New Delhi: Students of schools running under the South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC) will not be allowed to come to school wearing “religious attire”, according to a letter written by the SDMC education committee chairperson Nikita Sharma, the Indian Express reported.
Sharma, the BJP councillor from Dwarka, instructed officials in the letter to ensure that no child comes to school wearing anything but their uniform.
In the letter, Sharma also notes that students look “very beautiful” in their uniforms and that the uniforms make sure that there is “no inferiority complex between rich and poor children studying in school”.
Sharma told the newspaper that she wrote the letter after learning about an incident at a Delhi government school in Mustafabad’s Tukhmirpur region where a sixth-grade student was told to remove her hijab in order to enter class.
The Wire had reported that after a video of the girl detailing the incident went viral on social media, her father had first approached the school’s principal who told him that the school had acted in accordance with the Delhi government’s guidelines on uniforms. When he asked her to say the same on camera and show him a document showing the same, his phone was snatched away.
As reported by The Wire, the principal had denied that this incident ever took place.
Sharma, however, told the Express that she wrote her letter to ensure that another such incident does not take place.
The letter further said that the decision of some parents to send their children to school in religious attire would “create a mentality of inequality” among the students, instructing zonal officers to ensure that students only deviate from the uniform during competitions or festivities.
When asked if the same would apply to students wearing turbans, Sharma said it will not because “turbans are needed to tie hair” and that since turbans are worn in every school, “no correlation should be drawn”.
The Mustafabad incident, however, had taken place at a school run by the Delhi government and not by the SDMC. Municipal corporations in Delhi can only run schools up to fifth grade while schools under the Delhi government can include all secondary grades.
Following the Mustafabad incident, Delhi deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia, who also holds the education portfolio, said that there are “no restrictions” imposed on the students, that their “traditions are respected” and that “attempts are being made to politicise the issue”.
“I also enquired how this incident happened but so far I don’t think there is a problem… our school system and education department have not imposed any restrictions in this regard,” Sisodia said about the incident.
The debate around Muslim students being allowed to hear hijabs in educational institutions kicked off after six students were stopped from entering their classroom at the Government Women’s PU College in Udupi, Karnataka on December 31 last year.
Thereafter, the students began protesting the school authorities’ decision which was, in turn, met with protests in opposition from students wearing saffron shawls. The widespread protests had led Karnataka chief minister Basavaraj Bommai to declare school closures for a few days.
The issue is now being heard by a bench of the Karnataka high court led by Chief Justice Ritu Raj Awasthi. In its most recent interim order on February 10, the court told students not to wear any religious dress to school until the matter is resolved.
This article first appeared on thewire.in