India top court judges split on headscarf in classrooms
India’s Supreme Court has failed to deliver a verdict on whether Muslim students can wear the hijab in schools and colleges, with two judges expressing opposing views.
One judge upheld a Karnataka high court order from March that said the hijab was not “essential” to Islam.
The other said the high court order was erroneous and wearing the hijab was a matter of choice.
The verdict was expected to cap a 10-month-long polarising debate in India.
But Thursday’s development means the debate over the hijab will continue to consume the Indian public and the judiciary – as the judges could not agree on a decision, they have now requested the chief justice of India to recommend it to a larger bench.
The decision of Justice Hemant Gupta – who headed the two-judge bench – to uphold the high court order was widely expected. During the hearing, some of his comments had made headlines – he had told a lawyer arguing for the right to wear the hijab that “you can’t take it to illogical ends” and asked him whether the “right to dress will include right to undress also?”
But Justice Sudhanshu Dhulia, the second judge, said in his order that the high court took a wrong path by focusing on whether the hijab was an essential religious practice and that wearing it was “ultimately a matter of choice – nothing more and nothing less”.
The row began at the start of the year in the southern state of Karnataka when a government college in Udupi district barred six Muslim girls from wearing the hijab in class.
Agencies