Student organizations demonstrate in Kolkata on October 20, protesting the death of Mahsa Amini while in police custody in Iran.
Debarchan Chatterjee / NurPhoto via Getty Images
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Student organizations demonstrate in Kolkata on October 20, protesting the death of Mahsa Amini while in police custody in Iran.
Debarchan Chatterjee / NurPhoto via Getty Images
MUMBAI, India – Scenes of Iranian women protested and burned their headscarves attracted Indians, in part because they are seeing the opposite scenario playing out at home: Muslim women sue the Indian government to have the right to keep their headscarves private.
Their case, brought about by high school students being banned from wearing headscarves in classrooms in southern India, landed in the country’s Supreme Court, where this month judges admitted that even both of them. was unable to agree on this issue.
It is a reflection of how sensitive anything related to the hijab is in Hindu-majority India, especially under Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Lawmakers from his Hindu nationalist party have accused of inciting violence against India’s 200 million Muslims – the country’s largest minority.
But Modi’s Hindu conservatives are supporting Muslim female protesters in Iran.
Accused of anti-Muslim discrimination at home, Hindu nationalists speak out in support of Iranian women
The protests in Iran fit a narrative common among many Hindus in India: the headscarf is an example of “radical Islam”, a tool for controlling women and a slippery road to clerical control.
Earlier this month, Bollywood star Priyanka Chopra condemned the death in custody in Iran of Mahsa Amini, who was arrested by the country’s so-called ethics police for not wearing a headscarf properly. Chopra was targeted on charges of hypocrisy for not expressing concerns about the treatment of Muslims in India.
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Earlier this month, Bollywood star Priyanka Chopra condemned the death in custody in Iran of Mahsa Amini, who was arrested by the country’s so-called ethics police for not wearing a headscarf properly. Chopra was targeted on charges of hypocrisy for not expressing concerns about the treatment of Muslims in India.
Eugene Gologursky / Getty Images for Fast Company
“Since 9/11, the first thing you see with the arrival of radical Islam is the dress,” said journalist Tavleen Singh. said on a recent TV news program. “Every time a man decides what a woman should wear, it’s wrong. The hijab … is used as a political weapon.”
Singh comes from a Sikh family. She was an original Modi supporter, the latter wrote a book about how she became disgusted with him.
But her views on women’s dress resonate with Modi’s supporters, who fear the influence of Islam in India and indicate that the Indian authorities are not alone in their efforts. Limit headscarves. The Muslim face covering, although not the head covering, banned in France also.
Swati Goel Sharma, author of a new book titled Hijab Debate: Subjugation is sold as freedom.
That’s why she opposes it in Indian public school classrooms. “It’s like turning a wheel,” she said.
Sharma and her co-author Sanjeev Newar filed a lawsuit against Muslim schoolgirls in the high court of Karnataka, a southern Indian state.
Many Hindu nationalists see contradictions in those who support Iranian women removing the hijab while also supporting Indian women who want to keep them.
Members of the All India Muslim Students Union demonstrate against the Karnataka state government’s ban on headscarves in schools, at Delhi University on February 8.
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Members of the All India Muslim Students Federation demonstrate against the Karnataka state government’s ban on headscarves in schools, at Delhi University on February 8.
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“Protest Hijab in Iran. Support Hijab in India. Hypocrisy of Liberal gangs!” CT Ravi, national secretary general of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, tweeted last month.
Muslim women say it’s a choice
But many women on the left and right in India say that’s not true. They say it’s not about the hijab. It’s about choice.
“In Iran, the state is interfering with women’s rights – women’s right to choose – to decide what to wear and what not to wear. And that is exactly the problem with Muslim girls in schools in Iran. Karnataka has to face,” Samar said. Ali, secretary general of the student union at the College of English and Foreign Languages in Hyderabad, southern India.
Ali, who wears a headscarf, accuses hypocrisy in another direction. If you champion the Iranian women’s pick, she said, you have to do the same with the Karnataka girls. People who don’t have “double standards,” she said.
“It’s clear how prejudiced these people are. Even the media in India, it portrays the protests in Iran as simply anti-hijab,” Ali said. “But more than that, it’s women’s fundamental right to choose.”
Iranian protesters demonstrate in Tehran on September 21, after Mahsa Amini died in the custody of the country’s so-called ethics police.
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Iranian protesters demonstrate in Tehran on September 21, after Mahsa Amini died in the custody of the country’s so-called ethics police.
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Both sides decried the media coverage of the issue. Those on the right argue that the West has unfairly celebrated high school girls in Karnataka. And they accuse Indian Muslim groups of being relatively quiet about the Iranian protests.
But everyone seems to agree on one thing: When Bollywood celebrities weigh in, they get too much coverage.
A top Bollywood actress comments on Iran – and gets exposed online
On October 7, Indian film star Priyanka Chopra condemned the death in custody in Iran of Mahsa Amini, who was arrested by the country’s so-called ethics police for not wearing a hijab. head properly. Chopra said she was “frightened” about the Iranian protests that followed.
“Voices raised after so many periods of forced silence, indeed will erupt like a volcano! And they will not and MUST not be raised,” the actor said. wrote on Instagram.
She was quickly vilified for it, and accused of hypocrisy.
Nabiya Khan, an Indian Muslim poet who wears a headscarf, said Chopra has been unequivocally silent about the persecution of minorities in his homeland.
“We have never heard her raise concerns against mass vandalism, the illegal demolition of Muslim homes and the alarming rise in hate crimes against humanity,” she said. with Muslims and Dalits in India.
This is not the first time Chopra, a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations, face accusations of hypocrisy.
Two years ago, after she expressed support for Black Lives MatterObservers pointed out that in 2008, she appeared in a series of promotional videos for skin lightening creams in India called White Beauty. She later says she regrets those ads.
The hijab is used as a political tool against governments
The way Indians perceive the anti-hijab movement in Iran largely depends on religion and ideology.
“The right wing, they want to vilify Islam,” said Debangana Chatterjee, a political scientist at Jain University in Bengaluru. “Then there are libertarians on the left who say that women’s choice should take precedence.”
Chatterjee says all they’re missing is a history: In both Iran and India, the hijab has been used as a tool of political activism against the government.
Before Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution, the Muslim veil was “a symbol of resistance against the oppressive Shah regime,” writes Chatterjee. in a recent essay for the Indian online publication Scroll.in. They were also used by Algerian nationalists against the French, and in 1970s Egypt, she noted. Chatterjee says they are now being used by Karnataka schoolgirls to assert their right to self-determination.
“Someone’s wearing a burqa isn’t necessarily out of date,” she said. “The idea of repression isn’t in whether someone is wearing it, but in whether or not they’re wearing it by choice.” “It’s what connects India and Iran.”
