The hijab controversy has unravelled a host of other related issues and critical questions

Karnataka’s hijab controversy is not a local college issue anymore. It is not even a State issue. Its repercussions, abjectly communal, are being noticed across the nation. It has raised critical questions on constitutional freedom and rights and questionable restrictions, including that of the State, imposed on the right to personal choice. The Supreme Court is the only forum to examine this issue that has implications for liberty, society and law. Five States are busy electioneering, the country is crawling back to post-pandemic normal, and the millions-strong student community is preparing to return to the campuses they last entered in 2020. None of them can afford a diversion of this kind. It all began in early December with an out-of-the-blue Karnataka college circular banning girls from wearing hijabs in class. A few other colleges took up the ban cause. Utter confusion prevailed about the hijab. Was it a head scarf? Was it a veil? Religious texts and laws were explored, mediated meanings conjured. Counter-protests followed. Politically motivated youth entered colleges wearing saffron turbans and shawls. Instead of cooling tempers, the Karnataka Government issued an order backing the ban order. The matter of the girls’ freedom to exercise their choice got ignored in the melee. The protests increased, spread to other towns, resulted in confrontations with the police. Social media nationalised the issue in no time. At least one other State mulled introducing the hijab ban. The issue was brought to the attention of Parliament. The Prime Minister also referred to it.

The case reached the Karnataka High Court where a larger Bench issued an interim order asking students not to insist on wearing religious garments pending the final order. The Supreme Court did not intervene when approached against this order but said it is watching the matter closely. The Madras High Court, hearing another case on religion, remarked it was shocked that “somebody is going behind a hijab and somebody is going behind a dhoti”. The issue is no longer about the hijab alone. It is also about a Sikh ‘patka’, a Hindu ‘bindi’, and so on. It will lead to hair-splitting of all currently valid interpretations of constitutional freedoms and rights and caveats related to the choice of religion and religious practice. Every High Court judgment in the past is being scrutinised. The college standoff is being seen as a clash of constitutional freedoms, of education versus public order, religion versus privacy. What if the Karnataka High Court issues its final order next week but a ‘dupatta’, not a hijab, is used as a headscarf? There is no end to it. A national debate is already on about ‘positive secularism’ — allowing public display by practitioners of all religions —and ‘negative secularism’ — banning all such public display. What is required is a re-affirmation of the constitutional sanctity of individual freedom and choice in the matter of religion from the highest court of the land to avoid the law being hijacked by politicised logic.