New Delhi: Signalling a hardening of stance on the ongoing controversy over wearing of hijab at educational institutions in Karnataka, state Education Minister BC Nagesh said on Sunday that those who aren’t ready to conform with the uniform dress code can study elsewhere.
With the Opposition pushing back on the government’s bid to enforce the uniform dress code at educational institutions, Nagesh warned students against becoming pawns for political parties.
Speaking to reporters of news agency PTI in state capital Bengaluru, the minister said, “Just as rules are followed in the military, the same is to be done here (in educational institutions) as well. Options are open for those who are not willing to follow it, which they can make use of.”
Denying the claim by the Opposition Congress that the BJP-led dispensation is not in favour of students from the minority community continuing their studies, Nagesh said it is the ruling party in the state and the Congress which brought the Karnataka Education Act. He further accused the Congress, which has ruled the state longer than his party, of creating societal divisions for cheap political capital.
The Congress spoke up in support of the Muslim students who came to school wearing the customary apparel, claiming the government’s move to enforce the uniform dress code infringed on their fundamental rights, the BJP made it clear that it was against the ‘Talibanisation’ of the education system.
On a circular issued by the Basavaraj Bommai government on Saturday banning clothes disturbing peace, harmony and law-and-order in the state’s educational institutes, the minister said the state felt it had to put out a clarification on the issue.
He further informed that while the students are at liberty to come to school wearing the hijab, an apparel associated with Muslim women, they are required to take them off and put them in their bags while on campus.
The minister said students across faiths have been attending schools conforming to the uniform dress code and there is no precedent of differences cropping on religious lines.
Tracing the roots of the ongoing row back to Udupi district where some students were allegedly prompted to wear hijab after being told that the Islamic law, or Sharia, mandates such a dress code, Nagesh claimed that a majority of children refused to comply with the diktat.
Stoking a controversy, some girls started coming to a government school in Udupi district wearing Hijab in December last year, defying the prescribed uniform norm.
“In the Udupi school, of the 92 Muslim children, only six girls came wearing Hijab and succumbed to the poisonous seeds. Other children came wearing their school uniform,” he said.
The controversy has reached the Karnataka High Court, which will on February 8 hear a batch of petitions filed by five girl students of a government-run pre-university College in Udupi, questioning the rule against wearing hijab at the institute.
Adding more fuel to the row, some Hindu students in the state started attending their classes clad in saffron shawls.
The controversy spread to more pre-university colleges as Muslim girls, led by Congress MLA Kaneez Fathima, staged a demonstration in Kalaburagi town on Saturday demanding permission to allow female students to wear hijab.