Communalism

Hijab Vs Saffron Scarf || Midweek Matters 46 || Parakala Prabhakar Feb 16, 2022 https://youtu.be/TTwGpqtGcBM?t=60 

In this Episode Dr Parakala examines the hijab controversy, understand what is being played out in Karnataka, and reflect on the sub text these unfolding events contain.  Gender, Religious, and even economic Discriminatory sub-script of the orders and "elans/fatwas" like  barring Hijab in schools is being ignored even by the judiciary. One example is that Sikh boy are not barred from wearing headgear! 

The Hijab controversy is a project that is in the interest of the extreme elements in both the religions.. The alarming aspect is that extremists are now using children in the teens to further their agenda. 

The Hijab row is part of a long chain of events and controversies raised to instill fear and insecurity among the Muslims.  Attacks on Muslims and other majoritarian assertions have almost become normalised. 

Comment. The Hijab is a symbol of patriarchal oppression,  but agitation against its use in public places, is a sure sign of ensuring that those women who seek to go out, for education, work, and just recreation, face more difficulties to come out of their homes..   Is it the Karnataka States intention to keep these women at home. How will they ensure that these girls get a secular education?    

K Krishnan

1. The ban on hijabs in Udupi classrooms and campuses is a hate crime. The Hindu supremacists lynch/segregate/boycott Muslims on various pretexts - beef, Muslims’ collective prayers, azaan, the skullcap, Urdu language. Hijab is only the latest pretext to impose apartheid on Muslim women.
2. The video from Udupi of a saffron-stole wearing mob of men surrounding a hijab-wearing Muslim woman and heckling her is a warning of how the hijab can easily become the next pretext for mob attacks on Muslims.
3. We firmly believe that the Constitution mandates schools and colleges to nurture diversity, not uniformity. Uniforms in such institutions are meant to minimise differences between students of different and unequal economic classes. They are not intended to impose cultural uniformity on a diverse country. This is why Sikhs are allowed to wear turbans not only in the classroom but even in the police and Army. This is why Hindu students wear bindi/pottu/tilak/Vibhuti with school and college uniforms without comment or controversy.
4. Muslim women wore hijabs to college in Udupi in the past without any objection from the authorities of these colleges. It is not hijabs that provoked the ongoing educational disruptions. It is ABVP which disrupted harmony by staging demonstrating with saffron stoles in “protest” against hijabs. Banning both saffron stoles and hijabs is not a fair or just solution because unlike hijabs worn by some Muslim women, the saffron stoles are not everyday clothes, they are political protest-wear meant to intimidate Muslims and college authorities.
5. Making hijabi women sit in separate classrooms or move from colleges of their choice to Muslim-run colleges is nothing but apartheid. Hindu supremacist groups in coastal Karnataka have, since 2008, been unleashing violence to enforce such apartheid, attacking togetherness between Hindu and Muslim classmates, friends, lovers. It must be remembered that such violence has been accompanied by equally violent attacks on Hindu women who visit pubs, wear “western” clothes, or love/marry Muslim men. Islamophobic hate crimes have been joined at the hip to patriarchal hate crimes against Muslim and Hindu women - by the same Hindu-supremacist perpetrators.
6. We are appalled that the Karnataka Home Minister has ordered an investigation into the phone records of hijab-wearing Muslim women, to “probe their links” with “terrorism groups”. Till yesterday Muslims were being criminalised and accused of “terrorism” and “conspiracy” for protesting a discriminatory citizenship law, or indeed for protesting against any form of discrimination. Now Muslim women wearing hijab is being treated as a conspiracy - in a country where women of many Hindu and Sikh communities cover their heads in much the same way, for much the same reasons; and even India’s first woman PM and President covered their heads with their saris without exciting comment or controversy.
7. Girls and women should be able to access education without being shamed or punished for their clothes. Educational institutions should pay attention to what is inside students’ heads not what’s on them. We stand with every woman who is told that she can’t enter college because she’s wearing jeans or shorts - or because she’s wearing a hijab.
8. We unequivocally stand in solidarity with Muslim women whether or not they wear hijabs, to be treated with respect and to enjoy the full gamut of rights.
9. We unequivocally stand by women who are resisting patriarchal dress codes that demand “modesty” from women and shame them for “immodesty”. We tell the patriarchs within every community - Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian, and others - stop shaming women for clothes or conduct that you deem to be “immodest”. Stop trying to tell women what they must wear in order to be respected - instead respect women no matter what they wear. If you think a woman “exposes herself too much” or does not “dress like a good Hindu/Muslim/Christian/Sikh woman”, the problem lies with your patriarchal gaze and sense of entitlement.
10. Hijabs or pallu or ghoonghat or sindoor no doubt have their moorings in the patriarchal notions of “modesty” or “chastity”. However, women adopt these practices for a variety of reasons and motivations. Whether or not one wears any of these markers, cannot be the test for one’s feminist principles. Feminism lies in respecting that every woman charts her own path in fighting patriarchy. Wearing hijab or pallu or observing certain fasts and other practices is not anti-feminist: but shaming women for not wearing these clothes or By Kavita krishnan

A lesson from the Mahabharata  https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/a-lesson-from-the-mahabharata-india-hijab-7775630/  G. N. Devy February 16, 2022
As the hijab issue roils the nation, it would do to remember how Krishna stood by Draupadi at a time when, as now, dharma was under siege and anarchy loomed.

There is a well-set theory in linguistics: No signifier has the ability to produce meaning in isolation. Its signifying capability is determined by its place among all of other signifiers. Within the range of political signifiers of the day, where and how is the hijab issue placed? In the immediate vicinity of the lonely girl running in terror is the mob of young men, not all of whom are students of the same college, euphorically chanting the name of the “maryada–purush”. Mobs have become the authority, replacing the institutional authority, the judiciary and the law enforcing agencies. Their induction as substitutes for the institutions forming the pillars of democracy is strongly signalled by the prime minister who decided not to respond to the issues flagged in Parliament but to ramble endlessly on about his version of the history of India since Independence. Other political signifiers help understand the statements better. We are told about the perception that Independence was got as alms and that Jawaharlal Nehru was not the first prime minister. We are told that the history of India since Ashoka as written by historians is not history but a conspiracy to malign the Aryavarta.

Comment on WA: SG- I think talking of disrobing, is again fighting over the women's bodies as owned by community. And that is also not questioned. I find it offending reducing it to cause for war, without a critical comment.

SS: The reference to Mahabharat has been used just to effectively draw attention to the possibility of a devastating civil war that underlies the hijab row. ..The reference to Mahabharat has been used just to effectively draw attention to the possibility of a devastating civil war that underlies the hijab row...  it's perhaps a bit unfair to chastise the writer for using and then not dissecting "disrobing" and bring out its various implications.

SG: one needs to be critical on all aspects. Protection of Woman's dignity works against women too. The very fact that the article starts with the disrobing is meant to have the dramatic impact, , which feeds in a very surreptitious manner the deep rooted bias in communities. So at least when women are foregrounding battle, one needs to be sensitive to that too.

https://countercurrents.org/2022/02/hijab-ban-multiple-dimensions/

The raging controversy around Hijab is taking disturbing proportions. In Udupi Karnataka Muslim girls alleged that they were denied entry in to the classroom if they wear Hijab. Then we saw the gates of the institute being shut on the hijab wearing girls. Also we witnessed the shameful-despicable act of the vigilantes wearing saffron turban and shawls obstructing the lone girl Muskan, and aggressively shouting ‘Jai Shri Ram’. She in turn resorted to ‘Allahu Akbar’ and went on to submit her assignment. The Muslim girls approached the High Court, which has put a stop on saffron shawls and Hijab in the schools in the interim order.

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By Dr. Ram Puniyani