Quite predictably, Pakistani ministers, including Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, waded into India’s billowing hijab row in the southern state of Karnataka, terming it a grave violation of human rights. “Depriving Muslim girls of education is a grave violation of fundamental human rights,” he said, adding, “To deny anyone this fundamental right & terrorize them for wearing a hijab is absolutely oppressive,” Qureshi alleged that it was India’s state plan of ghettoization of Muslims, and asked the world to take note of it. 

Information and Broadcasting Minister Fawad Hussain, not to be left behind in the India-baiting game, said what was going on in India was terrifying and "Indian society is declining with super speed under unstable leadership".

Nobel laureate Malala Yusufzai also termed the controversy "horrifying," asking Indian leaders to stop the "marginalization of Muslim women". 

However, Asaduddin Owaisi, one of the most prominent Muslim leaders in India and an MP, advised Pakistan to mind its own problems, terming the issue an “internal matter of India.” 

“This is my country, not yours. It is our internal matter…We will see it,” Owaisi, one of the fiercest critics of the ruling BJP, said on Wednesday while castigating Pakistan for trampling on the rights of non-Muslims there. He also referred to the attack on Malala in Pakistan in his speech. 

What started with a school in the Udupi district in December last year, the controversy escalated to hundreds of schools this week across Karnataka, creating a huge law and order situation and sparking a nationwide debate over dress code and identity assertion. 

On Tuesday, the BJP-ruled state government deployed police forces on schools across the state and ordered the closure of all schools for the next three days. Currently, a petition filed by Muslim girls asserting their rights under India's Constitution has been pending in Karnataka High Court on the matter. Considering the sensitivity of the issue, the matter was referred to a larger bench on Wednesday.

Some schools object to hijab which is not part of the sanctioned school dresses while protesting girls see it as a matter of choice under their religion and demand they be allowed to attend classes with the headdress. The divide among students on school campuses on religious lines has never been this big in India before. This week, a section of students belonging to the Hindu community staged counter-protests, wearing saffron shawls, and protested when some schools permitted Muslim girls with hijab.

Rights activists also seem divided on the issue, with some for allowing it in schools, terming hijab a part of religious attire, just as turbans are for Sikhs, arguing that denying access to education for Muslim girls over hijab-wearing was unjustified, while others say that religious attire and assertion of religious identity had no place in a secular India. 

With both sides hardening their stands, and political parties jumping in, a small-town issue, that could easily have been resolved with some mature handling, has snowballed into an international headline-grabbing controversy causing deeper schisms in India's already frayed social fabric. 

 (SAM)