Colleges reopen in Karnataka but shut doors on students with hijab

KEY STORY

• COLLEGES ACROSS Karnataka reopened under heavy police cover Wednesday to chaotic scenes outside several institutions with authorities refusing entry to hijab-wearing students prompting several girls to return home without attending classes.

  While college authorities cited the Karnataka High Court’s interim order last week, banning religious symbols until it decides on pleas challenging the hijab ban in some colleges of Udupi, several students said the restrictions were applied indiscriminately.

• Despite the hijab becoming an issue all over the state, it was never a concern in our college. But today, they asked all of us to remove our hijabs and come. Before our college was shut last week, along with others in the state, we used to wear hijabs and attend class. Today, those who refused to remove their hijabs were made to sit in a separate classroom,” said a first-year BBA student from the G Shankar government women’s first grade college at Ajjarkad in Udupi.

• The college’s principal, Bhaskar Shetty, said he was “following the court order”. “There are 196 Muslim students out of 2,326 girl students in the college, and only 40 were against removing hijabs. We will take a decision about making alternative arrangements for those who refused to attend classes without hijabs,” Shetty said.

• Even as the Karnataka High Court continued to hear petitions against the ban, the issue echoed in the state assembly where it was raised during Zero Hour by Leader of Opposition Siddaramaiah.

  The Congress leader sought a clarification from the BJP government on a statement made by the state’s Higher Education Minister Dr C N Ashwathnarayan on Tuesday that the High Court’s restrictions would not apply to degree colleges.

• Responding in the House, Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai said: “The High Court order will be followed in all colleges. The High Court has said that only in colleges where uniforms are prescribed will the ban apply.”

  Bommai stated that as per the High Court’s interim order of February 10, the restrictions apply only in pre-university colleges where uniforms without headscarves have been prescribed.

  When contacted by The Indian Express to ask why students were not allowed inside degree colleges in Udupi, Sadhashivaprabhu, additional deputy commissioner of the district, said: “I don’t want to comment on the issue.”

  Officials said the six students who had moved the Karnataka High Court against the hijab ban remained absent from the Government Pre-University College for Women in Udupi. “The other Muslim students attended the college by adhering to the court’s order,” said Rudre Gowda, the principal.

  The 23 girl students who had insisted on wearing hijabs at the Government PU College in Udupi’s Kundapur stayed away from classes, too.

• Classes did not resume at the other hotspot in the district, MGM College in Manipal, where groups of students — those wearing saffron shawls and others wearing hijabs — had gathered to raise slogans on campus over the row. College authorities said they had declared an extra day’s holiday on Wednesday.

  The state government had shut all colleges from February 9 to cool communal tensions over the hijab row. On Wednesday, there were minor protests outside some colleges where hijab-wearing students were denied entry with policemen deployed near campuses at sensitive locations — especially in Udupi and Mysore where prohibitory orders were enforced within 200m of educational institutions.

CONCLUSION

• At DVS College in Shivamogga, hijab-wearing students said they were not allowed to appear for internal exams. “Today was our test, and we are not allowed to go in. For us, practising our faith is as important as education and hijab is part of our faith,” a student told reporters.

  In Vijayapura, students in burqas were not allowed inside campuses. Similar incidents were reported from Kalaburagi, Yadgir, Chikmagalur, Vijayapura, Gadag, Hubballi, Chitradurga and other parts of the state.

• The faceoff also triggered a war of words between the Bajrang Dal and SDPI, which is the political arm of the radical PFI, with both blaming each other in press conferences held in Udupi for the escalating tensions over the issue.

  State Home Minister Araga Jnanendra warned students that they would face “stern action” if the High Court’s interim order is not followed. “We had adopted a soft approach over these days, considering they are students, but it won”t be so any more,” he said.

• In its interim order, the High Court had said that “pending consideration of all these petitions, we restrain all the students regardless of their religion or faith from wearing saffron shawls (bhagwa) scarfs, hijab, religious flags or the like, within the classroom, until further orders”.

• It said that the order “is confined to such institutions wherein the College Development Committees have prescribed the student dress code/ uniform”.