The Supreme Court on Friday (August 9, 2024) stayed a directive issued by a private college in Maharashtra prohibiting Muslim women students from wearing hijab or other symbols of their faith on campus.
“Will you ban students from wearing a bindi or a tilak?” a Bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Sanjay Kumar asked the lawyers appearing for the Mumbai-based N.G. Acharya and D.K. Marathe College.
Justice Kumar questioned the college’s reasoning that the instruction was intended to draw attention away from the religion of students, and to treat everyone equally on the campus despite their faith.
“Will their names not reveal religion? Will you ask them to be identified by numbers?” Justice Kumar asked.
Justice Khanna said students should be allowed to mingle and study together.
The college, represented by senior advocate Madhavi Divan, had justified that the instruction was to maintain an equanimous academic atmosphere on the campus.
Hearing in Nov.
The Bench asked whether the college had suddenly woken up to the fact that this was a religiously diverse country. It listed the case in November.
A few Muslim students led by Zainab Abdul Qayyum Choudhary had appealed to the Supreme Court against a Bombay High Court decision on June 26, confirming the dress code policy issued by the Chembur Trombay Education Society’s N.G. Acharya and D.K. Marathe College.
The row over wearing hijab in educational institutions had earlier reached the Supreme Court in a case from Karnataka.
Fathima Bushra, a student of the Government P.U. College in Karnataka, had at the time challenged her “debarment” from attending regular classes for wearing hijab. She had argued that her petition raised urgent questions about “essential” religious practices of Muslims, who constitute 18% of the population. She had said the row over hijab should not be seen by the court as a solitary incident but “the latest in a long line of events that have threatened the secular fabric of our society and polity, a number of which are sub judice before the Supreme Court and other courts in the country”.
