Karnataka Hijab curbs: BJP’s game of votes versus the Constitution

Just what is going on in Karnataka on the hijab? I am personally convinced it is the BJP’s attempt to politicise the issue enough to make the southern state a bastion for its Hindutva ideology because the state government, in its words and deeds, is invoking administrative procedures and rules before the public and in front of the high court to justify curbs on the Muslim headdress -- even as party apparatchiks say matching things to drive the sentiment.

As of last week, some girls in hijab were not allowed to appear in secondary school final examinations, even if they were private candidates not bound by dress rules over which the row first erupted in a college at Udupi. I am not even going into issues like ban on Muslim traders around Hindu temples or demands for a ban on halal meat during the Ugadi Hindu new year day in the state.

Clearly, there is a long-term “project” at work in a state to create a vote bank over the heads of the Lingayats and Vokkaligas, both of which are Hindu communities traditionally wooed as rival vote banks by contesting parties in Karnataka politics.Leaders of both these communities should be worried because there may be, in business phraseology, electoral mergers and acquisitions ahead to undermine their role in the long run. Just look at what happened to the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra to get an idea.

But the real issue in my focus is not all that. The real issue is how we are supposed to look at it from the point of view of the Constitution and its underlying principles. The Chief Justice of India is seized of the matter, and there is no doubt that eventually, the hijab controversy is a constitutional matter involving the Right to Religion and a clutch of other rights including the Right against Discrimination. But the Supreme Court is in no hurry to consider the matter, as CJI Ramana has himself said in cryptic tones. The BJP is using the interim to build its own political base because, in plain language, it cannot afford to play Lingayat politics for too long. Here’s where we need to define the hard constitutional choices.

The Udupi college issue was essentially one involving a dress code (not the same as a prescribed uniform). It is now about what are the ways in which the Supreme Court can look into the issue, as it would have to, because that would set the precedent ultimately for all of India -- and national politics.

Subject to restrictions on things like nudity and decency (clearly not an issue in the hijab row), we can look at a dress code secularly as one involving “liberty of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship” in the Preamble of the Constitution. Even a Hindu, Parsi or Christian person (including men, if I may say so) enjoy the right to sport something that looks like a hijab, as a matter of choice. However, it is the choice, and its potential conflict with any rule involving a particular state authority or individual institution such as a college, that needs to be examined.

The Supreme Court will have to look at it as a public issue because colleges and examination venues are public spaces intersecting with private administrations in some cases. Issues of security may be at play -- such as security personnel or invigilators not being able to identify somebody by face because of a face veil. But then, we have gone through the entire Covid-19 pandemic with face masks, and the same rules should apply.

Now, consider the issue as one involving women. Malls, airports, and other public places routinely have separate security kiosks or enclosures to examine or frisk women. Surely an examination centre can permit women after female personnel look at the faces of candidates, match it with identification cards and allow them in to be escorted to their precise seat -- with the hijab firmly in place!

Malls and airports now have wheelchair access to permit the disabled to be treated equally. Why not a similar treatment for Muslim women to get educated? In this case, exemptions for women students and candidates can be built into administrative rules.

We have already got that sorted for Sikhs with turbans and kirpans. We just have to follow precedents. In Canada, the accommodation of the turban for police uniforms is a legal requirement based on human rights laws. The keyword here is “accommodation”.

The sad part is that after decades of some people complaining about Muslims in India not joining the mainstream (not borne out by evidence, though), we have the instance of Muslims, especially women, being pushed out of or being denied access to the educational mainstream -- and in the process, putting them into educational ghettos called madrasas. Oh, the irony of it all!

Like wheelchair access in malls and special exemptions for turbaned Sikhs, there is a case for “accommodation” of women through special measures in educational institutions, because it meets the constitutional rights as well objectives such as social justice.

Constitutional rights have underlying principles, so do administrative rules. You cannot invoke the Right to Privacy to justify domestic violence because equality is a principle that works even within the walls of a home. The imposition of a dress code may be considered in a similar category, taken together with the context of empowering women.

The thing to remember is that administrative rules and laws exist to uphold constitutional principles and protect basic rights, not the other way around.

n Uttar Pradesh, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s re-elected BJP government has withdrawn its decision to post women employees as private secretaries and to other secretarial posts with newly appointed ministers after protests from female employees who said they were “uncomfortable” working at odd hours with ministers or travelling with them.

I leave you to compare that with Karnataka and start your own discussion on equality and safety.

(The author is a senior journalist and commentator based in Delhi and writes on policy, political economy and governance. Pic: He tweets as @madversity)

(This was first published in National Herald on Sunday)