Mangalore, August 13: A row over wearing hijab (headscarf) has surfaced yet again in an educational institution in Dakshina Kannada. After Aysha Ashmin (19), who had quit Sri Venkatramana Swamy (SVS) College, Bantwal in August 2009 for not allowing her to wear a headscarf inside the classroom. It is now the turn of Hadiya, 2ndPUcommerce student of Jain PU College in Moodbidri.
The college of Hadiya stipulated a uniform of white churidar top with pink trousers and a dupatta. Hadiya preferred to use the dupatta itself as head-scarf. But the management objected to her pattern. The parents’ request also has not been heeded by the management. Hadiya insists that it has been her wish to wear the head-scarf. She is demanding just to wear an additional piece as head-scarf, which is part of the uniform. It would not violate the colour scheme of the uniform, nor was it an addition to the pattern.
Hadiya said, “From the past one year, I kept requesting the authorities several times to allow me to cover my head but each time, they termed it as ‘drama’. Not wanting to attend classes without a head-scarf, she has preferred to stay at home – already for about two months now. As a sequel, her scholastic future itself has been threatened.
She said a month after she joined the college last year, college authorities announced during the assembly that students would not be allowed to cover their heads, although all three girls who did so, wrapped the dupatta of the uniform in a way that covered their hair and neck. After the announcement was made, she said she did not go to college because she was denied permission to cover her head.
“I feel embarrassed to go (without covering my head and without full sleeves) in front of everyone. I have covered (my head) from the time I was small,” she said. She said that she managed the previous year, but she simply could not get used to not wearing the dupatta around her head.
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Hadiya and her relatives made several requests to the college authorities to allow her to cover her hair with the dupatta of the uniform, but to no avail. Hadia’s mother Hina said her daughter was not violating the norms of the uniform. Her mother’s friend Humaira Khatoon said, they had approached even the district administration and the Education Department. Director of the Department of Pre-University Education Rashmi V. Mahesh said the department had no views on the subject. She said if a student complained that the “freedom of dress” was being “proscribed”, then the department would look into it. “Freedom of dress should be left to the student,” Ms. Mahesh said.
Correspondent of the partially aided college, Pratap Kumar, said: “There should be uniformity inside the classroom” and that the college would not permit students to cover their heads with a dupatta inside the class. Having missed classes for two precious months, Hadiya has now appealed to the deputy commissioner to render justice to her.