The Allahabad High Court has rejected a Muslim student’s challenge to a school dress code, holding that years of attending class in a headscarf did not entitle her to continue doing so and that her claim of religious necessity rested on a “bare assertion” unsupported by evidence.
In the August 21 order, the Division Bench of Justices JJ Munir and Indrajeet Shukla said a school’s earlier decision not to enforce its dress code could be explained by anything from “lethargy” and “inaction” to “courtesy or hesitation” and could not prevent it from enforcing the rules later.
The order is the latest in a line of judgments that have turned on the “essential religious practice” test under Article 25 of the Constitution. The question of whether wearing a headscarf is religiously obligatory has travelled through multiple High Courts and remains pending before a larger bench of the Supreme Court.
Background of the case
The petitioner, a minor student at a school in Prayagraj, had studied there from Class VI to Class X wearing a headscarf, with photographs and ID cards on record showing her in uniform, scarf included, through those years. She argued that she had worn a headscarf throughout her years at the school without objection and sought permission to continue doing so.
The school said that the scarf violated the dress code and that other students from her own religious community followed the code without it. Admitting her with the scarf would affect “the administration of the School”.
The Assistant District Inspector of Schools, in a report to the District Magistrate, noted that the school is self-financed and has autonomy over its internal discipline and dress code.
The student, who belongs to the Muslim Shia community, told the court the scarf is part of her faith. She pointed out that the school allows students to wear “formal and decent” attire and argued that singling out the scarf effectively treated it as improper. She said that such refusal violates her right to free expression under Article 19(1)(a) and argued that being denied the scarf affected her dignity and bodily integrity.
What the court held
The court rejected each of those arguments. On the years she wore the headscarf without objection, the bench held that this created no enforceable right going forward. The school’s silence back then, it said, could just as easily be attributed to “lethargy, inaction, lack of will, non-enforcement of the uniform policy, even courtesy or hesitation”, none of which prevented it from enforcing the dress code later.
The court also said that this was not a case where the school had changed its uniform policy, it said, but rather a case where the school was insisting that the student give up an addition she had made to the prescribed uniform while studying in the lower classes.
The bench held that as long as a dress code is “uniform, bona fide, non-discriminatory and intended to maintain discipline and institutional identity”, the choice of uniform lies primarily with the school.
On the religious claim, the court described the petitioner’s case as a “bare assertion”. It noted that no authoritative religious text, expert material or other evidence had been placed on record to establish that wearing a headscarf inside the classroom was obligatory upon her or that not doing so would alter the fundamental character of her faith.
The petition, the court observed, relied largely on the fact that she had worn the headscarf since childhood and throughout her years at the school.
The court also noted that in the photographs placed on record, no other girl student was wearing a headscarf, including students whom the school said belonged to the same religious community as the petitioner.
It held that permitting students to depart from a prescribed uniform, “even a little bit…would militate against the idea of a uniform. It would transfer the authority to determine School discipline from the institution to individual students.”
Why the ruling is familiar
The Allahabad High Court located its decision within a line of judgments that have generally treated school uniforms as matters for educational institutions and required students claiming religious protection to demonstrate that the practice in question is obligatory to their faith.
Among them, it most heavily relied on the Karnataka High Court’s 2022 Full Bench judgment in the hijab case, which held that “wearing of hijab by Muslim women does not form a part of essential religious practice in Islamic faith”. The court in that case also held that a uniform requirement did not violate students rights under Articles 14, 15, 19, or 21.
That order eventually reached the Supreme Court in October 2022, and a two-judge bench delivered a split verdict. Justice Hemant Gupta held that “a student… cannot claim the right to wear a headscarf to a secular school as a matter of right” saying that students are required to follow a prescribed uniform in state-run educational institutions.
Justice Sudhanshu Dhulia, in dissent, approached the case through the lens of choice and access to education, saying that “a girl child has the right to wear hijab in her house or outside her house, and that right does not stop at her school gate. The child carries her dignity and her privacy even when she is inside the school gates, in her classroom. She retains her fundamental rights. To say that these rights become derivative rights inside a classroom, is wholly incorrect.”
The matter was referred to the Chief Justice of India to constitute a larger bench.
The High Court also relied on a 2002 Bombay High Court judgment, which held that a Muslim girl studying in an all-girls school could not claim that being required to attend classes without a headscarf violated Article 25. The court found no established religious requirement mandating a head covering in those circumstances.
A 2018 Kerala High Court ruling went further, holding that it is “purely within the domain of the institution” to decide whether to permit a headscarf and that “the Court cannot even direct the institution to consider such a request”.
Since there is still no authoritative ruling of the Supreme Court on the issue, the Allahabad High Court treated the Karnataka judgment, along with similar High Court decisions, as “persuasive authority of great value”.
The question of whether wearing a headscarf is religiously obligatory has travelled through multiple High Courts and remains pending before a larger bench of the Supreme Court. Photo: Arul Horizon 
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