Bangalore: While delivering its verdict on the hijab controversy, the Karnataka High Court on Tuesday also referred to the architect of the Constitution, Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar. The court also referred to Ambedkar's remarks on the purdah system while justifying the ban on hijab in educational institutions. Along with this, the court said that his opinion on the practice of purdah is also applicable in the case of hijab. The court further said, 'Whether things like veils, hijab are there in any community, it can be debated. This affects the freedom of women. This is against the spirit of the Constitution, which talks of equal opportunities for all, participation in public life and positive secularism.
Quoting Babasaheb's book 'The Partition of Pakistan and India', the court observed that 'a Muslim woman is only allowed to see her son, brother, father, uncle and husband. Apart from this, she can only meet some people with whom she has a close relationship. Muslim women cannot even go to the mosque for namaz. They are required to wear a burqa to go out. Muslims have all the social evils that Hindus have. In many ways they are more than that. That is the purdah, which is said to be more important for Muslim women than for Hindus.'
Reiterating another observation in the same book, the High Court said, 'Women appear helpless in the veil. In India, a large number of women are seen in the screen and this is one of the reasons for their weakness. One can easily understand from this how big the problem of purdah is in India. Explain that while justifying the ban on hijab in educational institutions, the court had said that it is not part of Islam. The court had bluntly said that if the uniform has been fixed by the institutions, then it cannot be questioned by the students.
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