karnataka ban in court – said there is a real fear that the hijab ban will now go national.

The 18-year-old said she has not attended school since late December after its authorities barred Muslim girls from wearing the hijab, even before the state-wide ban came in early February.

“Increasingly, we feel we are living in an India where its citizens are not treated equally,” Almas said from the Karnataka district of Udupi, from where the protests began. “I am fighting for myself, fighting for my sisters, fighting for my religion. I’m scared that there will be changes like this in the whole country. But I hope it does not happen.”