Should a DEd College have a dress code or uniform? And if it does, should it be the popular saree worn by all communities in Kerala or the aaya, if late the preferred dress for some Muslim women if the state?
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According to the Telegraph, a Sunni Muslim organisation that follows the stricter Salafi branch of Islam has surprised many by refusing a Muslim teenager’s demand to wear the abaya on all days bypassing the more secular dress code at a college it runs. The college management has stood by its secular dress code.
The Jamia Nadwiya Teacher Training Institute in Edavanna, run by the Kerala Nadvathul Mujahideen in Muslim-majority Malappuram district, has refused to relax its rules while stressing that it has students from other communities as well. This has sent out a strong message.
According to the report, the institute’s dress code makes it mandatory for its students – who are all women – to wear saris on three particular days of the week while allowing them a wider choice of clothing on the other days. An abaya is a black outer garment that covers everything but the face, feet and hands.
But one candudate, Husband, 18 and married, was not hapoy. Husna C, 18, who had obtained a seat in the DEd (Diploma in Education) course, made several attempts to get the management to relax the dress code before eventually dropping out. It was her husband P. Harshad Mohammed who spoke to The Telegraph on her behalf saying that Husna has, aggrieved by this, enrolled in a BA Economics course at another college.
Doing all the talking for his wife, Harshad said he was not against saris. “But like most Muslims, we too feel the abayais more comfortable and safer than the sari,” he said.
“When she realised that this college won’t allow her to wear the abaya on all days, my wife joined another college.”# He added: “It’s very unfortunate that a college run by a Muslim trust denied our request although some non-Muslim colleges allow students to wear the abaya, which conforms to our religious practices, on all days.”
Howeer, an official at the teacher training institute, who didn’t want to be identified, said the other Muslim students had been complying with the dress code, and that the college couldn’t have made an exception for one student.
“As we have Hindus and Christians among our students too, the management has for a long time been enforcing the sari as the uniform for Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays,” the official, a practising Muslim, said.
“We even have a uniform sari that all the students buy and wear. We had clearly told her (Husna’s) husband that rules are rules and if she wanted to wear the abaya, she could join any other college where it is allowed on all days.”
The Kerala Nadvathul Mujahideen, founded in 1950, runs a cluster of institutions at its about 30-acre campus in Malappuram, including a nursing college, arts and science college, higher secondary school for girls, residential secondary school and a school of Islamic studies.