NEW DELHI—An Indian court docket has upheld a ban towards sporting the hijab in school rooms in the southern state of Karnataka, weeks after the problem sparked confrontations exterior campus gates and stoked religious tensions.
Delivering its verdict on Tuesday, the Karnataka High Court dominated that hijabs—Islamic headscarves—didn’t represent part of “essential religious practice in Islamic faith.” It dismissed petitions filed by Muslim college students who had been barred from attending courses.
The court docket dominated the state’s authorities was inside its proper to have issued an order implementing college costume codes, saying it was an inexpensive restriction that was permissible underneath the structure.
A government-run highschool in the coastal metropolis of Udupi started stopping college students from sporting the hijab in class in September, in accordance with court docket petitions. A gaggle of scholars challenged the ban, inflaming a fractious national debate over religion and minority rights in India and sparking dueling demonstrations between Hindu and Muslim college students exterior campus gates throughout Karnataka. That prompted authorities to shut faculties for a number of days final month.
Ayesha Hajeera Almas, one of many college students who lodged the court docket problem, mentioned she couldn’t fathom how the court docket might say the hijab wasn’t important to their faith. She mentioned she would refuse to attend courses, and her exams, with out her hijab.
“We had so much hope in our judicial system, in our society and constitutional values,” mentioned the 18-year-old, who’s in her closing 12 months of highschool. “But we are feeling we’ve been betrayed by our own country.”
Supporters of the ban say it’s supposed to implement a uniform costume code and an environment that’s the identical for all college students.
Karnataka Chief Minister
Basavaraj Bommai,
from the nation’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, referred to as for calm and for all events to respect the court docket’s ruling. “The high court has settled the matter now,” he mentioned. “I request everybody to follow the high court order and maintain peace and order, and allow the children to do their education as usual.”
Ahead of Tuesday’s verdict, the state authorities issued an order banning giant gatherings for every week in the state capital, Bangalore. The district administration in Udupi shut faculties and schools for the day.
While echoing comparable debates that have played out in other countries over the proper to put on non secular apparel, the controversy additionally displays deepening tensions between Hindus and Muslims in India underneath the federal government led by Prime Minister
Narendra Modi
and his Hindu nationalist BJP.
The Karnataka ruling will probably embolden Hindu nationalist teams to name for different states in India to introduce hijab bans of their very own, additional alienating the nation’s Muslim minority, mentioned Ram Puniyani, president of the Centre for Study of Society and Secularism, a Mumbai-based suppose tank.
Lawyers and pupil teams supporting the scholars mentioned the scholars had been now contemplating submitting an attraction to the nation’s supreme court docket. “This order is a declaration of the status of Muslims in India, that Indian Muslims are second-class citizens,” Mohammed Tahir, a lawyer for the scholars, mentioned after the decision.
Write to Philip Wen at [email protected] and Krishna Pokharel at [email protected]
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