Bengaluru: The Supreme Court on Thursday September 22 reserved its orders related to the various petitions challenging the Karnataka High Court order upholding the ban on Hijab in educational institutions.
Senior Advocate Dushyant Dave who is representing the six girls, said, “For those who are believers it (Hijab) is essential. For those who are not believers, it’s not essential.”
The State High Court upheld a State Government order on March 15 authorising Government Colleges to ban the wearing of Hijab by Muslim girl students in colleges.
The girls who have challenged the Hijab ban told the Apex court that the order against wearing the Hijab in schools is part of a pattern to marginalise minority communities.
“This is not about uniform…by series of acts of commission and acts of omission that have happened, unfortunately…I’m not blaming any individual or anything, but these acts of commission and omission show that there is a pattern to marginalise minority communities. Part of this pattern is this directive,” senior advocate Dushyant Dave told a bench of Justices Hemant Gupta and Sudhanshu Dhulia.
Dave referred to controversies such as “love jihad” and said, “this has to be considered in the light of the kind of atmosphere that we are seeing today, which is going far from being liberal that we have been for 5,000 years.”
