A video posted on Twitter showing a hijab-wearing Muslim student being heckled by a Hindu far-right mob at a college in Karnataka state has caused outrage amid intensifying protests over ban on Islamic headscarves in the southern state.
Muskan Khan was surrounded by men wearing saffron scarves as she arrived at her college in Mandya, the viral video showed, as she confronted the protesters, many of whom, she said, were outsiders.
The ban on Islamic headscarves has outraged Muslim students who say it’s an attack on their faith which is very legal in India’s secular constitution, while Hindu right-wing groups have tried to prevent Muslim women from entering educational institutions causing communal tension.
"I was just there to submit an assignment; that’s why I entered the college. They were not allowing me to go inside just because I was wearing the burqa," Khan later told India’s NDTV news channel.
“After that, they started shouting the slogan ‘Jai Shri Ram’. Then I started to scream ‘Allah Akbar’ ” she said, adding that she would keep fighting for her right to wear the hijab.
“Ten percent of the protesters were from the college but the rest of them were outsiders,” Khan said.
Students at a government-run high school were told not to wear hijabs last month. Since then Hindu far-right groups have tried to prevent hijab-wearing Muslim women from entering educational institutions in the state.
Pakistani education rights icon Malala Yousafzai called the hijab ban for students “horrifying”.
Critics have said Modi’s election in 2014 emboldened Hindu supremacists who see India as a Hindu nation and are seeking to undermine its secular foundations at the expense of its 200 million-strong minority Muslim community.
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