In southern India, for several weeks, hundreds of young Muslim students have been banned from entering class. The reason is that their establishments suddenly asked them…

India: Muslim students banned from wearing the veil deprived of lessons in the south

Muslim students and supporters sit outside the deputy commissioner's office in protest in Shivamogga district in the Indian state of Karnataka on February 17, 2022. AFP - -

Text by: Sébastien Farcis Follow

3 mins

In southern India, for several weeks, hundreds of young Muslim students have been banned from entering class.

The reason is that their establishments suddenly asked them to take off their Islamic veil, which they refuse.

This arbitrary decision leads to significant tensions, even clashes between Hindus and Muslims in Karnataka.

Advertising

From our correspondent in New Delhi,

The situation is very tense these days.

Every morning, for several days, it is the same drama: the supervisors of schools and high schools in the west of the state of Karnataka arise at the entrance of the establishments and ask the young Muslim women to remove their veil.

Girls aged 10 to 18 are thus torn between the religious tradition inherited from their parents and their desire to study.

A trauma for many.

“

We were told: if you want to study, you have to take off your hijab and you will go to class

,” testifies this 17-year-old veiled girl in the city of Udupi, in tears at having been prevented from entering class.

We refused.
Why are they suddenly changing the rules?
Is this normal, as we have our exams next week?

►Also read: India: Hindu nationalists at war against “love jihad”

Where does this sudden opposition to the Islamic veil come from?

In India, unlike France, religious symbols are accepted at school, and Sikhs can, for example, wear their turban.

But Hindu groups in Karnataka have been pressuring these schools for a month to refuse this Islamic veil.

Hundreds of Hindu students thus arrived at school with a saffron scarf, the color of militant Hinduism.

This led to violent clashes between Hindus and Muslims, and the closure of schools for several days.

Directors are now too afraid to go against this political diktat and are asking to remove the veil.

Muslim students have therefore appealed to the regional court of appeal, and a judgment on the merits is expected in the coming days.

An instrumentalization of Hindu nationalists

Hindu nationalists sometimes use these tensions in their electoral campaigns: five Indian states are in the process of voting to renew their parliaments and the Hindu nationalists of the BJP, in power in the region and in New Delhi, generally seek to

stigmatize Muslims

in order to collect Hindu votes.

So the BJP is inflating this hijab issue and another state it leads has also started banning it.

The problem is that the government does not allow the emergence of a real debate on the veil in school: it just lets extremists impose their supremacist demand by force and brutalize Muslim students, who are asked to change suddenly a religious practice, without consultation.

It is a trap for these Muslim students, because by thus defending their veil and their identity, they pass for retrogrades who prefer their religion to their education, whereas it is the state institutions that violate the contract for the defense of minorities.

An effective process of marginalization of Muslims is at work, in Karnataka as elsewhere in India.

India: Muslim students banned from wearing the veil deprived of lessons in the south

India: Muslim students banned from wearing the veil deprived of lessons in the south

An instrumentalization of Hindu nationalists

You may like

Trends 24h

Latest