- Students and their parents protest hijab ban in schools
Indian Supreme Court panel has failed on Thursday to rule on a ban on hijabs in schools, referring the matter to the Chief Justice after a split decision.
The issue of the hijab ban started when female Muslim students wearing hijab were barred in January this year from entering their classrooms at a government college in Karnataka’s Udupi district.
Subsequently, more educational institutions across the state banned Muslim girls from wearing the headscarves.
The students approached the Karnataka High Court on March 15, which upheld the ban and ruled that “wearing of hijab by Muslim women does not form a part of essential religious practice in the Islamic faith,” says reports.
The students then approached the Supreme Court, challenging the lower court’s verdict.
Karnataka state’s ban on the garment in schools in February unleashed protests by Muslim students and their parents.
In response, Hindu students staged counter-protests, raising another contentious issue at a time that some Muslims have complained of marginalisation under a Hindu nationalist government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
“We have a divergence of opinion,” said Supreme Court Justice Hemant Gupta, one of two judges on the panel.
Gupta said he had wanted an appeal against the ban to be quashed while his colleague on the panel, Sudhanshu Dhulia, said wearing the hijab was a “matter of choice”.
The chief justice would set up a larger bench to further consider the case, they said but did not say by when that could happen. Supreme Court decisions apply nationwide.
According to Reuters, Anas Tanwir, a lawyer for one of the Muslim petitioners who appealed against the Karnataka ban, said the split verdict was a “semi-victory” for them.
“Hopefully, the chief justice will set up the larger bench soon and we will have a definitive verdict,” he said by telephone.
Muslims are the biggest minority group in India, accounting for 13% of the population of 1.4 billion, the majority of whom are Hindu.
Critics of the hijab ban say it is another way of marginalising the Muslim community, adding that Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which rules Karnataka, could benefit from the controversy ahead of a state election due by May next year.
The BJP, which draws its support mainly from Hindus, says the ban has no political motive.
