“Uniforms in such institutions are meant to minimise the differences between students of different and unequal economic classes. They are not intended to impose cultural uniformity on a plural country. This is why Sikhs are allowed to wear turbans not only in the classroom but even in the police and Army. This is why Hindu students wear bindi/pottu/tilak/vibhuti with school and college uniforms without comment or controversy. And likewise, Muslim women should be able to wear hijabs with their uniforms,” they said.Further, the statement said, “Making hijabi women sit in separate classrooms or move from colleges of their choice to Muslim-run colleges is nothing but apartheid. Hindu supremacist groups in coastal Karnataka have, since 2008, been unleashing violence to enforce such apartheid, attacking togetherness between Hindu and Muslim classmates, friends, lovers.”“It must be remembered that such violence has been accompanied by equally violent attacks on Hindu women who visit pubs, wear “western” clothes, or love/marry Muslim men. Islamophobic hate crimes have been joined at the hip to patriarchal hate crimes against Muslim and Hindu women – by the same Hindu-supremacist perpetrators,” they said.
Source link
