SC should redress concerns over hijab order: Brinda Karat

MANGALURU: CPI(M) politburo member Brinda Karat on Monday termed the Karnataka High Court verdict banning hijab in schools as “unfortunate”, and said the Supreme Court should redress the issue. Commenting on the ban, she said she felt ashamed when girls, who are breaking barriers to get educated, were asked to remove their headscarves.

She said the CPI(M) feels the entire controversy over hijab was “manufactured by the ruling BJP to divert people’s attention from its failures”. She sought to know what business local MLAs have in College Development Committees (CDC), while parents, teachers and students manage such committees elsewhere. Condemning Udupi MLA Raghupathi Bhat for making provocative statements over the hijab, she sought to know what action the State government and High Court had initiated against him.

Karat also said that the girls and their parents should decide whether they should wear a veil or not, and nobody should force them. “But there are some forces within the Muslim community that pressurise girls to wear the scarf. PFI and SDPI threaten to boycott them if they don’t wear the hijab,” she alleged.  

Addressing a ‘Souhardathaa Samavesha’ (Harmony Convention) organised by the Dakshina Kannada unit of CPI(M) in the wake of a slew of communal incidents in the state, Karat cautioned the people of the country to be wary of the RSS and BJP ideology, stating that it does not affect only minorities. “It affects each and every one of us. It changes the very nature of the Indian republic by putting the country under a communal and authoritarian regime,” she said.

More than external enemies, India faces grave threat to its harmony, unity, diversity and Constitution from the ideology of the RSS and BJP, she added. Commenting on the anti-conversion bill, Brinda said if BR Ambedkar was alive today, he would have been jailed by this law.