On the occasion of Saraswati Puja, Rahul Gandhi expressed that Ma Saraswati doesn’t differentiate referring to the hijab ban.
Rahul Gandhi on referring to the decision by college authorities not to allow wearing the hijab in the classroom, tweeted “We are robbing the future of the daughters of India.” and said “Ma Saraswati doesn’t differentiate”: Rahul Gandhi On Karnataka hijab controversy.
The hijab protests began weeks ago at the Government Girls PU College in Udupi district when six students alleged that they had been banned from classes for insisting on wearing the headscarf.
Some 40 women students wearing the hijab protested at the gate of Bhandarkars Arts and Science Degree College in Kundapur, a coastal town in Karnataka’s Udupi. The staff had refused to let them in unless they took off their headscarves. They missed their classes for the second day on Friday.
The college has an instruction manual that says: “Girl students are permitted to wear the scarf inside the campus, however, the color of the scarf should match with the dupatta, and no student is allowed to wear any other cloth inside the campus including the college canteen”.
The principal, Narayan Shetty, said he wanted to preserve harmony on campus. “I am a government employee. I will have to follow all the instructions of the government. I was told that some students will enter the college wearing saffron shawls, and if harmony is disturbed in the name of religion, the principal will be held responsible,” he said.
The Karnataka government allows state-run colleges to frame their own guidelines on the matter. Some government colleges allow Muslim women students to wear the hijab or any headscarf on the campus. But it is not clear whether they can wear it inside the classroom. The students have pointed out that there are no guidelines on this and they can wear inside the classroom.
On Thursday, another college in Kundapur saw identical scenes when a group of hijab-wearing girls stood outside the gates for six hours. The Junior PU Government College had allowed hijabs in class until two days ago, the girls complained.
It seems Karnataka is seeing slipping away from the legacy of the IT capital of the world into the grasp of fanatical fringes with Chief Minister Basavaraj Somappa Bommai’s communal politics and a heavy hashtag is on in Twitter with #BommaiStopCommunalPolitics #HijabisOurRight
It appears that the matter is being resolved temporarily in a meeting with the parents and college authorities allowing them to wear head dupattas as decided in the past, and forbid the wearing of saffron shawls.