Hijab row: When rights are at stake...

When the government fails to fulfil its constitutional responsibility, it falls on citizens to then do so. Nobody has done so with more grace, dignity and courage than young Muslim girls who have asserted their right to education, writes Arvind Narrain

The debate on whether Muslim students wearing the hijab should be allowed to attend college has roiled Karnataka. In the legal sphere, the issue being debated is whether the hijab is essential to the practice of Islam and hence entitled to protection under the freedom of religion clause.

This is, however, a very narrow reading of what are the rights at stake.

The real issues should have emerged from the images we saw on the media of brave Muslim women asserting their right to education and the equally shocking images of a school teacher shutting the gates of the college to its own students as well as young men wearing saffron shawls heckling a lone Muslim woman going to her college.

This should not have been a debate about the balancing of the rights of Muslim women to wear the hijab versus the interests of colleges to prescribe the uniform.

It was rather about the illegal, arbitrary and mala fide actions of those who choose to go outside any legal framework and shut Muslim women out of their right to education, expression, privacy and dignity.

In the face of these illegal vigilante actions to deny women the right to education perpetrated by school authorities and vigilante groups the Karnataka government has failed to act and abandoned its constitutional responsibility to defend the right to education of Muslim women students.

The Government not only failed to protect young Muslim women’s right to education but its notification showed that it itself will not hesitate to deny Muslim women the right to education.

The notification gave the green signal to College Development Committees to pass resolutions to prevent Muslim women from accessing their right to education.

The notification also functioned as a dog whistle to vigilantes. Bullies wearing saffron shawls and shouting slogans such as Jai Shree Ram went on to harangue and intimidate young Muslim women who were going to their college.

The Government of Karnataka by its silence has shown the world that it does not believe that it has the obligation to protect the right to education of Muslim girls and that ostracising, humiliating and preventing Muslim teachers and students from wearing the hijab is allowed as far as this government is concerned.

When the government fails to fulfil its constitutional responsibility, it falls on citizens to then do so.

Nobody has done so with more grace, dignity and courage than young Muslim girls who have asserted their right to education.

The world saw Muskan a young Muslim B Com student who drove a bike up to her college campus and walked fearlessly past a baying crowd of saffron shawl wearing bullies and cowards to get inside her college.

Her courage, her spirit and her fearless and dignified assertion of her fundamental rights is something the Government must learn from.

(The author is a lawyer & writer based in Bengaluru. He is the co-editor of Law like love: Queer perspectives on law.)