Left-propaganda website The Quint recently published a report wherein burqa proponents quoted Dr BR Ambedkar to denounce the Karnataka HC order on the hijab row.
In a report published on March 16, The Quint cited Muslim students lamenting against the court verdict that upheld hijab ban in class, stating that it was not essential to Islam. However, this verdict has sit well with the supporters of burqa, including fundamentalists, who have been decrying the sentence as unconstitutional and in violation of the fundamental rights of Muslims.
In this effort, some Muslim students interviewed by The Quint cited Dr BR Ambedkar, the chief architect of the Indian Constitution, to allege that he would be weeping at the verdict given out by the Karnataka High Court.
“Dr BR Ambedkar once said that the constitution is the best, but it will depend on the persons who run it. We were expecting so much from our constitution and country. If today Dr BR Ambedkar were alive, he will literally cry,” a Muslim student and a supporter of veil in educational institutes was quoted as saying by The Quint.
While the advocates of burqa are referring to Dr BR Ambedkar as a part of psychological attempt, besides being dishonest too, to establish validity of their demands, it is worth mentioning what India’s first law minister thought about the Islamic practice of purdah.
“Burqa women walking in the streets one of the most hideous sites witnessed in India”: Dr BR Ambedkar
Contrary to what the Left and rabid supporters of veil would have us believe, Dr BR Ambedkar was a staunch opponent of burqa. He extensively wrote against the practice of purdah that afflicts the Muslim society, sharply noting that watching Muslim women wearing burqas is one of the hideous sights one can witness in India.
“As a consequence of the purdah system a segregation of the Muslim women is brought about…These burka women walking in the streets is one of the most hideous sights one can witness in India,” Ambedkar wrote in his seminal treatise ‘Pakistan or Partition of India’.
Asserting that the Muslim community bears more social evils than the Hindu society, Ambedkar said, “There can thus be no manner of doubt that the Muslim Society in India is afflicted by the same social evils as afflict the Hindu Society. Indeed, the Muslims have all the social evils of the Hindus and something more. That something more is the compulsory system of purdah for Muslim women.
Ambedkar was also critical of how the purdah system had a deleterious impact on Muslim women, contributing greatly towards many diseases ailing them.
“Such seclusion(purdah system) cannot but have its deteriorating effects upon the physical constitution of Muslim women. They are usually victims to anaemia, tuberculosis and pyorrhoea. Their bodies are deformed, with their backs bent, bones protruded, hands and feet crooked. Ribs, joints and nearly all their bones ache. Heart palpitation is very often present in them. The result of this pelvic deformity is untimely death at the time of delivery,” Ambedkar wrote.
‘The evil system of purdah causes moral degeneration to set in among Muslim women’: Ambedkar
Mentally and morally too, Ambedkar postulated, Muslim women suffered due to the purdah system. He warned that sequestration of Muslim women, brought upon by purdah, inevitably caused moral degeneration to set in, which he said not only deprived them of mental peace but also restricted their overall outlook.
“Purdah deprives Muslim women of mental and moral nourishment. Being deprived of healthy social life, the process of moral degeneration must and does set in. Being completely secluded from the outer world, they engage their minds in petty family quarrels with the result that they become narrow and restricted in their outlook,” Ambedkar had written in his book.
Perhaps, the students who are citing Ambedkar to score political brownie points and justify their demand to wear burqas in classrooms, are ignorant of the withering contempt that Ambedkar harboured for the practice of veil. Far from breaking in tears, had Ambedkar been alive, he would have been smugly smiling and demanding an even stricter ban on the veil.
