Muslim women have dropped out of colleges and the classrooms have gotten polarized on the basis of religion, revealed a report released by human rights organization Peoples Union of Civil Liberties (PUCL) on January 9, Monday, marking one year of Hijab ban in Karnataka.
The PUCL’s Karnataka chapter undertook a study to investigate the impact of the imposed ban on the students and examine the role of authorities, administrative officials and police officials.
The report explains that through conversations with students as well as authorities, and an analysis of events that transpired, it becomes visibly clear that Muslim women students were not only actively prevented from accessing their right to education, but also bore the brunt of a climate of hate, hostility and misinformation.
“Students have faced humiliation and harassment in their own classrooms at the hands of their faculty, college administration and classmates.”
Speaking to TwoCircles.net, Arvind Narrain, President of PUCL-Karnataka, said that as per a reply in the legislative assembly on September 22, 2022 to a question posed by MLA Sowmya Reddy, in the 1 and 2 PU Colleges the total drop outs of hijab wearing girls is 1010 because of hijab ban or other reasons.
The PUCL report elaborates the ways in which Muslim women students were denied their right to education by being forced to stay out of the classrooms. Students have also recounted their experiences of loss, broken dreams and career aspirations, discrimination, segregation from other non-hijab wearing students and their feeling of fear and insecurity within the campuses of their colleges.
“The figures (of the government) indicate that the government has comprehensively failed to fulfil its constitutional mandate under Article 41 to ensure that the state has made ‘effective provision for securing the right to education’. This comprehensive failure is the result of a manifestly arbitrary government hijab policy which has instead of providing for the right to education, denied the right to education to a section of Muslim girl students. This is unconscionable.”
The report documents how vigilante groups of Hindutva organisations carried out a vilification campaign against hijab wearing students and how the inaction of the government and police gave implicit encouragement to these fundamentalist forces.
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