Students protest with books in hijab row : Shutting doors of classrooms on girls for wearing a hijab violates their fundamental rights, say protesters

Protesters on Hazra Road on Wednesday. Picture by Bishwarup Dutta

Debraj Mitra   |  TT  |   Kolkata   |   17.02.22 : One woman walked with Rabindranath Tagore, another with Virginia Woolf. Samuel Beckett to Arundhati Roy, authors past and present were in tow.

At a rally in south Kolkata against the hijab controversy on Wednesday evening, each participant carried a book. Organisers said the books were a symbolic protest against “the saffronisation of education and policing of women”.

The rally was called “Kitaab aur Inquilab (Books and Revolution)”.

Shutting the doors of classrooms on girls for wearing a hijab violated their fundamental rights, said marchers.

It also defeats the purpose of “liberating them from oppression” — the narrative being peddled by the Right-wing ecosystem — because education is needed to have an informed opinion on hijab.

“Educated women can decide if they want to wear a hijab or not. The denial of education means pushing them further away from the mainstream,” said Sanghamitra Mukherjee, 26, a marcher.

Mukherjee walked with Gitabitan, a collection of Tagore’s songs. “For me, this book is synonymous with diversity and inclusiveness, which we should protect at any cost,” said Mukherjee.

The rally, attended by women from all age groups, started from near the JD Park Metro station in Hazra and ended near Quest Mall in Beckbagan. It was followed by an hour of musical performances and skits.

Many of the women had been at the forefront of the protests against the citizenship matrix before the pandemic struck.

Nazreen Fatima, 21, was one of them. A student of sociology at JNU, Fatima called out the “stigma” attached to the hijab.

“Many people think hijab is regressive. Nothing can be further from the truth. Hijab is an obligation, a duty mandated by our religion. But whether you fulfill the obligation or not is an individual choice,” said Fatima, who carried Gujarat Files, an account of an undercover investigation by Rana Ayyub into the Gujarat riots and what followed.

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf made it to the rally, as did Samuel Beckett’s Waiting For Godot, which reminded a participant of “an endless wait for acchhe din”.