The decision taken in the state of Karnataka intervenes, while the situation of Muslims in India, the highest religious minority of the country, continues to deteriorate.
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The case took longer than usual. After eleven days of hearing and several weeks of deliberation, the High Court of Karnataka delivered, Tuesday, March 15, his decision on the wearing of Hijab at school, and it is unlikely that it soothes the climate. Seized by Muslim girls from this state of southern India, which challenged the brutal decision of their school to prohibit the port of the scarf and access to the course, the court rejected their request. The magistrates felt that the hijab does not constitute “an essential religious practice in the Islamic faith”. The applicants denounced “the injustice” of the decision and decided to seize the Supreme Court, the highest jurisdiction of the country.
The judgment consolidates the decision of the Government of Karnataka, which had authorized, on 5 February, colleges and high schools to prohibit the Hijab “in the interest of public order, unity and the Integrity of the country “. In support of their prohibition, schools had reported a school settlement imposing a dress code for students, which Muslim families had contested. The judges, on the contrary, ensure that the goal is to “create a safe environment, (…) where the ideals of egalitarianism must be easily perceptible by all students”.
The controversy had started in Udupi, end 2021, and gained other Karnataka districts. The Power Party in India, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and the Rashamsevak Sang (RSS) activists, a very present ultranational organization in the region, had supported the prohibition and attacking tensions, hoping to draw the Electoral Dividends At the time of five Indian states, including the Uttar Pradesh, the most important, were called upon to the polls to renew their regional assembly. Events and counterproducts had opposed, for weeks, Hindus and Muslims.
To defend his positions, the BJP had made the parallel with the French secularism and the ban in France of the veil at school. But Indian secularism is very different from French secularism. In the first case, it is a question of making religions together, in the second to privilege the neutrality of the public space. Since the arrival of Narendra Modi since the nesting of religious and political power has accentuated. Indian Prime Minister regularly engaged Hindu rituals and ceremonies. India is a country less and less secular.
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