“In your concern to defend the rights of Muslims please don’t end up reinforcing the Muslim Right.” wrote Javed Anand in an Indian Express article. Every now and then, an issue comes up in Indian politics where it is very difficult to take a position about. The issue about the supreme court judgement allowing schoolgirls to wear hijabs is one of them. To sum it briefly, in an increasingly polarized coastal Karnataka, some girls petitioned the supreme court for the right to wear a hijab, aided by the regressive Muslim clergy. The supreme court ruled that they have that right because it is a free country, trying to separate it from the topic of religion. However, as much as the supreme court wants to separate it, it remains a question of liberty against religion.
From the standpoint of liberty, should we be fighting for the choice of those schoolgirls to wear an article of clothing they desire or should we be fighting against the socio-religious power structures which make always wearing that garment in public a necessity? Before I talked to my girlfriend, who was born in soviet Russia, where everything was decided by decree, I was leaning towards the latter.
I live and work in France, where there is a special ‘strain’ of secularism which they call laïcité (laicity in English). It is freedom, not only of religion, but also from religion. The French don’t let the church or the mosque dictate public behavior. They banned burqas in 2011. They famously also defanged the church during the French revolution. In principle, I subscribe to that view. If we want to live together in harmony, we need to de-emphasize our differences and emphasize our commonalities. This is especially true for the majority so that minorities don’t feel threatened.
The true north for liberals like me is where the hijab isn’t a pre-condition for going to school at all. Shouldn’t the law, in this case protect the individual girls from these societal restrictions instead of protecting lofty ideals like liberty which end in some girls being forced to wear hijabs? To that end, we would have to outlaw the hijab in places where we are trying to build unity (when you are undergoing public education, when you are an agent of the state etc.). To be fair to all religions, we would also have to ban other religious symbols (pagdis, Christian necklaces, saffron loincloths and any other religious object worn openly). We all know that that will never happen in India. In the real world, we need to consider that more Muslim women want to wear the hijab than don’t.
We can’t be so sure that these damsels are in distress, Asabuddin Owaisi, a prominent Muslim politician makes this point. What gives us the right, one may ask, to try and change the status quo. Well, it was Abraham Lincoln who championed the freedom of the slaves in America.. Isn’t it always an enlightened minority which fights altruistically for the downtrodden masses? This is a tempting thought but has a critical flaw. If we ban hijabs, we will become the well meaning bad guys.
In an ideal world, one would have a secret ballot for Muslim women in India where they vote on whether they think that the practice is regressive and want the courts or the government to intervene on their behalf. However such an information utopia doesn’t exist yet.
So then, let us assume for a moment that we enact a law banning only hijabs in schools and colleges. This is in the realm of the possible given India’s current hindutva touting government. We can agree that other religions will not have their public symbols banned (notably Sikhs). This will most certainly push Muslims in the center towards the right. It would suddenly become much harder to convince Muslims who were on the fence would that we aren’t forcing majoritarian policies down their minority throats and ‘erasing’ their culture.
We need to accept that male chauvinist socio-religious practices are an ingrained part of Indian culture, both Hindu and Muslim, and one can’t simply wish them away. Justice Dhulia opined, that if girls were allowed by their conservative parents to go to school, conditioned on their wearing a hijab, then it was a good thing that the judgement didn’t proscribe hijabs.
Not banning them lets the mullahs, the agents of a regressive society propagate their beliefs and pressurize those girls. However, those girls will then get educated and probably, in 15 years, fight for what is important to them.
If we consider ourselves as the chosen few, the Intelligentsia which will free Indian women from the tyranny of imposed headgear, we would disturb the peace of the land. We should remember that the American civil war was a very bloody affair, as was the French revolution.. Changing society by force has price paid in blood and instability. Our country has painstakingly carved out recently relative harmony between different communities. Losing this would be tragic.
In light of the above, I feel that the only reasonable course of action is to not intervene directly. Only the women themselves can oppose hijabs, like they are doing in Iran. Education is the weapon that they can use to stand up for themselves. We should be ready to stand up for them at that time, after we have been called on. The weapons which will wear down enemies of liberty are time and education, not supremely ordained judgements.
