Every girl has a different reason for her headscarf, I found out when I reported about the prohibition of hijab a decade ago. Back then there was rumbling right about the hijab in France and also a squeaky effort by Sangh Parivar in Karnataka to ban the headscarves from wearing students from coming to college At that time I interviewed women from Old Delhi and shiny Hyderabad. I interviewed doctors, teachers, security guards, boxers, writers, and every type of woman you can think of wearing a headscarf. And this is what I learned. Every girl has a different headscarf. There is no girl wearing her mother’s metaphorical headscarf. His mother might have struggled not to wear a headscarf. His mother may have a mixed feelings about him wearing a headscarf. Her mother might insist her wear it only to overcome family drama. Every girl’s headscarf has a different story.
I know this to a certain extent. When my Bengaluru college friends began wearing a hijab month after the Gujarat pogrom in 2002, I had been surprised. I understand a little more because they work hard to keep a light handle on the relative innocence of our lives before the pogrome. And I understand, even when it becomes a stupid spectacular understanding, that they lean against an identity that the country is trying to set fire. That’s them, articulating, a charismatic young woman. And it’s their headscarf Every woman I interviewed later as a reporter told me about many of their hijab stories – Faith, Humility, Identity, Habits, Family, Political, Environmental Traditions, Judgmental Family Members, Hijab Swapping with Classmates to see their girlfriends. Every reason you can think of. Every woman has a different reason for her headscarf, but there is only one reason for universities and the government in Karnataka to ban the hijab-wearing women from attending classes.
Once, I was at a journalist award event in what we call a small town in India (which means the Metropolis City mighty) and three school girls are due to two bharatanatyam recitals at different points during the night. After their first recital, they immediately went to one second and MC looked annoyed at this change. From the front row of the organizer it was called that the girls were the next day and the entire audience of journalists from all the countries humming and coo’d in the agreement. Of course, they must be allowed to complete and leave. My friend’s parents found that he made a plan to marry after he was 12th grade and while they were boiled in anger, they waited two weeks until his last test to pounce on him and rain all their anger and disappointment with him. This absurdity to keep the test-writing mind on paid even seems normal for me. Are they not for you? You don’t mess with girls a few months away from their exam except your intentions very suspects. So why now, as if it was not hard enough to get higher education as a woman in India, that Muslim women in the war zone, namely Dakshin Kannada District was told that they were just not allowed to enter college?
All stories about uniforms and discipline and wild threats for the social order that are said to come from women wearing headscarves rooted in the worst and dirtiest intention. This is the intention that Bedmates will be willing with Hindu Rashtra-Demanders. After decades were spent in vilifting Muslim men, the next project was the renewal of Muslim women. Where the government has not been able to sexualize them and makes them a threat in a certain way, they say that the presence of women will be upend an educational institution. If it’s not a headscarf, there will be several other ways. Too sexual, also politics, too much beef, is also something else One of the most astonishing things about the success of the Hindutva is to take the eyes of people who live in the continent of this continental child who has been used for diversity – not tolerant or good or all of them but are only used to look on the road and see a dozen people differ from each other and themselves – and to train their eyes back only see every small variation as a threat.
The women who were kept away from college knew the authorities spoke nonsense. ‘We will wear a turmeric scarf in the crowd protest that it’s nonsense, that their silly scarves will not exist without a hijab woman. This is the success of other amazing hindutvas – to make the lakh people and social institutions we define themselves but always conflict with threatening Muslims, Dalit who threatens, threatening Christians. As if monolith Hindu can’t stand the scaffolding scarf that is transformed from nowhere, a scarf that has no previous meaning As a writer, I keep going out about why young women choose their special political identity, how they choose to wear it in public and personal. As a citizen, I am not interested in the logic that should be from the country’s intrigue that makes women lives harder. I spent very little time thinking about why young Muslim women wear headscarves. Instead I spent days dreaming of a legal system where government representatives and head of educational institutions can be prosecuted for a large amount of money and even imprisoned for their evil intentions to young women.