Every morning, before entering her school, 15-year-old Mahmouda Begum takes off her hijab, folds it neatly, before stowing it in her school bag. After school, when she steps out, the hijab is fished out of the bag, wrapped around her head, before she heads home, a few kilometres away.
Begum, a Class 9 student, says it would be “much less hassle” if the hijab was allowed in school, but adds: “Rules are rules, our teachers have a point too.”
In Juria Higher Secondary School, established in 1948, several Muslim girls find themselves in a similar quandary, caught between the duty to their families and religious beliefs to wear the hijab, and the school rules that say that nothing apart from uniform – white kurta and green dupatta for girls, white shirt and green trousers for boys – must be worn.
Asfiya Sultan,15, Begum’s friend and classmate, says that she “feels bad” since the hijab is a “part of her identity”.
“It is something I wear at home, a part of my identity. Our families want us to wear it, elders on the road chide us if we don’t. Then when we come to school, we are not allowed to,” she says.
More than 3,000 km away from Karnataka, where a controversy over the hijab is playing out, girls like Sultan and Begum find an echo. “I do not know the details but it is good that the girls have spoken their mind,” says Sultan, on the Karnataka issue.
Located in Assam’s Nagaon district, Juria is home to a sizeable Bengali Muslim population of migrant origin, with several Assamese Hindu pockets. Given Assam’s sensitive identity battles between those considered “indigenous” and those perceived as “outsiders”, locals are only too aware of these differences, and are conscious about maintaining inter-community peace.
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This applies to Juria High School too, with its 1,000-odd students, out of whom about 483 are girls. “Everyone is sensitive to the historical faultlines here,” says principal Rupalim Sarma, who has taught in the school for three decades.
“Our rules strictly say that a dress code should be followed, and it is an unwritten rule that hijabs, burqas or any other outside attire… jeans for that matter… will not be allowed,” she says. So if students are ever seen wearing the hijab, members of the faculty gently tell them not to, says Sarma.
“If they just use the school dupatta to cover their heads, we do not say anything – but if it is of another colour, we usually tell them. We are careful, so that no one feels bad. Till now, the issue has never escalated,” she adds.
Rajesh Bora, who teaches English, says that he tells his students that the moment they walk into the school, they leave their religious identities outside. “Everyone is equal here. We have a uniform, and we should follow it. We should not add our own identity to it,” he says.
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Class 9 student Tonu Saha, 15, agrees. “In school everyone is the same, Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian…That is why we have a uniform,” she says, adding that her two best friends, Farzin and Narzin, are Muslims. “There is no difference between us, so why should the uniforms be different?” she asks.
Narzin, 15, adds that she wears hijab at home, but not at school, and has no problem with it. “I don’t feel bad that I don’t have to wear it in school,” she says, echoing her friend’s argument of everyone being “equal” in school.
Nurjahnnur Huda, 17, points out that if everyone is equal in school, why should the hijab pose a problem. “My simple argument is that if all of us are equal, if we are secular, if we respect each other’s religions, why should a cloth on our heads, even if we do wear it, be a problem?”
The Class 12 student does not wear a hijab, and simply covers her head with her school dupatta. However, whenever she attends her school’s Saraswati Puja function, she wears a traditional Assamese Mekhela Chadar, her long hair open. “No one has told me not to cover my hair with my school dupatta, but if they do, I will also explain to the teacher my point of view… like the Karnataka girls did,” she says.
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Mridul Nath, Inspector of Schools, Nagaon district, says that while there are minority-dominated areas in the district, students usually follow the set uniform in the school. “They may wear their traditional attire at home as per custom, but do not wear it to school, and follow the dress code,” he says.
