LAST WEEK I found myself embroiled unwittingly in the hijab saga. I did not mean to get caught up in it but when I saw well-meaning women, most prominently Priyanka Gandhi, proclaim that to wear or not wear a hijab was a matter of choice, I felt it was necessary to point out that this is rubbish. Women brought up in conservative Muslim homes are taught from the time they are small girls that veiling themselves is an act of piety and they should accept this unquestioningly. When this idea is taken to its logical conclusion, we get Afghanistan, Iran, and the awful ISIS caliphate. When the caliphate was at the height of its power and glory, women could be shot in the street for showing their faces in public.
When the Prophet of Islam urged women to dress modestly, he may not have realised that what modesty meant exactly would be determined by men. This is what has happened, and there is no point in pretending that wearing a hijab is a matter of choice. It is not. This is why the sight of young women demanding the ‘right’ to wear a hijab is distressing and to see liberal ladies with powerful voices back them up even more so. Islam has given the world some fine ideas about equality and brotherhood, but the treatment of women is not one of them. Since India is not an Islamic country, Muslim women should be encouraged to rid themselves of their robes and headgear instead of being encouraged to fight for their ‘right’ to wear a hijab.
Once embroiled in the controversy, I began to examine more closely what was happening in Karnataka, and the closer I looked, the more worried I became. What worried me most was that the students who were part of the original protest were being supported by the Campus Front of India (CFI), which is the student wing of the Popular Front of India (PFI). This is a violent, jihadist organisation. It has an army of jihadists who often participate in military drills. The next one is planned in Murshidabad next week on February 17 with the stated aim of taking on ‘Hindu, fascist forces’.
My own interest in the PFI began in 2010 when it ordered an attack on a teacher in Kerala, Professor T J Joseph, and in this attack his hand was chopped off by PFI fanatics. He was punished because in the eyes of the PFI he had insulted the Prophet Mohammad. The PFI embodies the kind of radical Islam that has been directly responsible for most attacks of jihadi terrorism in the world and that has given birth to the Taliban government that now rules Afghanistan. Indian Muslims who have been feeling increasingly alienated in Narendra Modi’s ‘new India’ are particularly vulnerable to the ideas of political Islam being spread by organisations like the PFI. So, it should surprise nobody if, when a proper investigation into the hijab protest is conducted, it turns out that the PFI sponsored it. Without powerful backing it is hard to imagine how it has been possible for a small group of Muslim students to have taken their hijab demand right up to the Supreme Court.
It is just as hard to understand how a protest that began in one government college in Udipi should have so quickly and easily garnered the support of veiled Muslim women in cities across India. Veiled protesters in different cities carried the same placards that said, ‘Hijab is my Right’. This protest is no longer about Muslim girls being denied access to education but Muslim girls becoming unwitting pawns of political forces whose ideology and ideas are the opposite of the ideas that define India in our Constitution. What is more worrying is that the men who control the PFI have convinced these young girls that it is the Constitution of India that gives them the right to freedom of religion and worship. It does give them this right. What it does not give is the right for forces like the PFI to spread their violent, ugly ideology unchecked.
At a personal level, I first noticed the spread of radical Islam in our southern states more than 20 years ago. I was in Coimbatore to investigate the serial bombs that went off on February 14, 1998, in which 58 people were killed and more than 200 injured. I remember going to a Muslim locality around a large mosque and discovering that Tamil Muslim girls who once dressed in saris like their Hindu sisters were now wearing salwar-kurtas and wandering about in elaborate hijabs. When I tried to engage them in conversation, they said they were not allowed to speak to strangers unless they got permission from the local maulvi. So off I went to the mosque in search of him, but as I remember it, either permission to speak was not given to the girls or the maulvi remained elusive.
After the 9/11 attacks, radical Islam has spread exponentially among our Muslim communities. Before Narendra Modi became Prime Minister, they said it was a response to Islamophobia and the demolition of the Babri Masjid. Today they say it is a response to what PFI videos call ‘Hindu, fascist forces’. What is clear is that these developments are dangerous for national security and need to be investigated and stopped urgently and firmly.
