Terming the ongoing Karnataka hijab row a “conspiracy”, not “controversy”, Kerala Governor Arif Mohammad Khan lambasted the Congress and other opposition parties for exploiting the issue for vested interests. Arif Mohammad stated emphatically that people promoting hijab politics today do not understand Muslims.
Recalling how indifferent the Congress leadership was about the country’s Muslims when they were in power, Arif Mohammad Khan revealed how a Congress minister had once told him, “It was not the duty of the Congress to uplift Muslims and if they want to lie in the gutter let them be.”
He said that a minister in the Rajiv Gandhi government had made the aforementioned remark while making an effort to persuade him after he resigned from the Cabinet following the Shah Bano episode.
It may be recalled that the Kerala Governor had in 2019 revealed that it was PV Narasimha Rao, a minister in the Rajiv Gandhi government, who had made this remark. He had said this while backing Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s remark in the Lok Sabha on the plight of Muslims during the tenure of Congress-ruled governments.
The Kerala Governor went on to say that those people who have never thought about Muslims’ upliftment and want them to remain in ditches, those who have never urged their own children to wear the hijab/burqa and send them to the best and most costly schools are the ones who are backing the hijab controversy. According to Kerala Governor, their aims are clear: they want the country’s Muslims to remain benighted.
Arif Mohammad Khan, the Governor of Kerala, told ABP News that being secular does not imply accepting wrongdoing. He went on to say that during elections, the hijab would be made a spectacle.
Khan said previous governments used to bow down in front of people who broke rules, and/or discipline, but that the present government was not bowing down, adding that change would take time.
Terming the hijab row a conspiracy, Arif Mohammad Khan, added that when the law prohibiting triple talaq was passed in 2019, the dominance of this particular class (Muslims) over their women ended. He further claimed that since independence until 1986, this faction had driven the government of 400 MPs to its knees. They used to intimidate and give open threats of violence. These fundamentalists had also gone on to claim that those MPs who are not with them would be eliminated. Such was their power in those days. However, now that they have lost their dominance, this class is suffering as fish suffer without water.
Earlier too, the Kerala Governor had said that ‘Right to wear Hijab’ argument is acceptable, but then it will be the Muslim women who will be the losers. He recalled several instances of women refusing to wear the veil in the history of Islam.
He had sharply added that those claiming to follow the legacy of Islam today are actually losers and the entire act of hijab controversy is useless.
The Kerala Governor while exclusively talking to India Today also slammed the Pakistan government for interfering in the matters of India. He said that the Pakistan govt must be treated the way it deserves to be treated.
He appealed to the hijab girl students to avoid being instigated by the outside forces and requested them to focus on education and a better standard of life
