Why Those Misleading Young Muslim Minds On Hijab In Classroom Are Diminishing India

For every outstation patient coming to Delhi, All India Institute of Medical Sciences is one of the most important public institutions. Whether it is the common man, or a VVIP, AIIMS is always much sought after. Now, of course, we have multiple AIIMS.

When one goes to a doctor at AIIMS, the expectation is that he or she will get best possible medical care, without any discrimination – for, impersonal rules are equal for all. This is the hallmark of a Public Institution. However, if one finds that whether due to some VIP’s “sifarish” or any other extraneous reason, a few are extended special privileges, at the cost of others, AIIMS’ credibility as a trusted Public Institution takes a hit.

Like a public hospital, whether it is a public school or university, a library or an Assembly, Parliament or Supreme Court or Election Commission, it is Public Institutions that make a robust Republic.

To give another example, when a handful of misguided lawmakers throw paper missiles at the Presiding Officer in Parliament, or heckle marshals, Parliament’s institutional charisma is dented.

Rule of law is fundamental to a thriving democracy. In a Republic, our Public Institutions are governed by impersonal rules that must apply equally to all.

Social scientist, Ramachandra Guha, in a recent media interaction, said: “My great teacher, the sociologist, Andre Beteille, told me many years ago that the fundamental blocks of Indian society are family, caste, religion. A modern secular framework requires individuals to detach themselves from these”.

Doyen of Indian Sociology, Andre Beteille, has studied India’s Modern Institutions like few others have. 

Like he has observed on many occasions, including in a volume called “Equality and Universality: Essays in Social and Political Theory,” Beteille writes: “Every modern institution has a framework of more or less formal rules that define rights and obligations of its individual members and specify sanctions to uphold them. No hospital or university or bank could operate successfully if its members sought to assert their formal rights or to have their obligations formally specified at every turn”.

He also observes: “I also believe that it is here, in the domain that is, or ought to be, governed by impersonal rules that our modern institutions will face their most severe test”.

In other words, impersonal rules govern our Modern Institutions. For instance, an individual cannot argue in a public library that he or she be allowed to retain a book beyond the stipulated period without a fine. To cite another example, a lawmaker cannot insist on his or her right to have a Question Hour beyond the sanctioned Question Hour. 

In their interface with public institutions, private individuals become citizens. As Beteille says: “Citizenship is an individualizing concept in the sense that its entitlements are the entitlements of the individual irrespective of ‘religion, race, caste, sex, or place of birth’. These entitlements may be stunted by the bondage of the individual to clan, caste, and community”.

It is in this context that the row over “Hijab in Classroom” in Karnataka must be placed. It is in the same context, when Karnataka Ministers argue that the “students can wear whatever they want on streets, but dress code is compulsory in schools,” they are absolutely right, justified and reasonable. The matter, of course, is now in the domain of the judiciary.

What should alarm right-thinking Indians that young, educated Muslim men and women, girls and boys, are now being told that it is about “Pehle Hijab, Fir Kitab”. 

Those who are trying to create wedges in Indian society by misleading young, impressionable Muslim minds are doing a great disservice to India. This is a classic case of manufacturing a false sense of hurt, and fuelling relative deprivation. Stouffer, who first studied the phenomenon of relative deprivation, found that it is easy to manufacture a sense of hurt in educated, young minds. It is extremely important, therefore, that our politicians behave responsibly.

While political parties do politics at the cost of unity and integrity of India, this should concern countrymen. In the past, too, our Institutions were stifled, whether it was during the Emergency or during the Shah Bano episode, when short-sighted, self-centred politics got the better of political parties’ national duties and commitments. Similar forces are now creating a false narrative by misguiding a section of our Muslim youth.

Every Indian who is concerned about national unity and integrity, about our social fabric and national ambitions, should work to unite, not divide. Those seeking to weaken us and weaken our national resolve, and those seeking to create fissures by manufacturing false narratives, must be resisted and should be given a fitting reply.

(The writer, a JNU alumnus, is a political analyst. Views are personal)