Over 1.850 prominent citizens condemn targeting of Hijab-wearing Muslim students in Karnataka institutions

Several feminists, democratic groups, collectives, academicians and lawyers collectively released a statement on Thursday condemning the targeting and exclusion of Hijab-wearing Muslim women students in Karnataka’s educational institutions.

The statement has been signed by more than 1,850 individuals, including lawyers, activists and academicians.

They demanded strict action against the saffron-wearing mob of men who heckled a hijab-wearing Muslim woman in Mandya, saying that the incident “is a warning of how the hijab can easily become the next pretext for mob attacks on Muslims.”

They affirmed that they firmly believe that the Constitution mandates schools and colleges to nurture plurality, not uniformity.

“Uniforms in such institutions are meant to minimise the differences between students of different and unequal economic classes. They are not intended to impose cultural uniformity on a plural country. This is why Sikhs are allowed to wear turbans not only in the classroom but even in the police and Army. This is why Hindu students wear bindi/pottu/tilak/vibhuti with school and college uniforms without comment or controversy. And likewise, Muslim women should be able to wear hijabs with their uniforms,” they said.

Further, the statement said, “Making hijabi women sit in separate classrooms or move from colleges of their choice to Muslim-run colleges is nothing but apartheid. Hindu supremacist groups in coastal Karnataka have, since 2008, been unleashing violence to enforce such apartheid, attacking togetherness between Hindu and Muslim classmates, friends, lovers.”

“It must be remembered that such violence has been accompanied by equally violent attacks on Hindu women who visit pubs, wear “western” clothes, or love/marry Muslim men. Islamophobic hate crimes have been joined at the hip to patriarchal hate crimes against Muslim and Hindu women - by the same Hindu-supremacist perpetrators,” they said.

The statement added that the signatory organisations and individuals “unequivocally stand in solidarity” with Muslim women whether or not they don a hijab and added that they firmly believe that the Constitution mandates uniforms in schools and colleges to close the distance between students of unequal economic classes.

The signatories also include organisations such as the All India Democratic Women’s Association, National Federation of Indian Women, Awaaz e Nizwan, National Alliance of People’s Movements, Forum Against Oppression of Women, People’s Union for Civil Liberties, Dalit Women’s Collective, National Federation of Dalit Women, Women Against Sexual Violence and State Repression, and Feminists In Resistance.