Karnataka government’s hijab ban on ground of ‘public order’ is not just constitutionally wrong but also morally unjustifiable

Women being humiliated in public by a mob, forcing her to remove their head scarf as a pre-condition to getting an education is not just constitutionally objectionable, but should distress any reasonable person with common decency, writes NANDITA RAO.

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IN disbelief, the nation watched visuals, on television, of women students and teachers being disrobed at school and college gates in Karnataka, removing their hijabs and burqas in public view. In a country where, even for frisking by security forces in an airport, a special enclosure is built to ensure the dignity and privacy of women, this seemed too outrageous an indignity for them to endure, simply to access education and employment. One was immediately reminded of the plight of Draupadi in the Mahabharata, where she had been let down by those who were legally and morally charged with her protection. Dragged into the sabha, after her husbands lost her in a game of dice, she calls to the elders sitting in the sabha and urges them to answer, whether this was dharma? Her question is responded with silence. It is the silence of impotence that we hear all around us today.
Much like the vigilantes that were lynching people across the country on suspicions of cow slaughter, the news reported saffron-clad vigilantes, stalking women in Karnataka who were wearing head scarfs to schools and colleges. Such events have become so common place in the election season that we have almost normalised this seasonal vulgarity, in the hope that it will have less effect if we ignore it. However, in an unprecedented and arbitrary action, the Government of Karnataka chose to effectively ban the wearing of hijab, rather than taking legal action against this self-styled saffron moral police on the pretext of maintaining public order.
Also read: Karnataka hijab row: Behind the urge to discipline