Karnataka: Decision on Hijab ban to be in students’ favour, says education minister
A day after academicians met Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah over the hijab ban in educational institutes and changes to textbooks brought in by the former BJP government, state education minister Madhu Bangarappa on Tuesday said that the Congress government will take a “decision that will benefit all students”.
Refusing to comment on the hijab row as the matter is sub-judice, Bangarappa said, “The case is currently in the court and the law department will fight it legally. It would be wrong to comment on it further. But we will take a decision that will benefit all students.”
On Monday, about 30 academicians met CM Siddaramaiah in Bengaluru, and submitted a memorandum with various demands to reform the education sector.
“Thousands of girls are deprived of education due to the hijab controversy,” they said in the memorandum, urging the government to revoke a ban on students wearing the hijab to classes.
A controversy erupted in the state in December 2021 when six students of a government pre-university college in Udupi district protested after being barred from attending classes for wearing the headscarf. After the state government issued an order banning entry to classes of students wearing the hijab, the matter reached the Karnataka high court on January 31 last year. While the high court ruled that hijab is not “essential” to the practice of Islam, the Supreme Court in October last year referred the case to a bench led by Chief Justice of India Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud.
Ahead of the elections, the Congress in its manifesto said that the BJP “distorted textbooks” by “insulting great souls of Karnataka such as Vishwaguru Basavanna, Rashtrakavi Kuvempu”. The party promised it will restore the “true values of Bharath and Karnataka and scientific temper”.
On Tuesday, Bangarappa, who was the vice president of the Congress’ manifesto committee, said, “We have already said that students come to schools to get educated and we don’t want it to be disturbed, and there should be no mistake on part of the government or me or officials or the system in this regard. We have given the commitment.”
He further said, “In the manifesto, we had said clearly that textbook revision will take place in the interest of the students’ future. We don’t want their minds to get polluted.”
The textbooks with changes made by the BJP government have already been dispatched and the school session begins from Wednesday.
“The challenge before us now is, how we will do it (review the changes) with care, without affecting the students and their studies,” Bangarappa said. The commitment in the manifesto will be taken forward with the guidance of the chief minister and deputy chief minister DK Shivakumar, he said.
Congress leader and public works minister Satish Jarkiholi also said that the textbooks will be reviewed. “We will remove the unnecessary content in the textbooks. The process of addition and removal of new text will be done based on the report given by the expert committee,” he said in Belagavi.
The Congress government is expected to set up a committee to review the revisions made to the textbooks, a senior leader familiar with the matter said.
Former CM Basavaraj Bommai, however, took exception to the Congress government’s plans of reviewing the changes made to the textbooks.
“We had introduced certain new lessons based on Indian culture, literature and principles. However, the new government is trying to target this, and is set to form a new committee to reverse this. The society will respond to this,” Bommai said.
“Parents are observing the moves of the new government. Students should not be inconvenienced due to frequent revisions in textbooks. Let us see how responsibly this government will behave,” he said.