The world has seen many protests for the eradication of hijab by women in Iran, Egypt, Turkey, all Muslim countries. The question is: why is it the other way round in India?
On 9 October 2012, while on a bus in Pakistan, after taking an exam, Malala Yousafzai and two other girls were shot by a Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan gunman in an assassination attempt in retaliation for her activism; the gunman fled the scene. Yousafzai was hit in the head with a bullet and survived. Malala received Nobel Prize for her activism and her support for women’s education. The reason she was hit with the bullet was because the terrorist and religious fanatics did not want women to study, even though Malala and her friends were in hijab and burqa.
In India, many women, majority from the Muslim community are denied attending school or college by their male family members. One of the reasons is that male members fear that the women by attending the college may mix with males and may fall in love, get married outside the desired community of family members. Some also feel that women may be liberated and empowered and therefore they may ask for equality in their way of life, which is essentially denied in such a society and community.
Therefore, there are examples of such girls and females who dress like anyone else when they go to a party or to the malls but are forced by families to wear hijab if they go to college. This is a paradox. The reason behind the current hijab row in Karnataka is that some Muslim girls are scared because they may have to choose between the college or dress imposed on them by family members.
The world has seen many protests for the eradication of hijab by women such as in Iran, Egypt, Turkey—all Muslim countries. The question is: why is it the other way round in India? We need to understand what prominent Muslim women say about this issue, what happens in the western world and what are the rules around hijab in college and work in Muslim countries.
In my recent conversation with Shazia Ilmi, while she was in Dubai (an empowered Muslim leader, journalist, and leader in India) she mentioned about her experience as a girl in her remote village despite she having come from a very rich and educated family. I watched her yesterday crying on a national channel where she openly said that Muslim girls are harassed at home for not wearing hijab and they are looked down on and tortured by male members of the family.
Taslima Nasrin, another Muslim human rights activist and author from Bangladesh, says, “Some people think hijab is a symbol of secularism. No, it is not. It is a symbol of Islamism and misogyny. Secularism means without religion. Embracing all religions equally is not secularism, rather it is super-duper-religionism. You want a secular space? Avoid all kinds of religious symbols.”
Dr Zakir Naik, an Indian Islamic preacher, who is on the run and wanted by Indian authorities has a different opinion. His argument is in favour of the burqa. He says: “Suppose there are three women out on a stroll—two are wearing burqa one is not. As they pass by a gang of roadside Romeos who will they pass lewd remarks at? Obviously the one without a burqa because they can see her face and not the other two; burqas protect them.”
The campaign against hijab and burqa is at least a century old. The biggest proponent of discarding such dress restrictions guided by religious consideration was Kemal Pasha Ataturk of Turkey. The Kemal Pasha government issued a cabinet decree introducing clothing reforms meant to banish overt symbols of religious affiliation for civil servants. The revival of Islamist trend that brought Recep Tayyip Erdogan to power first as Turkish prime minister in 2003 and president in 2014 saw a law being brought in 2013 to abolish Kemal Pasha’s dress regulation.
In 2000, in Egypt, a controversy around the niqab erupted in the private American University in Cairo (AUC) when a student wished to be fully face-veiled—at the time unprecedented at the institution. In 2001, AUC formally declared a ban on the niqab. It supported its stance by quoting a 1994 regulation laid down by the Ministry of Education deeming the niqab inappropriate in academic institutions. AUC was a private institution and it prided itself on a liberal arts education, which the niqab does not represent. Another reason provided by the Minister was on the basis of security reasons since the identity of the student is hidden. On 27 January 2020, Egypt’s High Administrative Court approved on Cairo University’s decision to ban its professors from wearing the niqab or face veil which was introduced in 2015. In 1953, Egyptian leader President Gamal Abdel Nasser was told by the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood that they wanted to enforce the wearing of the hijab, to which Nasser responded: “Sir, I know you have a daughter in college—and she doesn’t wear a headscarf or anything! Why don’t you make her wear the headscarf? So, you can’t make one girl, your own daughter, wear it, and yet you want me to go and make ten million women wear it?”
A few non-Muslim countries that place a ban on hijab or burqa or niqab are France, China, Denmark, Belgium, Germany, Sri Lanka, Netherlands, Cameroon, Austria, Bulgaria, and Switzerland.
It is important to know what the rules and practices in Islamic countries are: Kosovo (since 2009), Azerbaijan (since 2010), Tunisia (since 1981, partially lifted in 2011) and Turkey (gradually lifted), Tajikistan, Morocco are the Muslim-majority countries that have banned the burqa in public schools and universities or government buildings, while Syria and Egypt banned face veils in universities from July 2010.
In my opinion, India is heading towards a Uniform Civil Code and the Muslim community needs a strong leader like Kemal Pasha for reforms in such areas. India as a society has discarded rituals and customs that were against the freedom of women in Hindu society, thought it took ages. Reformists such as Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Ramakrishna Paramhansa, Swami Vivekananda, Veer Savarkar, Jyotiba and Savitribai Phule and many have done great work in the last century. India needs Islamic reformers and their acceptance in Muslim society at large. Muslim leaders and clerics need to come together for reforms.
Ravi Chand is a Dubai-based educationalist, an alumnus of JNU and Central Queensland University, Australia; Founder, AmbedkarGlobal.com