Another government-run institute in Karnataka has barred the entry of women students who wear head scarves and hijab. Ramakrishna GJ, the principal of the junior college at Kundapur, Udupi district, shut the gates on the girls as he told them they would have to comply with the uniform rules set by the government.
The students counter that there is no rule against wearing hijab and they must be allowed to attend classes as their exams are only two months away.
In BJP-ruled Karnataka, this is the second such confrontation after ongoing protests at the pre-university girls college at Udupi where six students who wear head scarves over their uniforms continue to be barred from attending classes.
Escalating fast
One of the girls at the Udupi college has moved the high court arguing that the right to wear hijab is her fundamental right guaranteed by Articles 25 and 26 of the constitution. The court will hear her plea on Tuesday.
The state government has set up a committee to examine if students can be allowed into classrooms with hijabs. Its report is awaited.
Meanwhile, in solidarity, girls at the Kundapur college began wearing hijab a few days ago and, a day later, 100 boys responded by turning up in saffron scarves to attend class.
“There cannot be hijab or saffron shawls in the classroom and students have to wear the uniform that has been prescribed,” MLA for Kundapur and a member of the college’s development committee Srinivasa Shetty said.
Political controversy
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi waded into the issue by saying the nation is robbing the future of girl students by letting ‘hijab come in the way of education’. Shashi Tharoor, Congress MP observed there was no prohibition on other religious forms of dress such as turbans for Sikhs, a crucifix around the neck or tilaks on foreheads. And Congress MLA Zameer Ahmed Khan saw the controversy as a conspiracy by the BJP to divide communities. The BJP counters that the Congress is needlessly politicising the row.
But there can be no denying the religious overtones to the debate in communally polarised Udupi district. Culture minister V Sunil Kumar said his party will not allow Karnataka to become another ‘Taliban state’. The strong pro Hindutva campaign already present in the district is, more recently being countered by the growing influence of the Campus Front of India, the student wing of the Popular Front of India, a Muslim social organisation.
The crux
“Many first generation Muslim learners in particular girls are able to study because they can do within the safety of their religious practices,” said historian and writer Rana Safvi. “Whether you approve of hijab or not is another debate. We can’t make their education conditional to that in a democracy.”
The politics obfuscates the real issue: The education of girls. Gains made by girls in bridging the gender education gap are now at risk of being rolled back due to the pandemic.
The shift to online classes, the digital gender gap where girls do not have equal access to devices through which they can attend classes, the burden of domestic labour on girls, and increasing poverty caused by loss of livelihood could lead to as many as 10 million girls dropping out, according to a Right to Education Forum policy brief.
GOING PLACES
Picture Source: She The People
Journalist and author Alka Raza has been appointed chairperson of the Centre for Gender Equality and Inclusive Leadership at the Xavier School of Management (XLRI), Jamshedpur. Set up in March 2021, the centre encourages the inclusion of women in economically gainful activities.
Gender Tracker
Busting the stereotype of the bad female driver, women account for 8% of those who drive vehicles in Delhi but are responsible for only 1% of all fatal accidents.
Source: Road Safety Branch, Transport Department
Quote/Unquote
REST IN POWER
News of the death of Hershad Kumari, the daughter of Jam Saheb Digvijay Sinhji of Nawanagar (now Jamnagar) caused some degree of sorrow within the Polish community. Poland’s ambassador to India, Adam Burakowski recalled how the Jam Saheb had given shelter to 1,000 Polish children during World War II after the Soviets deported hundreds of thousands of Poles to death camps in Siberia. When the Polish consulate in Mumbai contacted the Jam Saheb, he readily agreed to provide a place to set up a camp.
Burakowski said Herhad Kumari was roughly the age of many of the children who arrived there. She was “always very helpful, always with a warm and open heart. I met her a few times and spoke for hours on the phone,” he said. “She was a true soul of India. We will remember her forever.”
Photo Credit: Imogene Salva. IImogene Salva is the daughter of one of the children from that camp.
WATCH
Within two days of its launch, The Most Painful Life, a documentary on the lives on sex workers and their children in New Delhi’s biggest red light area by Bhumika Sarawati and Mohammad Dawood for SCMP films had already got 3.9 million hits.
Made with sensitivity and rigour, the women in the film say they have no choice but to perform sex work, but still dream of a brighter future.
Watch the film here
STORIES YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED
Marital rape hearings
The Union government asked the Delhi High Court to defer its ongoing hearing on petitions that seek to criminalise marital rape, saying the issue has a major social impact that requires meaningful consultation with stakeholders and state governments in order to “serve the ends of justice”.
Filed in 2015, the Delhi High Court began its hearings only earlier this year. While seeking a deferral, the Centre promised to give a time-bound schedule for the consultative process.
Another Hathras?
The alleged gang-rape and murder of a 16-year-old backward caste girl in Dharau village, Bulundshahr is snow-balling into a poll issue as Congress’s Priyanka Gandhi visited her family and Akhilesh Yadav and Jayant Chaudhary, who lead the Samajwadi Party and Rashtriya Lok Dal respectively, declaring solidarity.
The girl’s family said she was gang-raped by a group of Brahmin men and then shot in the head on January 21. These men have the support of a local BJP MLA, Anil Sharma. In an echo of the Hathras incident a year ago, her body was forcibly cremated by police in the middle of the night, a charge the police has denied.
No moral policing
The Madhya Pradesh high court has directed police to ensure that a 19-year-old Hindu woman, allegedly detained by her family after she married a Muslim man, is reunited with her husband. The couple was married in a Mumbai court in December. The woman’s family had filed a missing person’s complaint and less than a month later, the husband filed a petition in court saying his wife was being forcibly detained by her family. “No moral policing can be allowed in such matters,” the court ruled.
Anganwadi workers on strike
They form the backbone of India’s heath, nutrition and immunisation programmes but receive an ‘honorarium’ of less than Rs 10,000 a month, a figure that has remained unchanged since 2017. In protest, anganwadi workers and helpers said they are going on indefinite strike.
FIELD NOTES
Media’s toxic masculinity problem
A study by the Network of Women in Media looks at journalistic performance on 31 prime-time television news and talk shows in 12 Indian languages, including English, to find high levels of aggression and competitive intimidation generally associated with performative toxic masculine behaviour.
The study found aggression in over 50% of all news shows and 85% of talk shows.
The report is not intended to critique men but present data against the backdrop of how toxic masculinity is performed in media by both men and women.
The most common expressions of aggression are tone of voice, followed by sound and visual effects signifying aggression. Panels moderated by male anchors revealed relatively more aggressive masculinist behaviour than those moderated by female anchors. In fact, shouting by speakers was observed more often in male-moderated panels, compared to female.
Read the complete media monitoring report here.
AROUND THE WORLD
Man-U’s Mason Greenwood charged with rape and violence
Hailed as the ‘next Cristiano Ronaldo’, 20-year-old Mason Greenwood had been billed as the next big thing in football. Then, his former partner, the 18-year-old Harriet Robson published evidence of violence from him on her social media with the caption, “To everyone who wants to know what Mason Greenwood actually does to me.”
Within hours, Greenwood was arrested by the Greater Manchester police. He is out on bail now but his sponsorship deals with Nike and Cadbury have been suspended while EA Sports have removed him from active squads in FIFA 22.
This is not the first time a football player has been accused of violence and rape. Ronaldo himself was accused of rape but charges were dropped after prosecutors were unable to prove them ‘beyond reasonable doubt’. Benjamin Mendy continued to play for nine months for Manchester City while under police investigation for four charges of rape. And in 2015, Sunderland suspended Adam Johnson for two weeks on suspicion of sexual activity with a minor.
“Misogyny in football fandom is a shadow that the sport has never seriously grappled with,” notes The Swaddle in talking about the ‘rape culture’ in football that rarely demands accountability from star players.
In Jordon, constitutional amendment for equality
Jordon last week amended its constitution to read: “men and women shall be equal before the law. There shall be no discrimination between them as regards to their rights and duties on grounds of race, language or religion.” The amendment is in line with the governments’ goal of achieving gender equality by 2030. Deutsche Welle reported that the push for women’s empowerment comes from Queen Rania Al-Abdullah. Despite this, the amendment was not easy to push through where a discussion in Parliament in December last year resulted in a brawl. The amendment was eventually passed with 94 of 130 deputies voting in favour and 26 against.
In London, a win for working women
Stacey Macken, a former BNP Paribas employee has won a two million pound pay-out after judges ruled that she had been discriminated against on account of her gender by being paid significantly lesser than her male colleagues over a four-year tenure at the bank’s London office. This is one of the largest awards made by a UK employment tribunal, reports the Financial Times that called it a ‘rare win for women working in the City of London, which is haunted by the lingering culture of laddish behaviour on trading floors’.
BEFORE I GO…
World Breast Cancer Day on February 4 is as good a day as any for a quick self check-up. Do yourself a favour, please. What are the early signs of breast cancer? Click on this CDC link to know more.
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| That’s it for this week. If you have a tip or information on gender-related developments that you would like to share write to me at: namita.bhandare@gmail.com. |