The ongoing hijab row is as dangerous as is worrisome to the true essence of uniformity and unity in diversity
Representational image. PTI
Soheila and Marziyeh were attacked with acid in Iran for not wearing hijab ‘appropriately’, as per the acceptable social standards enforced by the men and women of that country. Yes, the men and women. These women distinctly remind me of the group that actively opposed women’s suffrage and right to vote.
For decades as women demanded the rights to vote, they were met up with a stiff opposition from not just the men around them but also a fair chunk of the women folk who genuinely felt that women did not deserve the right to vote, just like the six women in Udupi disagree with millions of Muslim women around the world who want their freedom from hijab, naqab and burqa.
The well-known #FreeFromHijab activist, Masih Alinejad, famously said: “Wearing a Hijab is what Islamic Republic wants me to be, this is what the Taliban and ISIS wants us to be, and this is my true-self (takes off the hijab). In Iran I was told if I take off my hijab I will be hanged with my hair by God. I get kicked out from school, I get lashes, I get jailed, I get fined, I get beaten up in the street everyday by morality police. If I get raped it’s my fault. If I take off my hijab I won’t be able to exist as a woman in my homeland. In the West I am told, if I share my stories then I will cause Islamophobia. I am a woman from the Middle East and I am scared of Islamic laws, I am scared of all the brutalities that I have experienced. Phobia is an irrational fear but my fear and the fear of millions of other women who lived under Sharia law in the Middle East is rational, so let us talk.”
So let us talk about how the young Muslim girls in Udupi are not being ‘allowed’ to go to school without a hijab by their parents. Let us talk about how Indian politicians and activists are actually pushing the school to abandon its policy of ‘school uniform/uniform clothing’, to make room for a headscarf that has historically given women more suffering than suffrage.
More than five women are serving long prison sentences around the world for demanding freedom from hijab. Saba Kordafshari was as young as 20 years old when she was handed a 27-year sentence in prison for demanding freedom from hijab.
Young and free girls with their whole lives in front of them are now unfairly spending their youth within the confines of a prison which has managed to physically and emotionally imprison them.
To what end?
For demanding freedom from hiding their heads and their faces from the free world that they are born into. All for the preservation of some patriarchal practices that men and certain women experiencing Stockholm Syndrome seem to endorse.
Stockholm syndrome or the psychological affliction which causes the abuse victims to bond and empathise with their abusers is a well-researched human response which can develop over the course of days, weeks, months or perhaps years and decades of abuse. Here we are talking about women being subjected to such practices for centuries and starting as early as their toddler days.
It would not be unexpected for some women to feel the need to confirm to these patriarchal hegemonies from the conditioning that they are subjected to from early on.
Strong indicators of the symptoms arise from the justification including, but not limited to, that of ‘faith and religion’. It is exactly these moments that the feminists of this society should step up their role and rise up to the challenges of well-established patriarchal norms. The response of the wider public to the hijab row which originated in Udupi are plainly signs of the failing feminists of the free world.
We are failing as a community to stand up against a piece of clothing that has caused more suffering than suffrage in this community. The proceedings of the Karnataka High Court Case carry a disturbingly deep similarity to the arguments on either side of women’s suffrage for decades.
Udupi is also my home and has always been a warm place with exceptional beaches and elaborate mountains coupled with an unmissable cuisine. It is a kind place where the best meal one could have would easily be the free food at the famous Krishna Temple, which is open to people of every gender, race, religion and denomination. The temple town of India is also home to some of the most exceptional educational institutions, most of which are fully or partly funded and supported by the state.
Some of my early memories from the tinsel town are easily wearing the neatly pressed uniforms to school and then to college. Irrespective of who we were, we all wore uniforms in resonance with the secular tenets of the Indian Constitution.
It additionally gave young women and men the space and time to discover themselves out of their own free will over being pushed into stereotypes that their homes might or might not practice. The hijab row is as dangerous as is worrisome to the true essence of uniformity and unity in diversity.
As we scale newer heights of equality and liberty as a society, my only hope would be that we do not lose footing to become the failing feminists of the 21st Century free world.
The author is a former president-elect at the University of Oxford. She’s a human rights activist. Views are personal.
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