Hijab Ban: SC Says Allowing Religious Symbols Could Help Children Learn About Diversity

At the hearing on the hijab ban on September 21, Justice Sudhanshu Dhulia of the Supreme Court suggested that allowing pupils to wear religious insignia would help them become more familiar with the variety of the nation.

A group of petitions contesting a Karnataka High Court decision upholding the state government’s prohibition on the hijab at educational institutions are being heard by a bench of Justices Dhulia and Hemant Gupta.

Dhulia made the comments during the hearing on September 21 after Senior Advocate R Venkataramani, who was representing a Udupi college instructor, told the court that schools must be free of any religious components in order to guarantee that knowledge is transmitted without any division or walls.

Justice Dhulia answered by saying that teachers might use the hijab as an opportunity to explain to kids that the nation is multicultural and sensitive to cultural differences and that wearing religious symbols can be viewed as a kind of exercise.

Prabhuling K Navadgi, the attorney general for Karnataka, countered that nothing written in the Quran can be regarded as fundamental religious practice and added that making this assumption would be unfeasible.

Absolute independence, in his opinion, is unmatched.

Previous hearings

Justice Dhulia made a comment during the last hearing on September 20 that the High Court shouldn’t have considered the issue of fundamental religious practice in making its decision.

The Karnataka High Court cited an essay titled “Veiled Women: Hijab, Religion, and Cultural Practice – 2013” in its decision upholding the hijab prohibition. The High Court’s decision that the hijab was at most a cultural practice was based on an essay authored at the time by Sara Slininger, a student of history.

The Karnataka government’s Solicitor General, Tushar Mehta, concurred that the High Court might have avoided examining whether the hijab was a mandatory Islamic religious practice. However, he had made note of the fact that the petitioners had made the case that wearing a headscarf was a necessary custom.

Case of the hijab ban

A group of Muslim students at the Government Women’s Pre-University College in Udupi city was denied access to classes in December and January because they were wearing headscarves. This led to the Karnataka government’s ban. Similar protests were organized by the students in other regions of Karnataka.

Male mobs and Hindu students demonstrated against Muslim women attending educational institutions while donning hijabs. In other colleges, Muslim students were taunted, while in another instance, some males stormed into classrooms after climbing a flagpole to plant a saffron flag.

The Karnataka government issued a decree on February 5 outlawing attire that disturbs equality, integrity, and public order. Then, the students petitioned the High Court to overturn the ban.

On March 15, the Karnataka High Court ruled that hijabs were not necessary for practicing Islam and upheld the state government’s ban on them in schools and colleges.

A group of students filed a petition with the Supreme Court a few days after the High Court upheld the prohibition, arguing that they would miss their exams as a result of the ban. The chief judge at the time, NV Ramana, declined to hold an urgent hearing in March, claiming that the hijab ban had nothing to do with exams.

News Mania Desk