Hijab ban: Karnataka high court upholds government order on headscarves
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Loading... - Ananya Agarwal
- 15 Mar 2022
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The court also upheld a state government order that had banned headscarves in classrooms.
The verdict follows a months-long, divisive row over the hijab.
A Karnataka college's decision in January to bar entry to Muslim girls wearing the hijab had sparked protests.
The issue soon snowballed, forcing the state to shut schools and colleges for several days.
The matter reached the high court after some Muslim women protesters filed petitions arguing that India's constitution guaranteed them the right to wear headscarves.
The three-judge bench held that allowing Muslim women to wear the hijab in classrooms would hinder their emancipation and go against the constitutional spirit of "positive secularism".
The 129-page order quotes passages from the Quran and books on Islam to argue that the hijab is not an obligatory religious practice.
"There is sufficient intrinsic material within the scripture itself to support the view that wearing hijab has been only recommendatory, if at all it is. What is not religiously made obligatory therefore cannot be made a quintessential aspect of the religion through public agitations or by the passionate arguments in court,'' the order says.
The petitioners had argued that a February order by the government prescribing uniforms in educational institutions violated their constitutional rights.
The court, however, said the order was valid, holding that the government had the right to prescribe uniforms for students.
The judgment is likely to be appealed against in the Supreme Court.
"This is a pre-eminently fit case to go before the Supreme Court," Prof Ravi Varma Kumar, a senior advocate who appeared for one of the petitioners, told BBC Hindi. Read More...
