Hijab row: Why it pays to keep the youth fixated on religious identities

Whose purpose does it serve when young men and women are busy tripping on the opiate of religion and religious symbols?

The viral video of a burqa-clad girl at a college in Mandya, Karnataka, holding her own amidst a swarm of saffron-wearing youths shouting ‘Jai Shri Ram’ and closing in upon her, signifies different things to different people. To some, it is a picture of a lone girl’s courage in the face of a bunch of rowdies heckling her for her choice of attire. To others, it is an ugly exhibition of majoritarian bullying of a Muslim girl and the attempt to stifle her right to religious expression as guaranteed by the Constitution. To many, it is both.

There is, however, another dimension to the video clip: In response to the youths’ chants of ‘Jai Shri Ram’ — the now ubiquitous battle cry of militant Hindutva — the girl retaliates by raising her arm and shouting Allahu Akbar (God is great) again and again. It’s an unequal face-off, but it is a face-off — angry, belligerent, combative. This is what religious polarisation looks like; this is the bitter harvest of a sustained campaign to promote divisiveness and communal strife. In secular India, in the precincts of an institution of secular learning, the communal fault lines run so deep now that young people feel compelled to holler their religion’s war cry — either to bully and smother, or to fight back and cling to their identity.

The question is, who profits from such polarisation? Who gains when the youth of our country expend their energies on competitive communalism? Whose purpose does it serve when, instead of getting busy with their education and building their future, young men and women are busy tripping on the opiate of religion and religious symbols?

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Karnataka has been roiled by the so-called hijab row since last month, when six female students were denied entry into their college in Udupi for wearing the hijab, or the headscarf. The college said that the garment, worn by many Muslim women and girls, went against its dress code. When the girls stood their ground, several other colleges in the state came out with the same diktat. The right-wing BJP government of Karnataka backed the colleges’ stand, and since then, there have been widespread protests in the state for and against Muslim girls’ right to wear the hijab in educational institutions. Anti-hijab demonstrators bedecked in saffron scarves, the mark of their own Hindu religious identity, have come out in thousands, and their saffronised machismo is now focused on just one goal — prevent Muslim girls from accessing education if they cover their heads in deference to their religion.

The state government’s argument before the Karnataka High Court, which is hearing petitions to uphold the Udupi girls’ right to wear the hijab in the classroom, is that it cannot be allowed in an educational institution since it is not an essential part of Islam.

This is absurd. First, a woman’s choice of attire in an institution of higher education is her own business. (Schools have uniforms, colleges rarely do, because adult citizens are supposed to have freedom of choice in such matters.) Whether she wants to cover her head or bare her legs — it’s her choice. Second, it is not for the state to determine if the hijab is or is not an integral part of Muslim women’s practise of their religion. That is the job of religious scholars. Third, in a country where political leaders representing a secular state make a habit of flaunting religion and religious symbols — the prime minister’s participation in extravagant Hindu rituals and his many eye-popping, saffron-hued ensembles come to mind — it is stunningly discriminatory to argue that Muslim girls cannot wear a headscarf to college because the garment has a religious association. (There has never been an outcry over Sikhs wearing a turban or a married Hindu woman sporting a mangal sutra in a college classroom.)

Yes, the hijab is a regressive practice, but if a woman chooses to adopt it, you can scarcely deny her right to do so. Besides, the six Udupi girls’ demand for exercising that right in the classroom must be seen in the context of a body politic where the minority community and its religious and cultural identity have been under severe and sustained attack. From the lynching of Muslims on suspicion of possessing beef to the ferocious tirade against the fictive ‘love jihad’, from the cancelling of multiple namaz sites in Gurgaon to the nefarious Sulli Deal-Bulli Bai apps that sought to humiliate Muslim women online, there has been an incessant attempt to ‘other’ the community, marginalise it, demonise it. The foolish toxicity over actor Shah Rukh Khan’s dua before the mortal remains of Lata Mangeshkar, and the ridiculous allegation that he had spat on her, could be the stuff of black comedy. In truth, it is one more example of the stream of bile that is kept flowing in the direction of Muslims.

The othering of Muslims is, of course, the cornerstone of the ruling party’s Hindu nationalist agenda. But it brings electoral rewards too — the greater the divisiveness, the more intense the hostility between Hindus and Muslims, the more likely is the majority community to vote for a party that signals its intent to fight against its “common enemy”.

In the case of the youth, the gains are even more substantive and long-term. Keeping them in a ferment over religious identities — their own and their perceived antagonists — is a neat strategy to get India’s much-touted ‘demographic dividend’ to deliver electoral dividends for the ruling party.

Besides, it takes their minds off such matters as jobs or the lack of it. According to the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), India’s unemployment rate stood at a high of 6.57 per cent in January 2022, while unemployment in urban India was even higher at 8.16 per cent. The chances of the educated youth finding white-collar jobs in the country’s tiny formal sector — the informal economy employs 90 per cent of the country’s workforce — have been getting bleaker in recent years. In such a scenario, it pays to keep them preoccupied with non-issues like which religious symbols may or may not be worn to college.

But the fruits of Hindu-Muslim identity politics may eventually run out. Last month protesters in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh set fire to trains because they did not get jobs in the Indian Railways. It’s a signal that economic disaffection will eventually outweigh the opiate of religion. Until then, the discourse in this country will continue to be dominated by mandir and masjid, hijab and bhagwa, and the strutting of majoritarian might before all other communities.

(Shuma Raha is a journalist and author)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.