Opinion Firasha Shaikh writes: I’d like to have conversations beyond my identity as a hijabi woman

A recent report by The Indian Express revealed that many Muslim students in Karnataka have had to shift to private colleges as a result of institutional setbacks in government colleges. Muslim girls constitute a significantly higher proportion of these students. The story becomes even more sobering when we realise that many, if not most, come from impoverished backgrounds.

The entire hijab controversy serves as a grim encapsulation of the anxieties and struggles that shape the experience of Indian Muslim hijab-wearing students today. The burden of representation; the responsibility of overcoming structural barriers; the constant anxiety to prove that we are “just as good” as our classmates; Islamophobia among teachers and peers. We are forced to constantly question our own merit when we are denied opportunities due to our sartorial choices and religious beliefs.

Since most of my schooling was outside India and the college I attended for my graduate degree was a Muslim-majority one, for the longest time I witnessed the discourse around Indian Muslims in education from an outsider’s perspective. That changed when I started attending coaching classes to prepare for competitive exams. The extent of the marginalisation that Muslims are subjected to hit me when I first walked into the classroom. In a room with 300 students, I was the only burqa-clad woman.

After one particular class, a group of newly-formed non-Muslim friends started asking me why I wore the burqa and/or hijab, why Muslim men give triple talaq, etc. I sensed no hint of malice in their questions; it was genuine curiosity. Many hijabi students can attest to that little double-take that teachers and classmates do when they discover that you wear the burqa and yet speak good English and like pop culture.

One family member told me how her classmates were quite surprised to learn that she was into pop culture. They came from the same socioeconomic background. This was also why, according to her, they repeatedly questioned her choice as they couldn’t fathom why someone who identified with them in every other aspect would willingly wear a hijab. In their minds, the hijab was only associated with being uneducated and backward.

The experience of Indian Muslim girls and young women in education is highly differentiated, ordered by caste and class. By no means are hijabi students a monolith. I often wonder: Would the same opportunities be available and just as easily to, say, a hijabi student from a regional background? To a hijabi student who lives in a chawl or one who hails from a rural area?

One painful reality of being a Muslim student is the erasure and dismissal of the historical truths about Indian Muslims by teachers who claim to be “apolitical”. Teachers are responsible for dispelling the myth of the Muslim “other”, propagated far and wide to young, impressionable minds. Instead, most teachers in India today are either parroting stigmatising and harmful right-wing narratives about Indian politics and history, or have a skewed understanding of “secularism”. A secularism that draws false equivalences between “Muslim communalism” and “Hindu communalism”; equates parochialism among certain sections of the Muslim community with the project of Hindutva.

In both narratives, we see a faux transcendental idea of “unity in diversity” and “religion and caste-blindness”. Why this is problematic is a discussion for another article, but the fact is that the intellectual alienation caused by these narratives is extremely damaging.

Growing up, we were always told by our parents: “Be careful when you go to a ‘gair-Muslim mahoul’ (‘non-Muslim majority environment’)”. “You are like the ambassador of the Muslim community. Don’t say or do anything that will reflect badly on Muslims,” they said. In the rare instances that I was in a “gair-Muslim mahoul”, I realised that, subconsciously, I would try to subvert the typical stereotypes of Muslims being backward.

Even if this charge of Muslims being parochial is true, who is responsible for it? Is it not the structural inequalities and historical injustices carried out against the Muslim community of India that are responsible for their marginalisation and its consequences?

My experience pales in comparison to what other Muslim students in India are facing, like the heart-breaking cases of students like Najeeb Ahmed and Fathima Latheef.

To my young fellow Indians, I say: I’d like to have conversations beyond my identity as a hijabi woman. I’d like to talk to you about the politics behind the latest trend of demolition drives and evictions. I’d like to talk to you about how the current rapid corporatisation of education is class warfare and will further deepen the caste-based faultlines in India. I’d like to talk to you about the imminent energy crisis. I’d like to discuss the possibilities of a peaceful future without the violence currently besieging us by the exigencies of a police state. I would love to show you that I have something to add to these conversations. Not despite my Muslim-ness, but because of it. Precisely because my Islamic faith exhorts me to seek knowledge and utilise it in the service of humanity.

But how will we ever even begin to have these conversations when the only time the mic, camera, and podium are turned towards us is when there is a specific narrative that needs to be established about us by the powers that be?

(The writer is a student and holds a postgraduate degree in political science)