Hijab: The fight in Iran and Karnataka is not the same

The hijab debate must not become a sordid excuse for Muslim bashing, especially in the context of identity assertion in the age of majoritarianism. And, the priority must be the education of girls

One of the many prickly questions before the new Chief Justice of India, justice Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud, who is known for his social liberalism, is how to steer the debate around hijabs inside the classroom.

Female Muslim students wearing burqa and hijab talk to a police officer during their protest, outside the Shivamogga District collector's office, in Shivamogga, February 17, 2022 (PTI)

Justice Chandrachud, who was perhaps the first to emphasise the rights of the individual as distinct from the collective with his path breaking verdict in the 2017 Right to Privacy case, will possibly have to find a way to reconcile the views of his colleagues who could not agree on whether young women in Karnataka should be permitted to bring their hijabs into educational institutions. A new bench is to be set up and as no public order was issued by the previous CJI, justice UU Lalit, justice Chandrachud will likely decide on its composition.

Public opinion is also sharply contested.

One section of feminist thought has argued that though it may not seem that way, the women in Iran burning their hijabs to lead a revolution and the protesters in Karnakata fighting for the right to wear the hijab to school are on the same side. That side, it is argued, is called choice.

This is untrue.

It is also overly simplistic and somewhat disingenuous.

I do not think there is any justification to bar girls from accessing education and I support whatever it takes to keep them enrolled, engaged and interested; but the idea of choice in how we are shaped and formed by our patriarchal cultural conditioning is a complex one. This is true for women across communities and classes.

Do we choose to have body image issues? Do we choose to be racked with guilt? Do we choose to see ourselves constantly through a male gaze? Do we choose to prioritise feeding our children and our husbands first and starving ourselves if we have to, which is what so many women battling abject poverty do. Do we choose to drop out of the workforce, holding back our dreams, always for the sake of someone or something else — our partners, peace at home, our idea of what our role in society is?

For most of us, shrugging off conformism and orthodoxy — some of it conscious, some of it subliminal — is a lifelong battle. We are constantly negotiating and wrestling with ourselves and our changing ideas of who we wish to be.

So, no, the protesting young women of Iran (and Afghanistan) and the protesting young women of Karnataka are not fighting the same battle. In one case, the fight is to challenge gendered social conformism; in another, the battle is to uphold it.

I asked Masih Alinejad, the Iranian activist who lives under Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) protection in exile in New York, how she responded to the argument about hijab and choice. “I used to think the same,” she said. “Then I came to America, where there was no morality police. I took my hijab off, but I continued to wear a black hat at first to cover my big hair. That’s because from the age of 7, I had been told that if I don’t do so, I would go to hell. I don’t judge others, but this is my experience.”

Unfortunately, the politicisation of this debate has made us lose all nuance. We fail to see that many things can simultaneously be true.

It is, thus, entirely possible to see the hijab as patriarchal in demanding a modesty of women that is not expected of men. Such traditions are not unique to the Muslim community. Many conservative traditions across faiths place an extra burden of probity on the female of the species.

We can be respectful of the women who wear one, without either punishing them — as the Karnataka government’s ban inside the classroom seeks to do — or romanticising and endorsing the custom as a worthy illustration of free choice as several liberals do.

Many progressive Muslims themselves have pointed to this dichotomy, Zakia Soman, who led the fight against instant triple talaq, historian Irfan Habib and activist Javed Anand among them. So instead of framing the debate around the essential religious practice doctrine, which asks whether the hijab is essential to the practice of Islam, we should be emphasising the right to education of all girls, with or without the hijab.

It’s worth remembering that justice Chandrachud was among the judges who ruled that menstruating women should not be barred from the Sabarimala shrine in Kerala. Explaining his decision in the context of the constitutional right to religious freedom, he argued that “…the freedom to believe, to be a person of faith and to be a human being in prayer has to be fulfilled in the context of a society which does not discriminate between its citizens…”.

The hijab debate must not become a sordid excuse for Muslim bashing, especially in the context of identity assertion in the age of majoritarianism. Equally, the interrogation of practices that treat men and women differently cannot invite the charge of bigotry.

And, the priority must be the education of girls.

Barkha Dutt is an award-winning journalist and author The views expressed are personal