Muskan Khan, a girl student from Karnataka’s Mandya Pre-University college, has become the poster girl of pro-Hijab protests across India.

Last month several government-run educational institutions in Karnataka have put a ban on wearing a hijab, or headscarf by the Muslim girl students.

The students were asked to remove their headscarves before attending classes, as per Quartz India.

In a video that has gone viral, the 19-year-old student in Hijab arrived at her college and got heckled and jeered by a mob of male students wearing saffron shawls — a colour associated with Hinduism and Hindu nationalist groups, who started chanting Jai Shri Ram slogans. In reply, she raised her hand and shouted Allah-o-Akbar.

The resilience of Muskan is widely praised by the opposition and human rights activists in India and abroad. They say that the constitution of the country ensures the basic human rights of the minorities and freedom of their religious beliefs.

Strongly reacting to the heckling of lone hijab-wearing Muslim girl by Hindu extremists, Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi has said that it is a woman’s right to decide what she wants to wear.

Priyanka Gandhi on social media said: “Whether it is a bikini, a ‘ghoonghat’, a pair of jeans or a ‘hijab’, it is a woman’s right to decide what she wants to wear.”

She asserted that this right is guaranteed by the Constitution of India. “This right is guaranteed by the Indian constitution. Stop harassing women,” she said, using the hashtag ‘ladkihoonladsaktihoon’.

Omar Abdullah, former chief minister of the Indian Occupied Kashmir, posted a viral video of Muskan with his comment on social media.

“How brave these men are & how macho they must feel while targeting a lone young lady! Hatred for Muslims has been completely mainstreamed & normalised in India today. 

We are no longer a nation that celebrates our diversity, we want to punish & exclude people for it,” he wrote.

Renowned actresses Pooja Bhatt and Sawara Bhasker also spoke up for Muskan on social media.

“As always, it takes a pack of men to attempt to intimidate a woman. Such frightened, pathetic excuses for human beings. Brandishing their shawls as weapons, cloaking their weakness in cruelty. A sizeable section of a rudderless generation lost to hate,” Bhatt tweeted.

Bhasker also posted a video of Muskan and wrote “When Muslim girl arrives at PES College, she’s been heckled by several ‘students’wearing #saffronshawls #KarnatakHijabRow.

According to BBC, the burqa-clad girl has inadvertently become the face of resistance for young Indian Muslim women, amid an escalating row over hijabs, or headscarves.

In an interview with NDTV, Muskan said: “Since I started studying [here], I’ve always worn the burqa and hijab. When I entered the class, I removed the burqa… the principal has said nothing, outsiders started this.”

Reportedly, since the emergence of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Muslims in India have faced discrimination and prejudice in education, politics, employment and every other sector and they have always been the victims of communal violence.

According to Al Jazeera, for four days a group of 28 Muslim girls stood in protest in front of the Junior Pre-University College in the Karnataka state after they were denied entry for wearing hijab.

On the morning of February 7, a few girl students were allowed to enter the premises of the college located in the coastal town of Kundapur in Udupi district, but the college authorities stopped them from attending their classes along with other students, unless they remove their hijab.

On the same day, the college officials posted a notice outside the gate declaring prohibition of hijab in classrooms as part of the college uniform code.

“Our teachers told us they will not allow our entry in the classrooms or teach us without the government orders,” a student told Al Jazeera.

In an article in the Indian Express, Firoz Bakht Ahmed, former chancellor of Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Hyderabad, noted: “In a school or college, religious identity should not be the defining identity.”

“Where was the ‘hijab issue’ just a few months ago? Why has it suddenly erupted? These are important questions that we need to address, as its unfortunate and of great concern that young men and women are being divided along religious lines,” he continued.

Bakht also maintained that a dispute over uniforms has been blown out of proportion by being politicised and communalised. A matter between the administrators of educational institutions and the community should not be turned into a mandir-masjid kind of a wrangle.

“We have seen enough of them and they have sapped a lot of the nation’s energy.”

An Indian Muslim women rights activist Dr Asma Zehra Tayeba said: “What a painful sight. Our daughters are not safe. Their protection should be the top priority of the community and country. Where is law and order?”

It has clearly be seen that India has displayed hatred towards the Muslim communities for decades and now this growing abhorrence has become a concern the world over.

In December 2021, dozens of Hindu religious leaders and politicians gathered at an event and called for genocide against Muslims, as per Al Jazeera.

During the event, the general secretary of the Hindutva organisation ‘Hindu Mahasabha’ Pooja Shakun Pandey said, “Even if just 100 of us become soldiers and kill two million of them, we will be victorious.”

A 23-year-old boy from New Delhi who wishes to stay anonymous told BOL News that one of the founding fathers of RSS and Hindu Mahasabha Golvalkar wrote several books, demanding a complete exclusion of Muslims and Christians from India and termed them a threat to the nation.

BOL News reached out to another 26-year-old boy from New Delhi Fateh Guram to know about the current situation in India regarding the hijab row. 

He said currently with respect to the hijab issue, there are protests and counter-protests taking place.

“Saffron groups have been threatening and intimidating other students to take a stand against Muslim girls and shoving saffron scarves on them.”

Moreover, he maintained that this matter has been pending in the Karnataka High Court and now they have shifted this issue to the larger bench.

“Many educational institutes in Karnataka have been shut down for fear of unrest, which shows how the Indian state is okay with the students not receiving their education but it is not okay with the students wanting to wear whatever they want and seeking education in classrooms,” Guram said.

According to the first United Nations Special Adviser on Prevention of Genocide Juan E Mendez, the situation in India is ‘dangerous’ and “deeply disturbing”. Some experts have also warned that genocide is very likely in India.

Speaking about the worsening violence in India, Guram said that there is a rise in religious intolerance today because the media is an outlet for hatred now.

“People now in India can get indulged in hate speeches, lynch someone to death, burn a man alive and get away with it,” he lamented. “India has never been a secular country right from independence,” the freelance journalist said.

It has become even more visible now because of the way the media has been covering it, he added.

“The media has been completely, unashamedly complacent in this spread of hatred, which has engulfed the country.”

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