Muslim girls and the hijab
Some Muslim girls in Karnataka insist on wearing the hijab to college. The college authorities say that will not be allowed. The Kannadigas are following the path trod by the French in Europe, but for different reasons, the former because of Hindutva’s political agenda, the latter because of its long-established principle of separating the Church from State.
Why should a woman be asked to hide her beauty from the eyes of males, except those of her immediate family? Unless, of course, she is treated as a material possession of the male.
The girls who want to wear the hijab say it is their constitutional right and religious duty to do so! Is that duty enshrined in the Koran? I doubt it! The Koran was revealed in the time of the Prophet, when the desert sand wafted by the winds forced both men and women to protect their eyes and mouths by use of suitable clothing.
If Islam enjoined the wearing of the hijab as a religious duty, it stands to reason that all practicing Muslim women the world over would wear the enveloping gown as a matter of course. But that is not so. Not only in India, but also in the very heart of Islam, in the Arabian Peninsula, I have seen numerous women with faces uncovered. In my four years as our country’s ambassador in Romania, I met the wives of my counterparts from Islamic countries. The ladies from Iraq, Syria, Egypt and Lebanon wore western dresses! Those from Pakistan wore the traditional salwar-kameez, and those from Bangladesh, the sari without any thought of covering their faces or hair.
I presume from this that wearing a hijab is not a religious requirement, like the observance of the Ramzan fast is. Then why all this fuss over a rule that can avoid conflict and politics on the campus? And, more importantly, should a beleaguered community, now in the crosshairs of political Hindutva, pick on a losing cause to take on their tormentors?
The hijab has been a garment worn by some (not all or even most) middle class and lower middle class women in Mumbai in the days of my youth. They were from families following the diktats of the mullahs. Their numbers have increased the world over because political statements have to be made. Educated girls, young doctors in leading hospitals can be seen strutting around with stethoscopes around their necks and with their heads covered with fashionable head-scarves that hide every wisp of hair.
This I had not seen in my student days! But today, political Islam has succeeded in making its statement in a manner that does not invite retribution, but is emphatic all the same. But escalating the movement a notch further by defying university or college regulations will bring the entire gamut of pros and cons of such statements to public scrutiny. And here, I am afraid, the support a beleaguered minority requires and deserves from enlightened members of the majority community will diminish.
In the eyes of liberal and sympathetic Hindus — and non-Muslims — the hijab is a monstrosity that smacks of female subjugation. Why should a woman be asked to hide her beauty from the eyes of males, except those of her immediate family? Unless, of course, she is treated as a material possession of the male. Such a concept is out of sync with current mores. Gender equality is the pinnacle which modern societies attempt to reach. The hijab spells exactly the opposite.
In my opinion, if the girls in Karnataka have been primed to test the BJP government in the state with the donning of the hijab as the first test, they have made a tactical mistake, nay, a blunder. The hijab is the last garment to attract the sympathy of well-meaning non-Muslims willing to join the fight against the majoritarian forces of obscurantism.
One particular decision of the Muslim clergy has had a lasting, and negative, impression on my sensibilities. A Muslim soldier in the Indian Army captured by the Pakistanis in war or in a border skirmish was suddenly released by the enemy after many years. It was thought that he had died in prison! After a few years of his capture, his wife was married off to a cousin. She had a child from that marriage and was happy by all accounts. On the soldier’s return, the local Muslim clergy decided that the woman should be returned to her original husband. The woman was not asked for her preference. Further, the soldier was not happy to rear the child from the subsequent marriage and forced the woman to part from her own progeny. The woman did not survive this cruel arrangement for long. I learnt that she died soon after.
Was this a religious fiat? In Islam has the woman no voice of her own? Does Muslim personal law allow mullahs to overrule a woman’s wish based on her happiness? If the answer is yes, I am sorry to say that my sensibilities do not stretch so far as to subjugate women in this cruel manner. The burka and the hijab are associated to the fate of that poor hapless woman!
I have taken up cudgels on behalf of the beleaguered Muslim minority whenever I felt that grave injustice was being heaped on them. Lynching of suspected cattle traders and suspected beef eaters is one such grave injustice. The hounding of lovelorn couples under the pretext of fighting ‘love jihad’ is another. Hindu right-wing vigilantes operating under the pretext of helping the police to enforce laws are a negation of the very principle of the rule of law, but they operate with impunity in BJP-ruled states. I will continue to rant and rave against their illegal and morally unjust acts. It may help the BJP at the hustings but it is against the spirit of the country’s Constitution.
But the ideal of gender justice, which seems to be alien to Islamic jurisprudence, as propounded by the mullahs, is sacrosanct to people of my persuasion. I believe that a community which keeps its women subjugated cannot advance.
I am not a votary of the politics and the utterances of Owaisi, the firebrand Muslim MP from Hyderabad. But I was one with him when he turned down the government’s snide offer of Z-plus security and asked that he be treated as an ‘A’ class citizen instead. Two Hindu extremists had shot at his car. They were arrested and sent to judicial custody. If a BJP MP had been similarly attacked by Muslim hot-heads, the latter would have the UAPA and sedition laws applied against them, and they would have been subjected to custodial interrogation. Why then the difference in approach while enforcing the law? Does the Constitution divide citizens into two different classes?
