On Monday, the Karnataka hijab controversy that erupted earlier this month took an unprecedented turn after a section of ‘liberals’ and radical Muslims countered the issue by showing disrespect towards the High Court’s decision and supported the hijab wearing Muslim women. Several school administrations in Karnataka yesterday didn’t allow students and teachers wearing hijab to enter the school, college premises in accordance with the HC regulation. They were asked to remove the hijab at the school, college gates before entering the campus.
#Mandya dist administration has instructed even the teachers to be not allowed inside campus with #hijab. They should remove the hijab at the gate itself before entering school or college. #KarnatakaHijabRow #HijabControversy #Karnataka pic.twitter.com/bt33RTTmgp
— Imran Khan (@KeypadGuerilla) February 14, 2022
Bollywood entertainer Swara Bhasker compared the hijab issue to Draupadi’s cheer haran episode in Mahabharta. “In Mahabharata, Draupadi’s clothes were forcibly taken off and the responsible, powerful, law-makers sitting in the assembly kept watching. just remembered today”, she tweeted hitting at the government and the court amid the hijab controversy.
Bhasker has often spoken the language of Islamic terrorist and made the ‘gau mutra’ jibe to mock Hindus.
The High Court last week had declared that no body would dress up in religious attire in the educational institutes until the matter was being heard. The women were seen wearing hijab even after the HC’s regulation and kept on protesting for justice.
Swara’s unasked opinion was backed by many radical Muslims who claimed that Indians were just being spectators and were enjoying the entire hijab controversy. She also visioned Mahabharata’s Draupadi vastraharan episode and attacked the Hindu culture. “There was a time when a room full of learned powerful men could not stop disrobing of Draupadi and there’s a time now when many look with a smirk when Muslim women are asked to take off abaya/hijab. Indians aap mook darshak bane rahein shayad yeh hi hai aapki sanskritik dharohar”, she tweeted.
Another ‘liberal’ head, Supriya Sharma who is an Executive Editor of leftist portal Scroll, said that it was humiliating to watch Muslim women take their hijab off on the school, college gates. “Can’t bring myself to watch the videos of students and teachers removing their hijabs in the full glare of cameras amassed at college gates in Karnataka”, she said as the Mandya district administration ordered even the teachers to remove hijab before entering the campus.
Radio Mirchi RJ Sayema Rehman hinted that Muslim women were being attacked by not allowing them to wear hijab. Responding a tweet that showed hijab girl in school wearing mask that read ‘Apna Time Ayega’ (Our time will come), Sayema affirmed that definitely ‘our’ time will come. “Our time will come when the suffocation will end. And then we’ll be able to breath properly. Hang in there”, she said.
It is important to note that, earlier AIMIM leader Waris Pathan had compared Muslim women to mobile phones and said that ‘just like mobile phones are covered with screen guards, Muslim women should wear burqa to save themselves from scratches’. Also, AIMIM President Barrister Asaduddin Owaisi had supported the hijab and said that India will one day have a hijabi Prime Minister.
AIMIM compared Women with Mobile
— Shashank Shekhar Jha (@shashank_ssj) February 14, 2022
& #Hijab with Mobile Cover.
1. Going by this logic, mobile cover is optional and not mandated by Company.
Therefore, Hijab is optional and not mandated by Islàm.
2. Shameful.
pic.twitter.com/ybOwnRKQ64
Rashtriya Lok Dal leader Shahid Siddiqui got into a war of words with journalist Tavleen Singh when latter questioned the ‘free will’ of little girls who were seen wearing hijab.
Apologists like @tavleen_singh and others make the whole scenario more sickening. Now we understand how Nazis were able to make German middle class support and justify Genocide. https://t.co/w27zj5u0XC
— shahid siddiqui (@shahid_siddiqui) February 15, 2022
Quoting a tweet by The Wire’s Arfa Khanum Sherwani who claimed Muslims’ lives in India are without dignity, Siddiqui claimed how the likes of Singh were making the situation more sickening. He also claimed that this is how (questioning hijab as choice vs it being symbol of oppression), middle class in Germany had justified The Holocaust.
shame on you for supporting this forced stripping of girls & women students & teachers on streets. You know it that it’s not about Hijab,it’s about humiliating a community by a political group to get votes.We thought you are a democrat but you proved yourself to be a fascist. https://t.co/Ay6P9RTssx
— shahid siddiqui (@shahid_siddiqui) February 15, 2022
Singh hit back on Siddiqui and questioned ‘progressive’ Muslims like himself supporting wearing of hijab by little girls. That too when the protests are supported and backed by Islamist groups like Popular Front of India and its students wing Campus Front of India. Suddenly Siddiqui claimed that enforcing High Court order was not about hijab but about ‘humiliating’ a community.
In December 2021, a bunch of students in Udupi district college insisted they be allowed to wear hijab in classroom which was against the school’s uniform policy. When the teachers did not allow, they moved court. Two months prior to the beginning of the protests, the protesting students had met the CFI leaders who extended support in the hijab controversy. Muskan Khan, the burqa clad person who gained popularity by shouting Allahu Akbar while trying to go to college, is daughter of a PFI leader.
Congress leader and advocate Devadatt Kamat who has been representing the burqa clad petitioners demanding right to wear hijab in school, has been quoting and citing verses from Quran and Hadiths and also Sharia to justify the piece of cloth. Many women in Islamic countries like Afghanistan have been killed for refusing to wear the hijab/burqa. In fact, the Taliban in Afghanistan have extended their support to the Karnataka burqa girls for putting up the fight in secular India.
