As another end-term exams approach, 18-year-old Aliya Assadi is nervous about what may unfold in the coming days. Assadi, a final-year school girl from Karnataka’s coastal district of Udupi was among the six girls who sparked the legal battle for the right to wear hijab in public schools.

“I do not want to be heartbroken to see girls being turned away from exam halls for wearing hijab,” Assadi lamented. News about the ordeal of Muslim girls having a tough year due to the hijab ban in educational institutions makes her feel “guilty.”

“So many dreams were destroyed. I fill up in tears when I hear about them.”

The furor that began in January last year from Assadi’s school in Udupi soon escalated to other places. Students in support of Hindu nationalist ideology heckled Muslim students wearing saffron shawls in several cities in Karnataka. To quell unrest, schools were shut for days, and a curfew was imposed in some districts.

In reaction to the tensions, on 5 February 2022, the Karnataka government issued an order that said the dress code prescribed by the College Development Committee or the administrative supervisory committee must be followed.

“If the administration does not fix a dress code, clothes that do not threaten equality, unity, and public order must be worn,” said the order.

Assadi and other Muslim girls filed a petition asking to repeal the government’s directions backfired.

On 10 February 2022, the Karnataka High Court passed an interim order saying that no student should insist on wearing “religious clothes” until the court decides the matter — legalising the state-wide ban for the first time.

The order said, “all students, regardless of their faith from wearing saffron shawls, scarfs, hijab, religious flags or the like within the classroom.”

Following the interim order, schools and educational institutions across the southern state banned students and staffers from entering the campus wearing hijab.

The ban immediately triggered global outrage. While condemning the ban, Rashad Hussain, the US ambassador-at-large for International Religious Freedom, urged Karnataka state to “not determine the permissibility of religious clothing.”

On 15 March 2022, the High Court upheld the ban.

This would end all the effort put in by Afreen (name changed on request) during her first year in Pre-University College. The 17-year-old now repeats first-year PUC in a college not “academically” reputed as her previous one.

“My non-Muslim friends sometimes tell me how they wish we were together. But most of them have moved on. But I am still haunted,” Afreen says, rewinding the hostilities she had to face in February last year.

“It will not leave me,” she said to Maktoob.

This story was originally published in maktoobmedia.com . Read the full story here