Digital Desk: When the entire nation is after the Karnataka hijab row controversy, girl students from Assam have also put their opinions in light. A minor fight against the restriction to practice hijab in the classroom has become a national sensation.
People all over the nation, including high authorities, leaders from every party, educational experts, activists, and many, have revealed their opinions on what needs to be done in this matter of hijab row. In this regard, students from Assam have now voiced their opinions.
A 15-year-old girl named Mahmouda Begum revealed that she suitably wore her hijab every morning towards her school. Once she reaches school, she keeps the hijab folded properly in her bag and wears it again as she heads back home.
Begum is a class 9 student, and she stated although allowing the hijab in school would be "far less hassle," she added, "laws are rules, and our instructors have a point as well."
Several Muslim girls at Juria Higher Secondary School, which opened in 1948, are caught between the obligation to their families and religious beliefs to wear the hijab and the school rules, which state that nothing other than the uniform – white kurta and green dupatta for girls, white shirt and green trousers for boys – must be worn.
Begum's friend and classmate Asfiya Sultan, 15, said she "feels awful" because the headscarf is "part of her identity."
"It's a part of my identity that I wear at home." Our families want us to wear it; elders on the road chastise us if we don't. Then when we come to school, we are not allowed to," she stated.
This remark shows how wearing a hijab by Muslim girls has so much to do with others' opinions and is not bound to what they want to go with. Individuals differ in all ways, and everyone holds their own opinions. In such a scenario, wearing a hijab should be one's own choice, her agency. It should not be bound to criticism by religious elders and not by some establishments' judgment.
Girls like Sultan and Begum find an echo more than 3,000 kilometres away from Karnataka, where a hijab dispute is raging. Sultan added, "I don't know the details on the Karnataka issue, but it's excellent that the girls have started expressing their minds."
Juria, in Assam's Nagaon district, is home to a sizable Bengali Muslim migrant population and Assamese Hindu areas. Given Assam's sensitive identity rows between "indigenous" and "foreigners," individuals are acutely conscious of these divisions and careful about securing inter-community harmony.
This is also true at Juria High School, which has about 1,000 students; 483 are female. "Everyone here is conscious of the historical faultlines," said Rupalim Sarma, the school's principal and a three-decade teacher.
"Our policies state unequivocally that a dress code should be obeyed, and there is an oral tradition that hijabs, burkhas, or any other outside clothes, even jeans, will not be allowed," she explained. According to Sarma, if students are ever celebrated wearing the hijab, faculty members gently encourage them not to.
We take care to ensure that no one suffers. "We don't say anything if they just use the school dupatta to cover their heads - but if it's a different colour, we naturally alert them." "The problem has never escalated," she added.
Rajesh Bora, an English teacher, stated that he advises his students to leave their religious individualism at the door when they enter the school. "Everyone is on an equal footing here." We have a dress code, and we should stick to it. We should not count our own identity to it," he added.
Tonu Saha, a 15-year-old student in class 9, agreed, "Everyone is the same in school, Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians... That is why we wear uniforms," she clarified.
The Class 12 student does not wear a hijab and uses her school dupatta to cover her head. She does, however, wear a traditional Assamese Mekhela Chadar with her long hair open whenever she attends her school's Saraswati Puja celebration.
"No one has told me not to cover my hair with my school dupatta, but if they do, I will also explain to the teacher my point of view… as the Karnataka girls did," she added on hijab row controversy.
Diverse cultures and religions surround India, and they unite on every festival they celebrate. Therefore, people should be conscious about things and dark shaded people who try to destroy peace and harmony with controversies.
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