By Thomas Scaria
Mangaluru, March 23, 2022: Tension has prevailed in a Catholic school in Mangaluru, Karnataka, after it refused to let hijab-wearing students into classrooms.
The decision of St. Raymond’s School in Vamanjore on the outskirts of Mangaluru was in accordance with the order of the state government as well as the High Court to ban hijab in all educational institutions in the state, the school management explained.
The Bethany Educational Society of the Bethany Sisters manages St Raymond.
The trouble began on March 21, when the nuns refused to allow five hijab-wearing Muslims students to write pre-university examination. The students insisted on wearing hijab (a headscarf worn by Muslim women) inside the classroom.
“Today, some 25 students came with hijab and protested the management decision and missed their exams,” said Bethany Sister Shubha, who coordinates the Bethany Education Society.
Speaking to Matters India March 23, she explained that the High Court order did not specify whether private schools and colleges should follow the order, but left it to the decision of the management to have their policy.
“As a policy, we have decided to ban hijab inside the classrooms in all our educational institutions and stick to the school uniforms,” Sister Shubha added.
The Bethany Sisters, or the Sisters of the Little Flower of Bethany, currently manages around 190 schools and colleges, mainly in rural areas, throughout India. They are also engaged in social apostolate.
The congregation was founded in 1921 by Father Raymond Mascarenhas, a parish priest of Mangalore diocese.
Some other Catholic educational institutions have already banned hijab inside their classrooms. They include Jesuits’ century-old St. Aloysius College and Apostolic Carmel nuns’ St. Agnes College.
Meanwhile, Karnataka Education Minister B C Nagesh clarified that students boycotting examination on hijab issue would not be permitted to sit for reexamination. “It was never a practice in Karnataka whatever may be the reason,” he told reporters.
The students have been protesting against the Karnataka High Court’s March 15 order. They continue to come to schools and colleges with their hijabs. Some voluntarily remove the hijab as they enter the campus, but tension prevails in many Karnataka schools.
The court upheld the state government’s February 5 ban on hijab in government educational institutions.
Stating that wearing hijab is not an essential religious practice in Islam and freedom of religion under Article 25, a full bench of the high court dismissed a batch of petitions filed by Muslim girls, seeking the right to wear hijabs in classrooms.
The court said that the prescription of school uniform is only a reasonable restriction, constitutionally permissible which the students cannot object.
The controversy over hijab began in December 2021, when some Muslim girls were not allowed to attend classes wearing the headscarf in a government college in Karnataka’s Udupi town.
The Muslim organizations on March 17 observed a statewide lockdown as a silent protest against the state and court order on hijab.