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Hijab and Religious Freedom in India by Tahir Ansari, licensed under Flickr
In Udupi, Karnataka, Muslim girls were having a normal life; they were going to college, making friends, and practicing their faith in the way they saw fit. They used to wear a Hijab, a headscarf worn by some Muslim women as part of their faith and religious identity. Until one fine day, the committee of Pre-University (PU) College for Girls—a government college in Karnataka—headed by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), state legislator Raghupathi Bhat, decided to amend the dress code in such a way that it barred Muslim women from wearing the Headscarf.
The Hijab ban is yet another addition to the continuing atrocities towards the dissidents and minorities in India. Many people across the country got shocked after the Hijab-ban and made a normative claim of the incident as a plain violation of the religious freedom of the students. It was definitely that, but not just that. The fact that the Indian Government allowed religious derogation is an incident that baffles me, as it would baffle others. How is it that the Government, through its statehood, that depends on the citizens’ taxes for its economic existence culminates in an authoritative stand to dictate the livelihood of citizens?
Murray Rothbard, a Libertarian economist, and philosopher has some ideas that can likely help us make sense of the situation. He talks about this in his essay Anatomy of State, where he says that we have to be very careful when recognizing the kind of entity the state is, and the identity it has adopted for itself, especially when it is a democratic one. In a democracy it is often imagined that “we are the government,” but to put what Rothbard said, “If “we are the government,” then anything a government does to an individual is not only just and untyrannical but also “voluntary” on the part of the individual concerned.” In this situation as well, since a democratically elected state government is mandating a certain dress code, this would imply that the girls themselves are imposing the dress code upon themselves as a voluntary means of action as part of the, “we are the government,” rhetoric. However, if the government actions were to be categorized as “just and untyrannical,” we would not see the young girls protesting and demanding their rights, dignities, and freedom to wear a hijab. Here ‘we’ is essentially a charade that is constructed by the establishment (state, media, politicians, government-run schools) to justify an otherwise unjustifiable act and get away with it. The examples range from the Hijab ban all the way up to the seizure of forest property while alienating the local inhabitants.
This whole issue of the Hijab Ban in Karnataka at its core is likely to be driven by political considerations and motives. This is the only state in the Southern part of India, being ruled by the BJP, the political party that does not shy away from using its own rhetoric to target the country’s religious minorities such as Muslims and Christians, for political gains. This Hijab Ban fits very well in the larger game plan of the BJP to consolidate their prospective voter block through divisive issues.
Who could imagine school uniforms being used to organize people on an utterly divisive platform which uses religion to achieve political mileage?
The real problem lies when the government starts to deviate from its path of upholding rights and freedom to targeting individuals over the broad aspect of religion. Times when the state has treaded on a tyrannical frontier, citizens have turned to the Rule of Law. In a democratic state like India, where separation of powers is perceived through the Court’s rule of preservation of rights via the emboldenment of our Constitution, the Indian Constitution paves way for it. Article 25 of the Indian constitution says that “all persons are equally entitled to freedom of conscience and the right to freely profess, practice, and propagate religion subject to public order, morality and health.” The girls consider wearing a headscarf as an integral part of their faith and a government body stopping them from doing so is clearly violating their constitutional rights!
This case was taken to the High Court of Karnataka. The lawyers representing the girls argued that not only did the case violate Article 25, but while the court investigates the situation, an interim relief must be provided to the girls. However, interim relief was not given by the Karnataka High Court in this situation. This implies that until the court discusses, whether or not Hijab is an integral part of Islam, the girls have to remove their Hijab in order to attend school. Some people do not seem to have a problem with this. Arif Mohammad Khan—who is both a religious reformer and the Governor of Kerala—argues that Hijab is not an essential part of Islam and in fact, the entire controversy is a “sinister design” to push back Muslim women, especially the young girls.” Others like Asra Nomani and Hala Arfa—although in a different context—goes on to call Hijab as the “ideology of political Islam as practiced by the mullahs, or clerics, of Iran and Saudi Arabia, the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Islamic State.”
Even if one goes by the understanding of the critics of the Hijab, one must remember that there are other scholars who consider the Hijab as an integral part of faith. Furthermore, a difference of scholarly opinion will always stay within Islam, as put by Nizamuddin Ahmad Siddiqui, a Professor in Law, that Islam as a religion is “rooted in individual interpretations of the belief system, and lacking the requirement of collective ideals and identity.” Therefore it makes sense for the government to stay out of the matter and let the individual Muslims decide it for themselves. The Karnataka case is going to the Indian Supreme Court as well. I am counting on the SC to protect the religious rights of girls as enshrined in our Constitution. There are many forces who want to tread on our individual liberties and divide us on our religious identities. We must never give in to them, as the famous Latin saying goes “Tu ne cede malis, sed contra audentior ito”, i.e. “Do not give in to evil but proceed ever more boldly against it.”
This piece solely expresses the opinion of the author and not necessarily the organization as a whole. Students For Liberty is committed to facilitating a broad dialogue for liberty, representing a variety of opinions.
