By Kashif-ul-Huda, TwoCircles.net
Secularism is indeed a foreign concept for India. Many Indians have difficulty understanding it and therefore are confused on how to apply it in their personal and professional lives. Latest example is Supreme Court’s Justice Markandey Katju. While denying a request by a Muslim student to keep a beard while going to a convent school, Justice Katju termed it as “overstretching” of secularism.
Denying the plea of Mohammed Saleem, a 16 year old student of a Christian missionary school because school had a right to make rules that it seems fit would have ended this matter. But Justice Katju overstretched himself and said “We don’t want to have Talibans in the country. Tomorrow a girl student may come and say that she wants to wear a burqa. Can we allow it?”
First thing objectionable in his statement is that he is associating beard and burqa with the Talibans. Taliban was a puritanical group that emerged in Afghanistan few years after Russian occupation ended and provided stability to the region. Their use of force was not only limited to stabilization but also used force to enforce their understanding of Islam on the population. Men were asked to grow beard and women were told to wear burqa. So Talibanization is nothing but forcing of ideas and practices that you think is right without acknowledging that there are other opinions out there.
Justice Katju, if he comes out of his ivory towers will see that beard and burqa has been part of Islam in India for thousands of years and continue to be so. Muslims, in all walks of life continue to function with or without beard and with or without burqa. It is not a strange sight to see women in burqa in markets, tourist places, and schools & colleges.
Just because some Sikhs shave their hair and beard doesn’t mean that the requirement of five Ks is not there anymore. Similarly, a majority of Muslim men may not have beard these days but this does not take away the well-established fact that Islam requires men to have beard. Even if some one argues that it is not mention in the Quran and not a “farz.” We have to understand there is not one official version of Islam. Besides the differences between Shia and Sunni, there are at least four accepted schools of jurisprudence among the Sunnis. So, to say that there is one official version of Islam is to fall into the argument of Wahabbis or Talibans who don’t want to see any other practices of Islam that they don’t agree with. So the argument that even Mohammed Saleem’s Muslim lawyer doesn’t have a beard, is not valid.
Mohammed Saleem should be able to keep his beard if he thinks it is a religious duty for him and if his beard is not a factor in teaching and learning at his school. And I don’t see any reason why it should hinder the process of learning. If he insists that he will wear kurta and paijama to school then I can see a problem with that. It seems that the court thought beard to be something external like a uniform. It is not, for those who choose to have beard, for them it is a part of their body, just like color of their skin or hair on their head. Will the court let a school get away with a rule that bars people of certain skin color?
Other arguments given by Muslims and others that we need to set up our own schools where we can teach and do things that we think is best for our children. That may be right but if we all live and learn separately we all be in isolation and our understanding of others will be seen through the glasses of ‘stereotypes.’ So let the guards go down, allow some flexibility and compromise to improve understanding between people and we should all learn to accept people as they are not as we want them to appear.
Your honor, demand for religious rights is not Talibanization but denying is.