Burning the veil: An Indian response

I would learn that Iranian women are among the most educated in the region, with an 83% literacy rate and have one of the highest participation in the sciences

It has been thrilling to see Iranian women throw off their chadors (long loose veils), rip off their scarves, and dance with abandon before they burn the veils and chop off their hair. It's just one of those poignant and brave moments of woman power, when a people long suppressed find utterance. Thirty-five people have been killed in the week-long protests that continue across Iran, triggered by the death of a young woman arrested by the morality police, and 750 arrested, according to state TV. Pro-government counter-protests have also begun.

The interpretation of Islam that imposes a "non-choice" of dress on women is done by a deeply patriarchal system. But be it Iran or India, the issue of women covering their heads/faces or choosing not to do so is complex. In Iran, they do not have a choice. In Indian public spaces, women do as per the law of the land, but there are different layers to this debate in contemporary times. All cannot be seen in black and white.

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In 2017 during a visit to Iran, I met Masoumeh Ebtekar, then one of the four vice presidents of the country and the most powerful woman in the government of the Islamic Republic. She was a woman who could not be forgotten: she was the main spokesperson for the group of students that took over the US embassy in Tehran and held fifty-two US diplomats hostage for 444 days from November 4, 1979, to January 20, 1981, in the wake of the Islamic revolution.

Unlike most Iranians, she was fluent in English and she spoke with an American accent. Ebtekar's father studied at the University of Pennsylvania, and she lived with her parents in the US for six years, hence her perfect English. But she would return to Iran, enrol in university and become influenced by the ideas of Ali Shariati, who focused on the sociology of religion and is considered one of the important Iranian intellectuals of the 20th century. That's when Ebtekar covered herself with a chador revealing only her face, and later joined the revolution.

During the same trip, I would also do a day-long trek in the mountains that ring Tehran. On the journey, I would cross several women trekking up and down with smart shoes and sports clothes, while their headscarves would fall loosely and often fall off entirely. I would learn that Iranian women are among the most educated in the region, with an 83 per cent literacy rate. They have one of the highest participation in the sciences, and each year 60 per cent of seats in universities in all streams are filled by women, who make up half the faculties as well. A visit to the Iranian news agency IRNA too, had me landing on a floor full of women in black chadors doing the work of journalists. As they floated along in black robes, I wondered how many would like to get rid of the chadors.

Personally, I always resented the few occasions in my growing-up years when I was required to hide my face, or sit behind a purdah, when a maulana would come to the masjid and Imambara in the village home, mostly during Muharram. I objected as a child to being asked to sit in hot, cramped sections behind a curtain while men sat in the main spaces serviced by coolers and fans. I will, however, also qualify this by saying that in my family, there are also many erudite women who sit on the pulpit giving religious sermons (but on days when the maulana arrives, they sit behind the purdah). As a woman who always had freedom of choice, I could object and chose not to be part of something even if it made me mildly uncomfortable.

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As an adult, I would say there are two reasons Muslim women wear veils. Mostly because they have to as the larger social milieu determined by men and mullahs ordains it. These women, therefore, have limited choices. But there are also women who actually choose the veil as a response to a world that is hostile to Muslims/Islam. The first such woman I met was an Egyptian journalist on a fellowship with me at Oxford University, just months after the 9/11 attack on the US. The so-called 'War on Terror' had begun, and my friend was a single woman then, a fantastic journalist, who covered the Muslim Brotherhood for a leading Cairo newspaper. Her mother did not wear the head scarf but my friend did as a response to a world that she perceived as being hostile to her people and faith. She would often hold forth on how the US used Islam to fund and create the most extreme interpretations and then used that to destroy an entire region.

I would leave Oxford with two good friends: an Irishman who went to the local pub every night and my Egyptian friend who could not fit into social activities that centred on pubs. I could straddle both worlds and remained friends with her, visiting Cairo later and getting an invite to write in her newspaper (which I was delighted to do as, at that time, the great Edward Said also wrote for that paper). She was the first woman I met who found it liberating to symbolically highlight her Muslim-ness.

Later I would see this process unfold in India. Some years ago, I was invited by a professor at one of the leading women's colleges at Delhi University to engage with students who were choosing to cover their heads. The professor was worried about this phenomenon among otherwise bright and empowered women. I had a closed-door meeting with about 30 women. And some of the women at the DU college had indeed taken to the head scarf or burqa without any family pressure to do so.

One of them, who was also teaching at the college, had become deeply religious after following online sermons. A young Kashmiri student had once covered her head and later abandoned it and found freedom in that. The overwhelming consensus was for free choice to wear or not wear the veil. I remember the disturbing but accurate observation of one young woman that today they are objectified for wearing a scarf as if it were a micro mini skirt.

I personally do not believe women should have to hide anything, head, face, limbs, mind, views, if they don't want to. Simultaneously, I have discovered socio-political and psychological reasons why some Indian women are choosing to do so. Some are responding to the exclusion from other communities by becoming more Muslim in their appearance. They feel their religion and community are under attack and therefore choose to assert their faith more explicitly. There have always been interpretations of Islam that would encourage women to do so.

(Saba Naqvi is a journalist and author)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.