India and the hijab

Muskan Khan – a hijab-wearing Muslim college student in the town of Mandya in Karnataka, India – shot to international fame when she stood up against harassment by a group of Hindu boys sporting saffron scarves.

The issue has its roots in December last year, when a group of half a dozen Muslim students weren’t allowed to attend classes in another girls’ college in the town of Udupi in the same state. In response, the concerned girls staged a protest in front of their classes for weeks until it came to media attention when they approached the Karnataka High Court to seek interim relief against the orders of the school authorities. In the meanwhile, however, similar scenes were witnessed in quick succession in colleges across various towns and cities of the state.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had secured the Karnataka government in 2019 after overthrowing a coalition government of Congress and Janata Dal (Secular) by stage-managing defections from the Congress and getting the turncoats re-elected on BJP tickets. It has not issued any statement sympathetic to the cause of the hijab. To the contrary, some of its members of parliament (MP) have been vocal in criticising the support for the hijab coming from other political quarters.

Film star-turned-politician MP from Mandya, Sumalatha Ambareesh, who was elected as an independent candidate – albeit with support from the BJP – criticised the support for the girls’ right to wear the hijab by calling it politics “to poison young, innocent and impressionable minds.” She added that one could “wear a bikini on a beach or a pool [but could not] wear it in school.” In a similar vein, another film star-turned-BJP-MP Hema Malini called for respect for the school’s uniform code by declaring that religious matters need not be taken to educational institutions.

The legal merit of the uniform code for schools and its impact on religious clothing like the hijab or turban will be dissected threadbare in the Karnataka High Court which has already constituted a three-judge bench to hear all the petitions with regard to the issue. The wider question, however, is about the impact of the support of the ruling BJP to Hindu right-wing causes and groups on Indian secularism. It is not only emboldening right-wing Hindu groups but also forcing religious minorities to entrench themselves in their religious identities to further reinforce the divides. The latest example of the sharpening divides is the Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind announcing Rs500,000 reward for Muskan Khan, an action that would have repercussions for religious harmony in India.

While right-wing religious activism is part and parcel of societies across South Asia, the difference in the case of today’s India is that it is getting widespread acceptance and, perhaps, patronage in government circles. The track record of the ruling BJP in supporting Hindutva causes – whether it is L K Advani’s Rath Yatra that eventually led to the demolition of the historic Babri Mosque at the hands of a violent Hindu mob in 1992 or the party’s longstanding association with the extremist right-wing Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) – is well documented. So is the complacency of incumbent Prime Minister Narendra Modi in taking action at the time of anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat while he was serving as the state’s chief minister.

The actions of the BJP in its current term – such as the enactment of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) that discriminates against Muslim migrants from neighbouring countries, the enactment of the so-called Love Jihad laws by at least two state legislatures controlled by the BJP, and the revocation of the special status of Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK) – also demonstrate the government’s bias against religious minorities, especially Muslims.

As I have written in one of my previous contributions to these pages, politics around Hindu symbolism and targeting of religious minorities has been politically beneficial for the BJP and Prime Minister Modi in the past. That is why it is convinced to stay the course of populist majoritarian nationalism hinging on hate-mongering against minority communities.

This could have long-term consequences not only for the Indian polity but also the entire region. The Sanghi-inspired otherisation of Muslims as either outsiders who need to be pushed to Pakistan as remnants of a country made for Muslims of undivided India or converts who need to be reconverted back to Hinduism could be a disastrous path. This could add to the sufferings of the people of IIOJK as well as make the lives of millions of Muslims living all over India miserable for years if not decades. In a worst-case scenario, according to some observers, it could result in out-migration of Muslims from India.

All is not lost in India, though, as far as the plight of the minorities is concerned. There still are strong voices in India that are aware of the long-term implications of the RSS-inspired wave of Hindutva. Unfortunately, however, such voices are drowned out in the cacophony of the right-wing Hindu groups.

For the direction of Indian politics to change in order to assimilate the religious minorities running into hundreds of millions, Prime Minister Modi will have to ask himself some tough questions. How long will it take his divisive politics to run their course or to take Indian society to a breaking point? Has he failed to create other reasons for his party to win elections in the eight years since he has been in power in the centre? Hasn’t all the economic development he is so fond of taking credit for created an alternative space for the BJP to win upcoming elections? Haven’t all his much-publicised social welfare schemes for the poor had an impact on the minds of the electorate regarding the BJP’s governance?

After winning two terms as prime minister and, perhaps, poised to win a third, Modi should consider himself strong enough to change the course of history, heal the wounds of the minority communities in India, and extend a hand of peace, friendship, and harmony beyond India’s borders.

The writer is a research analyst at the Institute of Regional Studies, Islamabad.