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Muslim women students experienced the hijab ban as a denial of their autonomy and agency. As the PUCL team listened to the Muslim girls’ stories close up and large, what became clear was that for them, the hijab is a visible carrier of their self-identity and a way of remaking their own world by freely negotiating with their culture’s normative values and practices. However, they have also had to struggle with their teachers’ negative assumption that they are unaware of being oppressed by their own faith and by a community that does not value education for women. Journalists and political leaders repeatedly asked, “Are they coming to college for studying or for their religion? Let them go to their madrasas if they want to prioritise the hijab.” In insisting simultaneously on their right to education as well as the right to wear the hijab, they are confronting the dominant discourse on the hijab that has obstructed their educational possibilities that have in recent years opened up in Karnataka. In doing so, they are invoking an alternative discourse of gender justice. In this respect, their struggle is at one with the rallying cry ‘Jin, Jiyan, Azadi’ (Women, Life, Freedom) of Iranian women who are protesting the custodial killing of Mahsa Amini, a young woman, by the notorious Iranian ‘morality police’ for wearing her hijab ‘too loosely.’ The slogan ‘Jin, Jiyan, Azadi’ originates in the Kurdish resistance movement in Turkey and reflects similar struggles of women for complete autonomy and liberation. As Apoorvanand and Alishan Jafri argued, ‘Though the contexts of the protests in Iran and India are different, women in both countries are making the same statement. They are telling the state that they want to live their lives as free, thinking individuals – not as dull identical clones. In both cases, it is a battle between individuals and the state for ownership of the self.’

Countering the dominant symbol of hijab as oppression are contemporary practices that celebrate Muslim identity and as women. In the mid-1970s, some Muslim women in Egypt began a movement called the ‘Sahwah’ (awakening) that sparked a period of heightened religiosity that began to be reflected in the hijab as a dress code, to both publicly announce their religious beliefs as well as a way to simultaneously reject Western influences of dress and culture. Many Muslim women also viewed the hijab garment as a positive resource, as a way to avoid harassment and unwanted sexual advances in public and to instead allow them to enjoy equal rights of complete legal, economic, and political status. Thus, the hijab is a fluid symbol that functions simultaneously as a symbol of oppression and of pride and respect, the right to freedom of expression and the right to practise one’s religion, albeit devoid of the usual stereotypes surrounding the practice of Islamic faith.

Outfits of the ‘Sangh Parivar’, particularly the Bajrang Dal, Hindu Jagarana Vedike, and ABVP, pushed communal hatred and divisive politics into the classrooms, thereby polarising the student community. In recent years, all these groups have brazenly announced that it is their broader project to erase the presence of Muslims from public spaces. They have done this through the Hinduization of education by purging educational institutions and curricula of the values of the Indian Constitution, such as democracy, civil liberties, and equality of opportunity, irrespective of religion, caste, and gender81. As the team has observed, this has especially affected communities of low-income and lower middle-class socio-economic background, who have benefited from increasing education and economic opportunities in recent years (especially in Dakshina Kannada). These opportunities have, at the same time, played a major role in the increased agency exercised by Muslim women with regard to their aspirations. Going further, these groups of the Sangh Parivar are determined to inculcate in a majority of students their own brand of ethno-cultural nationalism in the name of patriotism, Hindu tradition, and spiritualism. In the context of the anti-hijab campaign, their agenda has been two-fold: erasing Muslims from civic life and denying education to Muslim women.

The abdication of what Ambedkar would have called, ‘constitutional morality’ was most evident in the response of the State of Karnataka. It consciously and deliberately went out of its way to deny Muslim women the right to choose their attire. It privileged uniform over education. At all points in time it consciously shirked its constitutional responsibility under Article 46 to make ‘make effective provision for securing the right to education’ and its constitutional responsibility to ensure the right to education without discrimination. The Karnataka Government, indeed has an inalienable constitutional responsibility to respond to the continuing violations of fundamental rights of young Muslim women. More than a year after the hijab was first suddenly prohibited in a PU college in Udupi, Muslim women students across Karnataka continue to struggle to pursue their education and face grave consequences such as psychological distress and isolation. It is this abdication, of a government which has sworn to uphold the Constitution, which is a matter of grave concern.

In the Indian context, the anti-hijab discourse described above intersects with what may be called ‘a discourse of secular modernity’, a default discourse that currently dominates discussions of the hijab issue in mainstream media and public opinion, including among a section of women activists and the educated middle class. This form of secular discourse betrays a discomfort with the hijab garment, and is often to be found in casual and off- hand remarks such as: ‘The hijab is antiquated’; ‘Is the hijab truly a female choice or are Muslim women being coerced into wearing it?’; ‘It is a custom that is enforced on women by a patriarchal and backward society, that has retreated from progress’; ‘In modern society, you don’t find such clothing’; ‘Why would any woman cover herself with a black garment in such a hot country like India?’ This discourse speaks the language of modernity and human rights but represents Muslim women as a homogenous community across class, caste, education, and regional location. It uniformly sees Muslim women as meek victims lacking any political subjectivity.

Today, the TV media industry heavily relies upon advertisements both from private entities and the State for their revenue. But the acquiring of advertisements and the quantum of advertisements available to a channel are dependent on their viewership. This viewership is periodically measured with “Television Rating Points” and released by the BARC. As a result, a virtuous cycle of advertisers and viewers is created that drives the television industry. In effect, advertisers have become one of the most significant forces as a buyer in the industry that affects the industry mechanism as well as content broadcasted. Given the exorbitant costs of running a News Channel, a sustainable revenue model to run an independent media channel free of these strings appears to be an impossibility.

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