The raging hijab controversy in Karnataka and the eruption of protests from the Muslim and Hindu students egged on by rabid elements from the two communities, the stirring of the communal pot by politicians, partisan television gladiators and Twitter warriors on both sides of the ideological and religious divide, brought wistful memories of a lost idyll -- of life in my picturesque village Gorur, in rural Karnataka. A melange of images of my school days swept over me.
We went barefoot to the local Government Middle School in Gorur. We sat on the floor and had no uniform. We ran around, played and soiled our clothes. The students were from all castes — Brahmin, Gowda, Lingayat, Vaishya, shepherd, fisherman, blacksmith, carpenter, potter, barber, temple musician and Dalit. All the boys wore drab cotton chaddi (shorts) and angi (shirt) and the girls attended classes in colourful lehenga and blouse, with flowers in their long tresses, and bindis and bangles. There was a lone Muslim boy in my class who dressed like the rest of us. And there was one Muslim girl in my sister’s class who came in bright salwar kameez, with no hijab.
But there were stark differences in attire among the teachers. The lady teachers came in sarees. While many male teachers walked into the school in pants and shirts, the Kannada Pundit, a Sri Vaishnavaite, wore white khaddar kurta-dhoti, wrapped in the traditional way of the South Indian temple priest, and sported a clean-shaven head with a tuft, and three vertical stripes of namam on the forehead in the style of the great saint-reformer Ramanujacharya. But he was a devout Gandhian and had spent a year with Vinoba Bhave. He was well-read in Kannada, Sanskrit and English, did not believe in superstitions like inauspicious hours (rahu kalam), and used to say, all hours are propitious. He was, to use the much-reviled word, secular — in the widest sense of the word. His actions and words belied his appearance. The Sanskrit Pundit was an orthodox Shaivite Brahmin of the Sanketi sect. He was a reputed Vedic scholar with the title of ‘Ghanapati’, wore no shirts but shawls, had long hair rolled into a bun, and his forehead was blazoned with bold, horizontal vibhooti (holy ash), and he walked on wooden sandals.
One knew from the names, dialects, hijab, burkha, the skull cap, the turban, beard or the kind of dhoti, saree, tuft or the symbols on the forehead, to which religious community one belonged. You got used to seeing your classmates, teachers and the people in the village in their variegated garments and in their many splendoured symbols and headgear, and you did not give it a second thought. They made the same impressions on you as different species of trees or animals or birds.
Some impressions stand out. During Hindu festivals, especially during the annual Rath Yatra festivities of the local deity, who was drawn through the streets on a magnificent festooned wooden chariot, everyone participated, dressed in their finery, including the Muslims. I remember vividly the Moharram processions of the Muslims, when many Hindus daubed paint on their bare bodies and decked by props, looking like tigers, danced in the streets, with lusty music played by Dalits.
We were conscious of the underplay of caste but there was one heart-searing pain underneath this harmony that I sensed even as a young boy. It was the untouchability and discrimination practised against the Dalits. While all communities, including Muslims, lived in different quarters of the ancient village, the Harijan Colony was, and is, always outside the village, a kilometre away, a shameful stain from our hoary past, a stain that continues to tarnish us as a people. All the holy chants and rivers of our country cannot cleanse us of this sin and stain. We have to cure ourselves of this despicable disease before we can ask Muslim women to come out of their purdah.
I am reminiscing, tinged with agony and anguish, in the backdrop of the current antagonistic positions taken by Muslims and Hindus on the wearing of hijab by Muslim girls in junior colleges in Udupi, where they were stopped from entering their classrooms. Was there a necessity to rake this up now, by a few teachers?
Conservative Muslim families placing restrictions on their women citing medieval customs or ancient laws of Shariat, forcing them to wear hijab or burkha or ostracising them, are just like casteist practices of untouchability and violence, khap panchayats, and ‘honour killing’ or the unfounded fears of ‘Love Jihad’, the suppressing of the freedom of girls to make their life choices among many inward-looking Hindu families – all of these are barbaric, abominable and anachronistic in the modern world. A society that does not treat women with dignity and allow them their freedom of choice will forever be backward and mired in poverty while the rest of the world races ahead.
Instilling strong desire and ambition among girls to get educated and become professionals -- doctors, engineers, teachers, film actors, entrepreneurs -- to achieve higher living standards, and inspiring them to become economically independent, to aspire for modern lifestyles with dignity by seeing other successful women of their community, is the surest way to liberate them.
It is peer pressure, personal drive and ambition to choose their professions and their life-partners that will eliminate backwardness and gender inequality. The laws and the Constitution are unambiguous on this, and guarantee these rights. Fanatic mullahs and sadhus and bigoted community elders in both religions are a blot on our civilisation and retrograde.
There is a bigger threat today from politicians and political parties of varying ideologies in realising our dream of becoming a developed, modern and egalitarian society as they are sowing discord and dividing communities with an eye on winning elections. The students are caught between the devil and the deep sea -- between student organisations and fundamentalist outfits like PFI, SFI, NSUI and Ram Sene, Bajrang Dal and ABVP that are spawned by parties on the Left and Right.
Why imprison our children in uniforms? Let us unfetter our children from all bondage. Let them be robed in vibrant colours. Let their minds be awakened and their imagination soar with joy in exploring the mysteries of the world.
It is the not only the sacred duty of teachers and parents but also a moral and constitutional obligation of our politicians to ensure that the “clear stream of reason” of the young children does not lose its way into “the dreary desert sand of dead habit” and their mind is led “forward...into ever-widening thought and action” so that they “awake into that heaven of freedom.”
(The writer is a soldier, farmer and
entrepreneur)