Asked to remove hijab, girl boycotts exam

Bengaluru: The hijab row continued to simmer in Karnataka on Tuesday over alleged denial of entry for girl students into schools with their headscarves on in some places, as one such girl announced boycotting her exam in response to the diktat.

Scenes of angry parents of such children arguing with police and school authorities and an instance of a student trying to flaunt a saffron scarf as an apparent retaliation were also reported. The Karnataka High Court, in its interim order last week restrained all the students from wearing saffron shawls, scarves, hijab and any religious flag within the classroom.

High schools were reopened across the State on Monday, even as there were instances of students turning up in Hijab and burqa then, only to be denied entry or asked by officials to remove them, citing the High Court order. On Tuesday, at a school in the district headquarters town of Shivamogga, a Burqa-wearing girl refused to write her exam when the school authorities asked her to remove her Hijab first.

"We have grown up wearing Hijab since our childhood and we cannot give it up. I will not write the exam and I will go home," the girl told reporters. In a government school in Indavara village in Chikkamagaluru district, Muslim girls were not let inside the school and were asked to go back. Soon, their parents reached the school and staged a protest. They barged into the campus, raised slogans and demanded that the order should be given to them in writing. As the protest intensified, another student pulled out a saffron scarf from his school bag. On the direction of his teachers, he put it back inside.

Sensing the situation, the principal closed the school for the day. In another institution in Chikkamagaluru town, tension prevailed over denial of entry to the students with hijab. Parents swarmed the school and questioned the school authorities how their children were not allowed inside. Policemen deployed there told the crowd that there was a High Court order not to let anyone wearing Hijab or saffron scarves but the parents were not ready to listen and insisted that their wards be allowed to write the exam.