Representational image (Photo: PTI)
When I was growing up in the late 1990s in Assam, I hardly remember seeing any burqa-clad women or one in a hijab, not in the privileged judiciary colony where we lived or in my ancestor's impoverished village, Koroiguri (after the tree) in Nagaon, sans electricity and pucca roads. What I do remember seeing is rural Muslim women working hard outside the home and at home, making ends meet, bodies covered in tattered cotton saris. Over the years, there have been many changes, the women continue to work hard and many have been able to get hold of an education, so rare those days as most were married off in their teens, like Amma. The burqa and the hijab has found gradual acceptance amongst some Muslim women in Assam, both within the Axomiya Muslim community and the Muslims of Bengal-origin. In the former, it is largely restricted to the hijab while in the later, the burqa is catching up in terms of popularity, often paired with a colourful dupatta. Many will see this as proof of 'radicalisation' of a community when the community itself, perhaps, saw it as a sort of antidote to majoritarian politics gaining ground in the region, putting in deeper roots. Islam is not practiced in the same way all over the world; in Assam, the ethnic identity often takes precedence over the religious one. Religious festivals such as Saraswati Puja or Vishakarma Puja are freely held in educational institutions and offices, respectively, where people of all religions come together and partake of the festivities. Muslims are not a single entity and are made up of many identities coming together. To see Muslims as a group which is regressive and extremist, is simply Islamophobia. Then, the 'hijab' is not a symbol of oppression; it becomes the symbol of an undesirable community.
In my college years at Delhi University, I remember being distinctly uncomfortable with the idea of covering up my face or body with a veil – feminist scholarship deemed it 'oppressive' and 'patriarchal'. Also, the whole idea of a good Muslim woman being someone who is 'modest' (read as someone who doesn't dress in Western attire) irked me. After all, a woman's body and what she puts on it is her choice, solely. The difference is that, today, there is an understanding that it is a choice Muslim women have to make for themselves. Some effort was also put into understanding where ideas of the 'hijab' being oppressive stemmed from – a lot of White feminist texts and a saviour complex. I stopped pestering Amma not to draw up her sari/mekela-sador aasol in public; I let her be. I supported my cousin, a dynamic lawyer, when she, one fine day, started wearing the hijab. It is a highly impractical garment in a humid region like ours, in my opinion, but I keep my unsolicited views to myself.
In the viral video doing the rounds on social media, a lone Muslim woman, Muskan Khan dressed in a burqa, is seen riding to college on a scooty in Mandya, South Karnataka, who is then heckled by a saffron-clad mob while entering college. The reason: because she chose to wear the burqa. Her response: she chose to stand her ground. This is not the same college where six hijab-clad women in Udupi were stopped from entering their classes. Her college has not yet banned the hijab, and she had support as she walked away from the mob. Clearly, here is a young woman who is capable of defending herself – this is exactly why she is seen as problematic, because she refuses to fit into the box of the 'oppressed' Muslim woman. So, what happens when an Indian Muslim woman is vocal about her views? She is put up on auction via an app, as the Sulli Bai and the Bulli Bai apps enumerate. Rape threats and death threats rain on her inbox and she is forced to lie low. For those who may not know, the mastermind behind the Bulli Bai app was a young engineering student from Jorhat in Upper Assam. So, it is not a 'mainland' India issue only. The rot has spread and if we, as a people, don't take a stand now, the Assam we grew up in may forever be lost.
It is sad that young Muslim women students are being made to choose between getting an education and their faith. When such a ban arises in the middle of a semester, and without any prior warning or notification, it can only indicate there are political motivations involved. Our colleges and universities are not battlegrounds, and as the Indian Constitution grants the freedom to all citizens to practice their own faith/religion albeit with some restrictions, the young students have every right to an education. In a country where a turban is acceptable to be part of a uniform, there is no reason why a hijab should not be. In the recent past, courts have upheld the right to wear a hijab under fundamental rights. The Karnataka High Court on February 9 has referred the batch of petitions filed by Muslim students against the hijab ban at colleges in Karnataka to a larger bench. But until a decision is being arrived at, the students are being deprived of an education even as a recent report from the National Statistical Office notes that the literacy rate for Muslim women is lower than that of any other religious group. In 2018, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said, "The Government of India is leaving no stone unturned in empowering the Muslim youth. We want them to have the Quran in one hand and a computer in the other." If this is indeed true, it is time to move beyond the highly politicised hijab ban and open the gates of the college to students of all faiths.
Many have questioned if it would be a failure for Indian secularism if religious symbols become a part of public life. But religious symbols, one way or the other, have always been a part of public life in India: the question then arises, which are the 'acceptable' symbols and which are not? Are only the symbols of a particular community seen as problematic? Unlike France, the Indian brand of secularism is an acceptance of all faiths rather than a strict distance from any. And, if our secularism is threatened by a young woman's headgear, it is time we revisited our notions of secularism and religious freedom.
