Hijab Row: Choices In Democracy Should Empower
The Karnataka hijab row has led to a fierce debate. While the matter is being heard in Karnataka High Court, attempts are also being made to create fake narratives and manufacture a sense of hurt. In the process, dangerous ideas -- and organisations -- are sought to be mainstreamed.
The hijab row gives rise to two different questions. One, whether Public Institutions, which are governed by impersonal laws, thus ensuring equal treatment for all, can be bulldozed by vested interests and motivated campaigns. Two, if hijab, as a “personal choice” in private space, is also an empowering, emancipating choice.
While attempts are being made to present one-sided, distorted accounts in foreign publications on the hijab row, attempts are also underway to mainstream organisations that instigated students in Karnataka, and are also known to be involved in terror activities in the past.
Multiple reports have documented how the PFI and its students’ arm conspired to create unrest on Karnataka campuses on the issue. PFI has also been known to be involved in terror activities.
Writing in this publication, this writer has earlier discussed why Public Institutions are known by, and why they must always uphold, impersonal laws. The second point, whether hijab is a “personal choice”, has led to a debate, even as the matter is being heard in court.
The Congress leadership appears to be speaking for those arguing for hijab as “a personal choice”.
Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra recently tweeted: “Whether it is a bikini, a ghoonghat, a pair of jeans, or a hijab, it is a woman’s right to decide what she wants to wear…”.
Congress leader Shashi Tharoor, in response to a media column, tweeted: “It is a matter of individual choice. No woman should be forced to wear or not wear something; let her do what’s right for her…”
Some party lawmakers, meanwhile, have also made a strong pitch for hijab.
The present Congress position is a study in contrast when seen in context with Jawaharlal Nehru’s articulations.
In his address at the Bombay Presidency Youth Conference, on Dec 12, 1928, Pandit Nehru said: “Women have been and are still kept down in the name of religion, (and) in many places are made to submit to that barbarous relic of an earlier age – the purdah system. The depressed or the suppressed classes cry out to the world how infamously religion has been exploited to keep them down and prevent them from rising…”
A letter from Pandit Nehru to daughter Indira, on Jan 7, 1931, said: “See the women of India, how proudly they march ahead of all in the struggle. Gentle and yet brave and indomitable, see how they set the pace for others. And the purdah, which hid our brave and beautiful women, and was a curse to them and to their country, where is it now? Is it not rapidly slinking away to take its rightful place in the shelves of museums, where we keep the relics of a bygone age?”
In “An Autobiography,” Nehru notes: “Muslim women have taken to the sari and are emerging rather slowly from the purdah”.
In the last few decades, the Congress system, which once had the likes of Sardar Patel, has mainstreamed fundamentalist and obscurantist ideologies – whether it was on Shah Bano, or on assertions like “Muslims must have the first claim on resources,” or on “Teen Talaq”.
History now appears to be repeating itself.
Meanwhile, posters screaming “pehle hijab, fir kitab” have been seen in some parts of the country.
Young minds, however, need to evaluate if in the name of “freedom of choice”, obscurantist politics should be furthered. At the same time, those in power also need to ensure that organisations and ideologies that have conspired against the nation and the people, and have been involved in terror activities, are not mainstreamed -- like what was seen in Rajasthan.
When India works to realize its potential, collective resolve and united efforts are of utmost importance. Our Institutions strengthen Democracy. Our personal choices impact our collective future. Young boys and girls, Hindus and Muslims, will work hand in hand to script a golden future. They must therefore guard against forces bent on creating wedges – either by shortsighted politics, or by fake narratives.
Whether in the classroom or in the countryside, it is our collective might that shall defeat forces which want to take India back to the dark ages.
(The writer, a JNU alumnus, is a political analyst. Views are personal)
