[Brinda Karat of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) on why
there is no contradiction in supporting Iranian women burning their
hijabs – and Karnataka women fighting for their right to wear them ]
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HIJAB WARS IN INDIA AND IRAN: A QUESTION OF WOMEN’S AUTONOMY  
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Brinda Karat
October 6, 2022
Morning Star
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_ Brinda Karat of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) on why there
is no contradiction in supporting Iranian women burning their hijabs
– and Karnataka women fighting for their right to wear them _

Demonstrators display posters as they attend a protest against the
death of Iranian Mahsa Amini in Berlin, Germany, Wednesday, Sept. 28,
2022.,

 

THE images of women in Iran burning their hijabs has prompted the
social media trolls of the BJP in India to taunt women who have
opposed the Karnataka government’s ban on wearing the hijab to
educational institutions. One of them said “show [the photographs]
to shameless Indian women who want to cover girls in hijabs”. As
usual the trolls have got it wrong.

In Iran the custodial death of Mahsa Amini, the 22-year-old Kurdish
woman in Tehran, has led to a series of protests. She was arrested
because of her “improper hijab” by Iran’s notorious moral
police. Witnesses have said she was beaten on the head with sticks
several times and died in police custody. Hundreds of women protested
and in defiant and brave solidarity actions, made bonfires and threw
their hijabs – headscarves – into the fire.

Scores of protesters have been killed. At the funeral of one such
martyr, his grieving sister tore off her hijab, cut her hair and put
fistfuls of it on the coffin of her brother, in a powerful symbol of
protest. Subsequently social media has been flooded with videos of
other young women cutting their hair and throwing away their hijabs.
Across Iran the police are cracking down on protesters. We stand in
full solidarity with the protests by women in Iran. We share their
anger and outrage.

Here in Karnataka young women have defied government orders banning
their entry into colleges unless they removed their hijabs, and in
defiance, wearing the hijab, have stood outside the gates of their
institutions demanding to be allowed in. They have been heckled,
abused, threatened, taunted by government-supported hoodlums, but have
not been cowed down, taking their struggle to the Supreme Court. We
stand in solidarity with their protests. We share their anger at being
made to choose between education and belief.

We support the women in Iran who are burning the hijab as a symbol of
oppression. We equally support the young women in Karnataka who demand
the right to wear the hijab. Is this self contradictory? Here are a
few reasons why support to both is just and fair to women.

Protests and issues have a political context. Although these protests
are seemingly about the “hijab” the common denominator is: does a
woman have the right to decide what clothes she wears, what company
she keeps, who she chooses as her partner?

The question of women’s autonomy and her right over her own body and
sexuality is critical in understanding the context of both protests.
Sometimes it can also happen that fundamentally opposed and opposing
forces happen to take the same position on any given issue. It should
be judged by one yardstick — does it support women’s right to
autonomy and choice?

It is true that in capitalist and feudal societies in general the very
concept of “choice” is relative. Culture reflects class realities
in a capitalist world, so a working-class woman or an unemployed youth
rarely have the right to real choice because of socio-economic
inequalities and related realities.

But this does not prevent building struggles to push the concept of
freedom and autonomy through legislation, institutional frameworks and
social infrastructures to support concepts and rights like autonomy
and choice. In societies like India which are beset with evils such as
the caste system and also in the last decade or so, with state-helped
promotion of virulent majoritarian communal ideologies, “autonomy
and choice” are mediated by the kind of politics generated by
casteism and communalism. Fundamentalisms of various hues add a
further blanket of conditioning on choice, on rights and liberties.
The history of the restrictive codes in Iran and India are necessarily
linked to the conditions prevailing in those societies.

In Iran, the “hijab” has become a symbol of the struggle of women
for their rights.

Till the 1930s, there was no strict dress code. With the advent of the
rule of the King Reza Shah, there was a wave of pro-Western cultural
changes initiated by him. In the decade of the thirties, wearing the
hijab was banned. Any woman wearing the hijab was liable to
punishment.

Security police at that time were given orders to forcibly remove the
hijab. Men also were ordered to wear a bowler hat! This bizarre
imposition was in a society where in any case the vast majority of
rural women working in the fields or in manual work, hardly wore the
“proper hijab.” It was mainly worn by upper-class urban women.
However this changed with the brutality against women wearing the
hijab. When women were forcibly stripped of the hijab there was a
strong counter-reaction and protests were held. More women starting
wearing the hijab as a sign of protest against the ruling regime.

In 1941, the ruler abdicated and was replaced with the regime of Md
Reza Shah who lifted the ban on wearing the hijab so it was more or
less left to the choice of the woman. The struggle came full circle
when the regime of the Shah was overthrown. Although the struggle
against the Shah was for more democracy, for civil liberties and
citizens’ rights, it included all sections of people in Iran but the
end result was that power was taken over by the clergy and a most
authoritarian rule in the name of Islam was established.

The compulsory wearing of the hijab was announced. It led to huge
protests by women and the law was put in abeyance. However in 1983 the
law was enacted which made it compulsory with strict punishment
including imprisonment, fines and 74 lashes against unveiled women.

The struggle of Iranian women to dress as they wish has been a
constant issue. Many women have lost their lives, hundreds have been
imprisoned, hundreds are in exile. It is a struggle led by women of
immense courage. The burning of the hijab is their symbol.

In the recent decade under BJP rule, religious symbols and festivals
have been used to push the agenda of communal politics. In response,
fundamentalists in the Muslim community have also put pressure on
Muslim women to adhere to tradition and custom of wearing the burka or
the hijab.

Many more women of the Muslim community are wearing the hijab. There
is undoubtedly pressure on Muslim women to wear the burka. In some
places even small girls are dressed in close-fitting headwear which
was never the case earlier. Undoubtedly this is a reflection of
growing fundamentalist influences among the community. But in India,
Muslim women in spite of being caught in the pincer of pressure from
the fundamentalists within their own community who are dead against
reform and the toxic and aggressive assaults of Hindutva on the other,
have fought for reform within the framework of their belief in Islam.

It is this courageous struggle that all democrats must support.

There is deliberate confusion created that those supporting the
Karnataka girl students are for them wearing the burka against the
code of uniform. This is entirely untrue. No-one was going into
classrooms wearing the burka or any face covering. The issue was
regarding the wearing of the headscarf, the khimir popularly referred
to as hijab.

The motive of the Karnataka government to ban this head covering is
outright political. It is to further its communal agenda of
polarisation in view of the forthcoming elections. In neighbouring
Kerala, girls are attending school and colleges in uniform wearing the
hijab. In some places they match the colour of the uniform.

There is no issue in Kerala because of the wearing of the hijab.

Whether I believe it is a symbol of oppression or not is really
immaterial, the point is that by forcing girls to take off the hijab,
the state, the courts and the governments are bulldozing a fundamental
right linked to freedom of conscience, linked to the right to
education and linked to individual choice.

Women in both cases have become the medium through which
fundamentalist and majoritarian ideologies are promoted by those in
power. Historically women have not just been considered the
repositories of the “honour” of communities through obedience to a
strictly regimented code of conduct of dress, behaviour and a control
on their sexuality but such “honour” invariably relates to the
strictest of punishments for any transgression of the set code.

In Iran, the power of the ruling clergy has put what it considers an
indelible stamp in the name of religion on such a code. In India we
have seen dominant ideologies in the general framework of majoritarian
religious texts such as the Manu Smriti being put into practice. We
have seen it in the case of honour crimes when young couples choose
each other as partners across caste and community.

In any society where such restrictions are enforced on women in the
name of “honour,” it is incumbent on any democratic minded person,
to support protest against turning women into symbols of fake
“honour.” The woman as a symbol of the community sets her up as a
target and is deeply authoritarian and must be opposed. This is true
in Iran and in Karnataka.

And therefore we reiterate our support to the courageous women of
Iran. And in solidarity with the young women in Karnataka who want to
wear the hijab, we say, it is their choice and theirs alone.

_This article is an edited version of one published on People’s
Democracy [[link removed]]._

* Iran
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* India
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* war on women
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* women's rights
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