NEW DELHI: Major women's rights groups in India have raised concerns over Muslim girls access to education, after schools in Karnataka state barred them from wearing the hijab in classrooms.
The hijab controversy took off in late January after Muslim girls at a government-run secondary school in the southern state's Udupi district began protesting a new rule that prevented them from attending classes if they wore the Muslim head covering.
The local government earlier this month backed the school and banned the wearing of hijab and "clothes which disturbed peace" at educational institutions. The order sparked demonstrations in support of the Muslim women's right to wear the headscarf and counterprotests by Hindu activists, which escalated into violence and led authorities to close all schools for three days.
Protests continued in several Indian cities on Friday, joined by over 20 women's organizations, which in an open letter to Karnataka's chief minister said the hijab ban was a practice of "apartheid."
"It is basically simply telling them that if you want to study, you will have to study in Muslim-only schools, which means you are enforcing apartheid," Kavita Krishnan, secretary general of All India Democratic Women's Association — one of the letter's signatories — told Arab News on Saturday.
She added that the ban was "an attack on Muslim women’s right to education."
Vani Subramanian from Delhi-based women rights group Saheli, which also signed the letter, said the ban was not only an attack on education, but also an attempt to "whittle down on Muslim people’s rights in the country, like what you eat, what you wear."
Kavita Srivastva of People's Union for Civil Liberties — also the letter's signatory — said the issue "will put fear in so many girls and their families who will feel restrained to send their children to school."
"In Karnataka there was no such rule and people were free to wear whatever they wanted to wear, be it sari or headscarves," she added.
For Nabiya Khan, a Muslim activist, poet and writer, the whole controversy was an attempt to “otherize” Muslim women.
“They want to otherize us further and not let Muslims move towards an upward mobility," she said.
Muslims make up about 12% of the population in Karnataka, which is a stronghold of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party.
Since coming to power in 2019, the local government has passed orders tightening the slaughter of beef in the state and introduced regulations making it difficult for interfaith couples to marry and for people to convert to Islam or Christianity.
The Karnataka High Court, which is hearing petitions against the ban, said on Thursday that students in the state should stop wearing religious garments in class until it makes a final ruling on whether a school can bar the wearing of hijab.
