Islamophobia: Hijab-wearing girl protests against Hindu mob at Indian college

AhlulBayt News Agency (ABNA): A video posted on Twitter showing a hijab-wearing Muslim student being heckled by a Hindu far-right mob at a college in Karnataka state has caused outrage amid intensifying protests over ban on Islamic headscarves in the southern state.

Muskan Khan was surrounded by men wearing saffron scarves as she arrived at her college in Mandya, the viral video showed, as she confronted the protesters, many of whom, she said, were outsiders.

The ban on Islamic headscarves has outraged Muslim students who say it’s an attack on their faith enshrined in India’s secular constitution, while Hindu right-wing groups have tried to prevent Muslim women from entering educational institutions causing communal tension.

“I was just there to submit an assignment; that’s why I entered the college. They were not allowing me to go inside just because I was [wearing] the burqa,” Khan later told India’s NDTV news channel.

“After that, they started shouting the slogan ‘Jai Shri Ram’. (Hail Lord Ram). Then I started to scream ‘Allah Akbar’ (God is great),” she said, adding that she would keep fighting for her right to wear the hijab.

“Ten percent [of the protesters] were from the college but [the rest of them] were outsiders,” Khan said.

Following the incident, the Karnataka government run by the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Tuesday announced shutting down of educational institutions for three days.

Earlier, students at a government-run high school were told not to wear hijabs last month. Since then Hindu far-right groups have tried to prevent hijab-wearing Muslim women from entering educational institutions in the state.

The government of Karnataka, where 12 percent of the population is Muslim, said in an order on February 5 that all schools should follow dress codes set by management.

BC Nagesh, the education minister of Karnataka who tweeted the order, said school dress codes had been set after reviewing court decisions from across the country to ban the hijab at educational institutions.

Campuses have seen escalating confrontations between Muslim students condemning the ban and Hindu pupils that say their classmates have disrupted their education.

Local media reported last week that several schools in the coastal city of Udupi had denied entry to Muslim girls wearing the hijab citing an education ministry order, prompting protests from parents and students.

“All of a sudden, they are saying you are not supposed to wear hijab … why did they start now?” said Ayesha, a teenage student at the Mahatma Gandhi Memorial College in Udupi.

Pakistani education rights icon Malala Yousafzai called the hijab ban for students “horrifying”.

“Objectification of women persists – for wearing less or more. Indian leaders must stop the marginalisation of Muslim women,” Yousafzai said on Twitter on Tuesday.

A case filed by one of the students, who said in her petition that wearing the hijab was a fundamental right to religion guaranteed by the constitution, was heard in the Karnataka High Court in state capital Bengaluru on Tuesday.

While no final order was passed, the judge appealed for peace and calm and will continue hearing the petition on Wednesday, one of the lawyers for the petitioner told Reuters.




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