For many years I lived at Valanchuzhy in Pathanamthitta district in Kerala. It was a Muslim-majority area. Most of my classmates were naturally Muslims. I attended the Government Primary School, an alumna of which was Justice Fathima Beevi. Skirts and blouses were the standard dress of girl students. Muslim girls used a scarf or a towel to cover their head.

Nobody found anything objectionable in the practice. At home, my grandmother, who was widowed at a young age, always covered her head with the neryath (shawl) she wore, especially when she went to church. When she read the Bible, she always kept her head covered.

An African, who was married to one of my relatives, stayed with us for a couple of days. She was a Christian. At the dining table, she always covered her head. I asked her why. She told me that in their tradition women did not eat without covering their head. That is when I realised that covering the head was not endemic to the Muslims alone.

The first time I saw a burkha was at the Madras Junction. I saw three tall women wearing the full burkha coming from the opposite direction. It so happened that when they were about to pass me, one of the women lifted her veil and for a second I noticed that she was stunningly beautiful. 

In my impressionable mind, I associated burkha with beauty. I presumed that the north Indian Muslim women were very beautiful and that is why their menfolk kept them wrapped up.

In many areas in India, Hindu women, too, would not only cover their head but also their face with their sari-end. In Haryana villages, women do not talk to strangers, especially men, without their hijab. Surprisingly, I met a few Kashmiri women busy planting paddy seedlings, who spoke to me without using any burkha or hijab.

I have taken classes in Aligarh Muslim University, Jamia Milia Islamia and Jamia Hamdard where a majority of the students were Muslim women. They wore the hijab and I did not find it a bother. 

I was chairman of a higher secondary school where 95 per cent of the students were Muslims, out of whom at least 45 per cent were girls. Most of the senior girl students wore the hijab. Of course, we had prescribed a uniform which they too wore. They chose a hijab that matched the uniform. 

For us what was important was to impart education to the children. Unlike the boys, most of the girls were keen on studies. 

I still remember a Muslim girl who came and held my hand and said that her father was planning to stop her education as he could no longer afford it. What a great sense of relief she had when my friend who accompanied me and was privy to what she said willingly offered to pay her fees. My experience suggests that given a chance and a level-playing field, Muslim girls will excel in their studies.

It was against this backdrop that I was shocked by the campaign unleashed by the Hindutvavadis to prevent hijab-wearing Muslim girl students from attending a government college at Udupi in Karnataka. I have fond memories of my visit to Udupi which I consider as the Masala Dosa capital of India.

There are vegetarian restaurants run by traditional chefs from this small town all over the country. In Delhi, most journalists and non-journalists attached to newspapers like the Times of India, the Indian Express, the Pioneer, the National Herald and the Milap had their lunch and snacks at the Udupi restaurant on Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg, known as the Fleet Street of the Capital.

Udupi restaurants symbolised the inclusiveness that it fostered. Everybody who paid was given the same fare with the same taste and in the same quantity no matter whether the guests wore a burqa or a dhoti and veshti or a European suit.

It was, therefore, surprising that there was a protest from a section of the students against a few girl students wearing hijab while attending class. Muslim girls there have been attending classes for generations wearing the headscarf. Surely, the aim was to disturb peace, humiliate the girls and prevent them from acquiring education.

There was nothing spontaneous about the agitation. It was all planned. That the “protesting” students were given saffron scarves and headwear by someone was proof that there were dark hands working behind the protest. They wanted to escalate the agitation to more colleges and bring about a situation prejudicial to the interests of the Muslim girls.

I can understand if the students protested against girls wearing hot pants but here they were only following the tradition of wearing a modest dress. How can it offend anyone? Alas, the sinister forces seem to have succeeded in escalating the agitation.

The Karnataka High Court could have settled the matter by ordering status quo but it is now looking at the issue from all legal, social and educational standpoints. Efforts are also on to make it a national issue.

That the Hindutvavadis have a different ball game, not just preventing girls from wearing hijab, became clear when they removed the national flag from a government building and hoisted the saffron flag in its place. One minister hinted at the saffron flag replacing the tricolour at the Red Fort, sooner than later.

In other words, the whole exercise should be seen as part of an attempt to convert India into a Hindu nation. The cadres of the Sangh Parivar are not prepared to wait as they think that it is time they took the plunge and declared India as a theocratic state.

One of the first laws the Modi government passed soon after it returned to power was to abolish the triple talaq system. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been mentioning in all his election speeches in UP that it was meant to liberate the Muslim women. He or his government has not cared to answer the question as to how many Muslim women have benefited from the law. 

The fact of the matter is that the practice of triple-talaq is almost non-existent. There are much more Hindu women who have been abandoned by their husbands than Muslim women triple-talaqued by their husbands. Though the Preamble of the Constitution says specifically that India is a secular nation, it did not prevent Modi from bringing forward a law on citizenship that discriminates specifically against Muslims.

Vicious campaigns are unleashed against Muslims and their establishments so that they are politically, socially and economically driven to a corner. Imagine what would have happened to the boys who hoisted the saffron flag, if they had hoisted a green flag.

For the first time, some religious heads were allowed to hold a meeting at Haridwar where open calls for genocide against Muslims were made. A gentleman who made use of his television channel to claim that Muslims were infiltrating into the civil services was openly seen giving an oath that the people would sacrifice everything to convert India into a Hindu Rashtra.

While Modi invokes Mahatma Gandhi’s name every now and then, many of his party men are allowed to denigrate the father of the nation. Gandhi's life was his message. He sacrificed his life for the unity of the country. He considered the means as equally important as the aims. He went on a fast to demand that the government of India pay the money that was due to Pakistan and he was assassinated for the same reason.

Gandhi’s complete works are as large as 100 Bibles. Modi does not quote him on communal amity, political propriety and ethical conduct. Instead, he has been reduced to a symbol of toilets.

The Constitution guarantees fundamental rights to its citizens. The rights include the right to profess and propagate their faith. It also allows them to wear the dress of their choice. In his beautiful autobiography entitled “Before Memory Fades”, well-known lawyer Fali S. Nariman describes an incident when children of a Seventh Day Adventist family refused to sing the national anthem.

They took the stand that their religion prohibited them from singing any song which was not in praise of God. They were like the great Carnatic composer Thyagaraja. He was a poor man but a great musician.

When his fame reached the Thanjavur Maharaja who was a great connoisseur of music, he welcomed him to be a court singer. He would have received a handsome salary and could have lived comfortably till his death. But he refused to be a court singer because he said he would sing only to please God and not any mortal.

Thyagaraja preferred to sing at temples, especially those dedicated to Lord Shiva. The Kerala girls, who refused to sing the national anthem were thrown out of the school. They finally went to the Supreme Court. It appeared to be an open-and-shut case. The court gave its own reasons to allow the students to return to the school.

Of course, they did not sing the national anthem. But when other students sang the song, they also stood reverentially. They did not cause any disrespect to the national anthem. The court interpreted the law to help them study without compromising their religious belief.

An easy option would have been to uphold the school’s decision not to allow them to continue their studies. Did it matter to the country if three siblings stopped their education?

This is not a new subject. At the Padmanabha Swamy temple in Kerala, it was not possible for men to enter the premises wearing upper garments like shirts. Women wearing trousers were not allowed. Nobody objected to such practices.

Similarly, it is not possible to enter a gurdwara without at least a towel to cover the head. The Sikhs are allowed to wear the turban and keep their beard. Exceptions are made for them even in the armed forces. The last time I visited Houston, USA, I saw the state flag fluttering at half-mast because a police officer was shot by some criminals.

The officer was a turban-wearing Sikh. He was the first Sikh to become a police officer in the USA. Whether wearing hijab is a must for a Muslim or not is a different question. Does it cause any problem for society? It was only recently that two Catholic nuns accompanying a girl were forced to break their journey by the vigilantes because they found their habits unacceptable.

They were taken to the police station and they were asked hundred and one questions before they were allowed to go. Why blame the vigilantes when it was the Prime Minister who said at the height of the protests against the citizenship laws that anti-national elements could be identified by their dress.

Newspapers carried a poignant picture of a Muslim girl being hounded by a mob of saffron scarf wearers. What kind of image would it have created about India? It was in Karnataka that a brave woman confronted a group of vigilantes who questioned her right to celebrate Christmas.

Those who think that the agitation is only against hijab-wearing Muslims are mistaken for the so-called Freedom of Religion law it enacted has the potential to harass any Christian and Muslim. The onus of proving innocence is that of the accused Christian or Muslim.

If Gujarat was the laboratory of Hindutva in the north of the Vindhyas, it is now Karnataka which is the laboratory of Hindutva in the south of the Vindhyas. Let there be no mistaking that the hijab row is all part of an orchestrated plan to divide the people and keep the minorities from enjoying the fullness of freedom that the Constitution guarantees.

ajphilip@gmail.com