- Thursday, February 27, 2025
By: Shubham Ghosh
THE row over hijab (headscarves worn by Muslim women) in the southern Indian state of Karnataka has caused an uproar in Pakistan where women protested on Thursday (10) denouncing the ban on the clothing in several schools and colleges.
About a hundred women came out to the streets in the southern port city of Karachi to join a protest organised by Jamaat-e-Islami, a Pakistani Islamist party. In the eastern city of Lahore, too, they demonstrated and burned an effigy of Indian prime minister Narendra Modi and demanded withdrawal of the ban. Protests were also held in Pakistan’s capital Islamabad.
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Earlier in the same day, the high court of Karnataka asked students not to wear any religious clothing till a judicial verdict was given on petitions seeking to overturn the ban on hijabs.
The petitions were filed by the students from the minority community against the ban that some schools recently implemented.
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The controversy erupted over the last many weeks when a government-run school in the Udupi district of Karnataka stopped students wearing hijabs from entering classrooms, triggering protests. More schools came up with similar bans and the snowballing ruckus forced the state’s top court to intervene. The administration appealed for peace and even schools and colleges in the state were shut for three days to defuse the tension.
Unlike in many countries, hijabs are not banned or restricted in public places in India where Muslims make up 14 per cent of the country’s population of nearly 1.4 billion.
Recently, a number of top ministers in the Pakistani government slammed the hijab controversy in India and accused the neighbouring country of human rights violation. Asaduddin Owaisi, a prominent Muslim parliamentarian of India, hit back at Pakistan over the ministers’ remarks saying that country could not protect Malala (Yousafzai) when she was attacked by the extremists and asked it to mind its own business.
Noted French footballer Paul Pogba also raised a voice over the hijab controversy. The player, who represents Manchester United, shared an Instagram story – “Hindutva mobs continue to harass Muslim girls wearing Hijab to college in India”.
Pogba, whose mother is a Muslim and who started practising Islam in 2019, shared a 58-second reel which shows a massive crowd of boys and men wearing saffron scarved and surrounding a small group of young girls wearing hijab.
A few other men seemed to be holding hands to form a protective barrier around the girls in the video while only two police personnel could be seen.
It is unclear when and where each of the clips was shot.
