Huge protests have erupted across Karnataka state following the government's decision to ban hijabs, or headscarves, in schools and colleges.
After six students were banned from entering a college in Karnataka's coastal Udupi district for wearing hijabs on January 1, the debate over the rights of Moslem women, pluralism and secularism has gripped the entire country.
Amid escalating communal tensions and sporadic violence, authorities have closed all high schools and colleges in the southern state for three days.
The Karnataka state is governed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which many Moslems accuse of deviating from the country's secular ideology.
The state's High Court is hearing two petitions on the issue and will decide whether to keep the ban or discard it. One of the petitions argues that it is a citizen's fundamental right to choose the attire, and that is guaranteed by the country's constitution.
The other petition challenges the legality of the government's decision to enforce a dress code in educational institutes.
School uniforms are an inheritance from Britain, which is why fancy private schools in America have them, too. The whole point is to dictate what the students wear.
DW contacted several ruling party officials, who said they didn't want to comment as the matter is now in court.The hijab row, however, was echoed in the national Parliament, with opposition parties staging a walkout.
Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pralhad Joshi, who is a politician from Karnataka, told news hounds that "all students must follow the dress code prescribed by schools and their administration."
AN UNLIKELY 'HERO'
The issue became more prominent when a video of a college student became viral on social media. It showed Muskan Khan, a second-year student of Mandya College, being heckled by Hindu right-wing activists. They were purportedly supporting the dress code in the college. Khan, a Moslem girl clad in a burqa (face veil), confronted them and shouted "Allah Akbar" (God is great in Arabic). She refused to remove her veil.
Not secular on the Muslim side, then, but the soft jihad of the law.
Khan is now being hailed by many Indian Moslems as a "hero" who stood for the rights of minorities.Not minorities in general, though. Just soft-jihading Moslems who probably, when investigated, will turn out to have connections to others involved with the hard jihad of the sword.
"They were not allowing me to enter college because I was wearing the burqa. They started shouting Jai Shri Rama (Hail Lord Rama), so I started yelling Allah Akbar," Muskan told DW over the phone from Mandya."All I want to do is study, and these people are stopping us. But I am not afraid," she added.
'OBJECTIFICATION OF WOMEN'
Supporters of the ban argue that it is the right of college authorities to decide what kind of attire the students are allowed to wear. But many Moslems, and India's secular sections, counter it by saying that it is every individual's basic right to exercise religious beliefs.
"The hijab is a part of cultural and religious identity of the Moslem women. It is like mangal sutra (necklace) for Hindus, the cross for Christians, and turbans for Sikhs," T N Prathapan, a politician from the opposition Congress party, told DW.
Prathapan said the constitutional rights of all citizens must be protected.
Meanwhile,
...back at the hanging, Butch continued with his last words, trying not to repeat himself too often......
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai
...a Pashtun blogger and advocate for girls' education from Mingora, in Swat. She is esteemed as an ambassador of international good will, even though she can't go home lest some fellow in a turban shoots her in the head again...called on Indian authorities to take measures to "stop the marginalization of Moslem women."
"Refusing to let girls go to school in their hijabs is horrifying. The objectification of women persists, for wearing less or more," Yousafzai tweeted.
A bold choice for a young woman who was shot in the head for not being a proper Moslem maiden.
POLITICAL MILEAGESome experts say the BJP is deliberately igniting the issue for political gains.
"What to eat and what to wear is a fundamental right. The BJP is trying to impose its choices on people. This is nothing but majoritarian politics at play," Nawab Malik of the Nationalist Congress Party told DW.
Activists say attacks on Moslems, who number about 200 million of India's 1.4 billion population, have increased since Modi took power in 2014.
Communal tensions are also on the rise in Karnataka, a state ruled by the BJP. According to the Karnataka Communal Harmony Forum, the state's coastal districts witnessed over 120 communal incidents last year, the highest number in the last four years.
A recent report by the joint initiative of the United Christians Forum, the Association for Protection of Civil Rights and United Against Hate revealed that at least 305 incidents of violence against Christians took place nationwide in the first nine months of 2021. This includes at least 32 incidents in Karnataka alone.
Cynthia Stephen, a social policy researcher in Karnataka, said the BJP "could have nipped the issue in the bud" much earlier.
Kavita Krishnan, of the All India Women's Progressive Association, told DW that the headscarf issue could easily be used as a justification for mob attacks on Moslems.
"Hijab is only the latest pretext to target Moslem women. It came after Hindu supremacists held multiple online auctions of Moslem women and made speeches calling for their sexual and reproductive enslavement," Krishnan said.