While delivering the verdict on the Hijab controversy, the High Court on Tuesday also referred to the framer of the Constitution, Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar. The court also referred to Ambedkar’s remarks on the purdah system while justifying the ban on hijab in educational institutions. Along with this, the court said that his opinion on the practice of purdah is also applicable to the issue of hijab. The court said, “If things like veils, hijab are there in any community then it can be debated. This affects the freedom of women. This is against the spirit of the Constitution, which talks of equal opportunities for all, participation in public life and positive secularism.
Quoting Bhimrao Ambedkar’s book ‘The Partition of Pakistan and India’, the court said, ‘A Muslim woman is only allowed to see her son, brother, father, uncle and husband. Apart from this, she can only meet some people with whom she has a close relationship. She cannot even go to the mosque for namaz. He has to wear a burqa to go out. Muslims have all the social evils that Hindus have. In many ways, he is more than them. That is the purdah, which has been said to be more important for Muslim women than for Hindus.
Reiterating another observation from the same book, the court said, “Women look helpless in veils. A large number of women are seen in the screen in India and this is one of the reasons for their weakness. One can easily understand from this how big the problem of purdah is in India. Significantly, while justifying the ban on hijab in educational institutions, the court had said that it is not a part of Islam. The court had clearly said that if the uniform has been fixed by the institutions, then it cannot be questioned by the students.