After a long period of CAA protests, which were eventually forced to halt due to the rapid development of the covid epidemic, the Hijab Row protests have erupted now. From Karnataka, the Hijab row protest has now reached Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh. On Wednesday, Muslims in Shaheen Bagh took to the streets in a protest against the hijab ban in Karnataka’s government pre-university colleges.
Women waved placards demanding justice as people sang “Allahu Akbar” and raised slogans of “Inquilaab Zindabad” in a peaceful demonstration in Delhi’s streets.
Since early January, the controversy raging in Karnataka forced the state to appoint a committee to examine the matter and make a decision on pre-university college uniforms across the state.
Students dressed in saffron scarves arrived at the colleges in northern Karnataka wearing headscarves in protest against the wearing of headscarves on college grounds. These students asked the Muslim girls and women of the college not to wear their hijab.
While a college’s rule book stipulates that girls may wear hijabs on campus, management recently forbade the girls from covering their heads, following a diktat from the state government.
Meanwhile, the Karnataka High Court resumed hearing the petitions regarding the ban of Hijabs in educational institutions in the state on February 9. After hearing both sides, the bench of Justice Krishna S Dixit referred the matter to a larger bench.
However, after Parliament passed the Citizenship Amendment Bill in December 2019, riots erupted across India, including in Delhi. Protesters gathered on Shaheen Bagh Road to voice their opposition to the Citizenship Amendment Act, as well as the National Register of Citizens (NRC) and National Population Register (NPR), which they labeled “anti-Muslim.” The Hijab controversy has sparked new protests in Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh once again.
