Mahsa Amini was a young Kurdish-Iranian woman, who was detained by the police for wearing her headscarf improperly. She was reportedly hit on the head with a baton. Amini died later in police custody. Her death has caused widespread protests in Iran, and garnered international solidarity for the protestors.
In India, at first, the incident of the hijab in Iran was juxtaposed awkwardly with that of headscarves in Karnataka, “they want to wear, they don’t want to wear or they just want to create trouble?” It was then that we collectively realised that the hijab was only a trope — the women were really claiming for themselves the right to choose.
At birth, Mahsa Amini was named Zhina, her name in her native Kurdish language. Her family and friends called her Zhina, but she was forced to also carry a Persian name for the purposes of official documentation, for the Islamic state does not recognise certain ethnic names that promote “separatism”. As Justice Hemant Gupta held in his judgment on the hijab case “the students should look alike, feel alike, think alike… for a cohesive cordial atmosphere”.
Zhina Amini was a member of the Kurdish minority. Do police in Iran exert more force on the marginalised, as they do elsewhere too?
I have a memory of two evenings in Colombo many years ago. They were army pickets in the city and people were routinely stopped and their papers checked. The first evening I happened to be walking with a Tamil friend, who immediately became alert as we approached the picket, took out her papers, stretched her hand out and waited patiently as the soldier took his time scrutinising her documents. Another evening I was walking with a Sinhalese friend, who realised that “she had forgotten her ID card at home”. First, she sighed, then she giggled, and then she bantered with the soldier. We were past the picket within seconds.
The Iranian leader, Ali Khameini, recently said on his official Twitter handle “many Iranian women who don’t observe the hijab perfectly are among the steadfast supporters of the Islamic Republic”.
Amini belonged to a community that is politically suspect amongst the establishment — there is an ongoing Kurdish separatist movement. The Iranian security forces frequently perform surgical strikes on the Kurdish opposition hiding in the mountainous borders with Iraq.
Could it be said that the “establishment of national consciousness and unity” is practised mostly qua minorities and dissidents, not so much on those who “steadfastly support the establishment”, even when they are not following its everyday rules for disciplining?
The “hijab case” is only a trope to think about so many other issues. When we think about the deployment of state power on certain communities to make them uniform, or even when the courts consider arbitrary application of UAPA on certain dissenters, we are really discussing the same primary question: How do we deal with difference and dissent? Do we police the margins and bring into line those who insist on looking and being different as per Justice Gupta? Or do we warmly smile at, and engage with difference in the manner shown by Justice Sudhanshu Dhulia?
The hijab case is also a good place to ask how individual members of a political minority negotiate their freedoms vis-à-vis their community, which might be closing in on itself in the face of persecution? Political minorities organise around their primary identity, and all other inequalities and bigotries within remain suspended in the moment, especially when faced with a “disciplining state”. Justice Dhulia provides a way by making available to all such individual spaces for critical thinking, and on their own terms. He cites approvingly two judgments from South Africa and the UK to make the point: “The school argued that if Sunali did not like the Code, she could simply go to another school that would allow her to wear the nose stud. I cannot agree… the effect of this would be to marginalise religions and cultures, something that is completely inconsistent with.. our Constitution.” And: “Young girls from ethnic, cultural or religious minorities growing up here face difficult choices: How far to adopt or to distance themselves from the dominant culture. A good school will enable and support them.”
Such an attitude makes for confident minorities and makes internal reform eminently more possible.
But on the question of policing difference, the two judgments present two diverse understandings of education and citizenship. Justice Dhulia states, “This is the time when they should learn not to be alarmed by our diversity, but to rejoice and celebrate (it)… All the Petitioners want is to wear a hijab! Is it too much to ask in a democracy?” He envisages it as a time to explore and experiment, while Justice Gupta has a sterner view: “Discipline is one of the attributes which the students learn in schools. … They should grow in an atmosphere of brotherhood and fraternity and not in the environment of rebel or defiance.”
Gupta’s imagination of the public space is counterfactual. It is devoid of any political, social or economic contexts. But for lack of uniforms, all students are truly equal in all respects — there are no conflicts over Dalit cooks serving mid-day meals, no difference in resources and opportunities between students, no discrimination around gender and sexuality. It is like the received story of Mahsa Amini, devoid of her contexts in Iran — as it was celebrated in India.
Dhulia, in contrast, notes: “History teaches us that there have been but few infringements of personal liberty by the state which have not been justified, as they are here, in the name of righteousness and the public good, and few which have not been dictated, as they are now, at politically helpless minorities.” I believe he understands the struggle of Zhina Amini.
The writer is a Supreme Court lawyer. She assisted with research on the case for the Petitioner’s side. The views expressed here are her own
