BENGALURU: Speaking on the ongoing hijab row, Karnataka High Court senior advocate Harish Narasappa asked why the imparting of education has been affected by a piece of cloth. The advocate spoke alongside Supreme Court advocate Shahrukh Alam, at an online discussion held by the All India Lawyers’ Association for Justice (AILAJ) on ‘Women’s Autonomy & Right to Education In The Eyes of Law’ on Sunday.
Both lawyers questioned why the onus has been put on whether women should be allowed to wear hijabs, rather than why the government has decided to put restrictions on religious clothing.
“In the event of changing the grading system by the College Development Committee a month before exams, when the inevitable writ petitions come in, the court will ask the CDC why they have done so, whether they have the power to do so, and if the decision was taken arbitrarily or with the deliberation of stakeholders,” said Alam. “The rights of the students to oppose it does not come into question then. However, this has not been the case here, where it has been inverted,” she continued.
“The issue should not be framed only around the wearing of a piece of clothing or a woman’s choice to wear it, or politically, that the government is trying to dictate what a woman can or can’t wear, rather, it should be that the government is trying to prevent the right to education based on this,” said Narasappa.
Further, Alam said that though uniforms should be in place to instill values and discipline in children, there has been no discussion on how these uniform rules have been formed and the political aspect of their formation.