Why the obsession with Hijab doesn’t help Muslims

The decision of the Karnataka High Court upholding the ban on hijab within classrooms will not put matters to rest.

The Muslim side has already made their intention clear that they will approach the apex court and challenge this decision. They are well within their right to do, but they should really pause and think if this confrontational attitude is of any help to the community. Decades ago, section of Muslims made the mistake of resisting the Supreme Court over its Shah Bano judgment. The imprints of that pathological resistance haven’t really left us. If Muslims can be so intransient about their religion, then what stops the majority from doing the same? Why cry hoarse over majoritarianism when Muslims were the first to hoist the petard of Islamic supremacy over constitutional morality.

And that’s why such judgments should not be seen simply as legal pronouncements; they acquire a life of their own in terms of their social salience. The hijab judgment has a similar potential and hence it is incumbent on Muslims to act wisely and not repeat the mistakes of the past.

The court has struck down the plea that hijab is essential to Islamic practice. One can go on debating whether it is right in doing so or not. The important question though is who within the Muslim community gets to define what is essential to Islam. For every Muslim girl donning a hijab, there are many others who do not think that the hijab is essential to their faith. The mediatized images of hijab wearing girls storming the gates of their college imposed an ocular homogeneity; educating us that this is an issue between Muslim girls and their exclusion from educational spaces. In reality, this is an issue of symbolic imposition: that there is only one standard way of being a Muslim woman. This symbolic assertion is not just against perceived majoritarianism, but also against those in the Muslim society whose experience and embodiment of Islam is varied and different.

We should also not forget that world over, the return of the hijab has coincided with the rise of Islamism. From Egypt to Iran, educational institutions were the first to become sacralized; whether through the Muslim Brotherhood or through the Iranian regime. Women and their bodies have always been the first site of appropriation for all right-wing politics; it is therefore not surprising that the hijab has emerged as the signifier of Muslim identity. In the Indian context, the Islamist narrative has been pushed by organizations like the Popular Front of India and Jamat e Islami, who are heavily invested in whatever is happening in Karnataka.

Secondly, the court has upheld the authority of the college to impose a dress code as it falls within ‘reasonable restriction’. There are good reasons to impose a uniform but effecting a uniformity is not one of them. The idea is to level distinctions of class and develop solidarity amongst students irrespective of caste or religious distinctions. If any educational institution is stripped of that authority, then that is a recipe for unhinged relativity, something which will become too much to handle. There are members of a religious group that go without clothes; imagine what will happen if they start demanding that they be allowed to access schools and colleges in that state!

And where does it stop? Today it is the hijab, tomorrow it can be an insistence on wearing the Talibani burqa. How will we respond to demands for segregated classrooms which can be couched in terms of another essential practice? What will we do if some group argues that since the science of evolution is against their religious tenets, they will not attend those classes? These are not purely hypothetical situations. These demands have already been raised in European schools and one should not be surprised if similar demands are raised here in India too. Education is too serious a business to be left in the hands of religion. If the majoritarian impulse to refashion education to their liking should be resisted, there is no reason why minorities should be allowed to get away with it.

The argument that courts should desist from opining what constitutes essential features of a particular religion does not hold much water. Both Islam and Hinduism do not have a church and it is this absence of a legitimate authority within these religions which necessitates the intervention of the state from time to time. This is not the first time such an intervention has happened; Indian courts have been doing it since their inception. But no one had an issue when the courts intervened in the matter of Hindu personal law, changing the very basic feature of marriage of that religion. The same people who are today opposing the court’s intervention in Islamic practice had earlier hailed the courts and its reformist zeal through which it sough to modernize the Hindu society. The problem therefore is not the court’s intervention but their intervention within the Muslim religion. The left liberals who are criticizing the judgment need to revisit their patently unprincipled position.

It is true that the constitution guarantees the right of free expression of religion. But the constitution also tells us to strive for a gender just society. Why is it that the constitution today is being remembered only as a shield to protect and perpetuate religious orthodoxies? Those who are remembering Dr. Ambedkar today must also remember that he certainly had very uncharitable views about the burqa, calling it “one of the most hideous sights one can witness in India”.

The hijab today is not just about Muslim identity. It has become a test for a community’s ability to adapt and evolve.

The defence of hijab is being perceived as another instance of Muslim community’s inability to change with times. Muslims have all the right to challenge the present ruling in the apex court but in the larger realm of ideas, they have already lost this battle.

The author is an independent researcher on Islam and Muslims in South Asia.

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