ISLAMABAD: Pakistani foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said on Wednesday denying Muslim women in India an education and the right to wear a hijab was “absolutely oppressive,” as protests grow in India in response to some schools refusing entry to students wearing the headscarf.
India's southern Karnataka state on Tuesday ordered schools and colleges to shut for three days after protests erupted over the hijab ban. Local media reported last week that several schools in the coastal city of Udupi had denied entry to Muslim girls wearing the hijab citing an education ministry order, prompting protests from parents and students and raising fears among the state’s Muslim students who say they are being deprived of their religious rights.
“Depriving Muslim girls of an education is a grave violation of fundamental human rights,” Qureshi said on Twitter. “To deny anyone this fundamental right & terrorise them for wearing a hijab is absolutely oppressive. World must realise this is part of Indian state plan of ghettoisation of Muslims.”
Tensions have frayed further in recent days in Udupi and elsewhere in majority Hindu Karnataka as students with saffron shawls - typically worn by Hindus - thronged into classrooms to show their support of their schools' hijab ban.
"I appeal to all the students, teachers and management of schools and colleges as well as people of Karnataka to maintain peace and harmony," Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai said on Tuesday.
The government of Karnataka, where 12% of the population is Muslim and which is ruled by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), said in an order on February 5 that all schools should follow dress codes set by management.
B.C. Nagesh, the education minister of Karnataka who tweeted the order, said school dress codes had been set after reviewing court decisions from across the country to ban the hijab at educational institutions.
Opposition parties and critics accuse the BJP government at the federal and state level of discriminating against religious minorities and running the risk of stoking violence. Modi has defended his record and says his economic and social policies benefit all Indians.
