Chief Minister Siddaramaiah-led Karnataka Government is planning to remove the ban on wearing hijabs at public educational institutes. Speaking at a gathering in Mysore on Friday, the Chief Minister, as reported by NDTV (December 22), said that “Hijab ban isn’t there anymore. (Women) can wear hijab and go anywhere. I have directed to withdraw the (ban) order”. Undoubtedly, this is a welcome decision.
Giving assurance to the people, Siddaramaiah said that they were free to “eat” and “wear” as they wanted. As he put it, “How you dress and what you eat is your choice. Why should I obstruct you? Wear what you want. Eat what you want. I will eat what I want, you eat what you want. I wear dhoti, you wear pants shirt. What’s wrong with that?”
The decision of the Karnataka Government not only strengthens social harmony in India but also promotes the ideals of gender justice, cultural diversity and pluralism, one of the key pillars of the Indian Constitution. The decision to withdraw the ban on Hijab will empower women and encourage them to pursue their education.
A day after his Mysore speech, the Chief Minister made it clear that so far no order to remove the Hijab ban had been issued. According to a report in The Indian Express (December 23), Siddaramaiah said that “We have still not issued any order regarding this. A question on hijab was asked for which I said we are considering lifting the ban on wearing hijab (in schools and colleges). We will discuss at the government level and then take a decision”.
Fearing a counter-mobilisation from the BJP, the Congress Government in Karnataka is looking into the matter before taking a final call. After the CM’s statement, School Education Minister Madhu Bangarappa issued another statement clarifying that the Government was looking into all legal aspects before taking the final decision.
Before taking a final call on the decision, the Chief Minister Siddaramaiah is trying to mobilize more support on the issue, both within the party and within the party and outside. He has been advised that the Hijab issue has been made a “controversial” issue by the BJP and the RSS and he should not give the saffron party an issue ahead of the 2024 General Elections. However, political commentators have opined that the Chief Minister Siddaramaiah is personally keen to lift the Hijab ban.
Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, who comes from a historically oppressed caste and whose association with the movements of social justice, goes back years, has set an example for other leaders of the secular parties to follow. His clear message to the secular camp is that the soft-Hindutva strategy and turning back on the marginalised communities including the Indian Muslims, is self-defeating.
In the light of the Congress defeat in Madhya Pradesh, Siddaramaiah’s act assumes much bigger importance. For example, Kamal Nath, former chief minister and the face of the Congress party within Madhya Pradesh wasted a lot of crucial time by visiting Babas and fell at their feet to seek blessings ahead of the assembly elections. He even publicly made a statement that credit goes to the Congress party for opening the gates of the controversial Ram Temple at Ayodhya.
Even the “blessings of Hindutva-funded Babas” and Kamal Nath’s compromise with secular politics could not prevent the Congress from facing a humiliating defeat in the state. Leaders like Kamal Nath should learn from Siddaramaiah that politics-based secularism and social justice is the only way that the BJP and the RSS can be defeated.
Siddaramaiah was quite aware of the game plan of the saffron government that had banned the Hijab at the public educational institutes ahead of the state assembly elections to fight elections on an anti-Muslim agenda. The BJP chief minister B. Bommai was desperate to create a religious polarisation so that the public attention from his government’s failure and the alleged corruption could be diverted. The Hijab ban came months before the assembly elections. Godi media mischievously created an impression that the protests against the ban were led by “radicalised” Muslim students and organisations. Intellectuals and activists who spoke in favour of gender justice and cultural pluralism were demonised as “supporters” of obscurantism and patriarchy within the Muslim community.
The same trope was also used during the BJP’s campaign around the triple talaq issue. While the BJP is fond of selectively invoking the Muslim women question and using it as part of its anti-Muslim agenda, it is both afraid and uninterested in improving the subordinate position of Hindu women within the family. Amid all these challenges, the Karnataka Government has taken a bold decision to stand with marginalised Muslim women.
This opposition to the Hijab ban by this author should not be used as a weapon against women who oppose wearing a Hijab. Simply put, my position is that we should uphold freedom and oppose coercion. For example, if Muslim women are happy to wear a Hijab, they must be respected. If they do not want it, they must be supported, too.
Our Constitution gives citizens the right to freedom. The state has no business in policing head gear, dress or food habits. A significant number of Muslim women wear Hijab when they step out of their homes. For some, wearing a Hijab outside their homes gives them confidence. Hijab does not pose any threat to security as argued by communal forces. Rather, it showcases our multicultural society. Such women are within their right to enter college, university, seminar rooms and Parliament, wearing a Hijab. Minus Islamophobia, then hijab will appear to us as normal as a saree, salwar, shirt, or pants.
The harsh truth however also is that, in Muslim male-dominated society, the Hijab is often also imposed on women. This is a form of coercion that is not peculiar to Muslim society alone. Even Hindu males, in some ways, do impose a particular dress code on their women. That is why, we should uphold freedom and denounce coercion wherever they are practiced. Put simply, support wearing a Hijab when it is worn out of choice or preference and oppose the same Hijab when this is imposed by patriarchy.
So the larger issue is not the Hijab per se but the principle of individual freedom, general justice and pluralism. Progressive sections, therefore, have defended Muslim women’s right to wear hijabs in Karnataka, at the same time they have also spoken in favour of Iranian women’s right to cut their hair.
Contrary to this, the BJP and the RSS appropriate gender issues selectively to promote their divisive and regressive ideology. Hindutva forces are never tired of demonising the leaders of the minority community as “anti-women”, “anti-national” and “anti-secular”, while they are afraid to touch the gross social inequality within the Hindu social order based on caste and gender. For example, untouchability, caste-based discrimination, multiple crimes against Hindu women, exclusion of Hindu women from large share of property, asymmetrical wage-relations, dowry, discrimination against sexual minorities and martial rapes hardly figure in the agendas of the BJP and the RSS.
(Dr. Abhay Kumar is a Delhi-based journalist. He has taught political sciences at NCWEB Centres of Delhi University.)