By Sana Khan,
More than three years ago I wrote an article titled ‘burqa-to wear or not to wear’. A friend said that she supported the view of the French government banning the burqa as it truly was doing it to respect the principle of secularity in school and well of course it would liberate women, and in this light I wrote this article. That time I was arguing that the wearing or not wearing of a burqa/hijab is an individual choice about attire. Just as the other women exercise their opinion to dress in the manner they want, without any hue and cry, a woman in burqa/hijab should have the right to dress in the way she wants to. I am sharing here some excerpts from that article which I think are significant only to place the discussion around hijab in a more lucid way as it explains my position on hijab.
“What is problematic about this debate of the veil that I fail to understand are the assumptions that the mere wearing of the hijab is retrogressive and that not wearing it is liberating. The assumption that by wearing it, a woman’s mind, determination and intellect are also being enclosed is simply ridiculous.
How does one address the problematic perception of the Muslim woman? Can we not talk about the more pressing problems that Muslim women have to deal with everyday in their societies? Can we not lift this veil, not from the Muslim woman’s face but from our narrow and ignorant minds, which refuse to see beyond? Anyways, what is the bloody obsession with a woman’s physical form? No one seems to be concerned about the Muslim woman’s intellect, her strength, her desires, her aspirations – but her dress attracts intense scrutiny. No one is bothered about her poverty, her illiteracy, her exploitation. She is oppressed, subjugated and reduced to an object for comment…comments by everyone across the world. A Muslim man too covers himself from head to toe, why don’t we scrutinize his attire and ask for his liberation?
There would be numerous fatwas issued by the maulanas and to counter that there would be many apparently progressive views on the hijab. If the maulana doesn’t give the Muslim woman a choice, neither does the so-called progressive world. Everyone talks about it, whether it’s about banning a burqa or forcing one, Muslim women are mostly denied agency. The views of many people are tinted and myopic about the Muslim woman. Whether it is banning of veil where women want to wear it, or the compulsion of it where women don’t want to wear it, they have no choice.
The issue is not just about the right to a choice of clothing. It is one where the Muslim woman can be seen as attempting to reclaim space for herself, a space which had been lost in the process of colonisation and now with the compulsion of a globalised world. Both the wearing of the hijab/burqa and its rejection can be seen as the unfolding of the recovery of an Islamic self- the form in which it is manifested is another matter. What matters is the informed choice that Muslim women have begun to make. It is her and her only personal matter, no one should interfere or force their views on an individual’s choice… this is purely a personal matter; let it be between her and her God… Least you can do is respect her choice!”
These few sections of the article I feel are important to share as my position from then and now moves from looking at hijab being a choice of attire to it claiming a spiritual space for women in the public arena. Today when I sit again to write a piece on hijab, I have some new insights to offer especially now when I wear one myself. This write up too is coming from a deep personal experience. Every morning I take the metro from my place to a school where I teach. The lady guard at the metro station once during the checking rudely lifted the dupatta with which I covered myself or let me say she lifted the hijab I was wearing. I felt uncomfortable but I didn’t say anything. The next day same thing happened. It was the third day when she was about to do the same thing that I put my hand on my covering. She asked me to take it off. It is then that I asked her if she realises, that it’s just a piece of cloth. Even then she was quite adamant that I must take it off. It is then that I argued- I must take my entire clothes off for security purposes as they are same as the hijab-pieces of cloth. And the guard should ask everyone else as well to cooperate by taking their clothes off for security reasons. After this she didn’t say a word and let me pass. Since then she has not bothered me. While reflecting on this episode I thought of engaging myself with the meanings of the hijab and what has become of it.
The politics of a ‘dress’ goes beyond the politics of the ‘body’. In recent years, the question of to-cover-or-not-to-cover or how to cover is a burning issue that frequently comes up at discussions about democracy, immigration, patriarchy, feminism, multiculturalism etc. I don’t intend to ‘uncover’ this politics by bringing in the question of appearance of an individual and identification as the ‘other’. I intend to reflect on the meanings of the hijab.
Through discussions with my sister and few others, I found asking myself that why can’t a hijab be a very regular and secular dress? We often see women who wear a sari and a bindi (a Hindu symbol) as regular and secular, even if otherwise they might have quite Hindu fundamentalist views. But just their appearance would not be seen as a marker of a Hindu identity but they would appear very secular or Indian. Why can’t then a woman fully covered be also seen as very much secular or Indian? Or let me pose this question why can’t someone who is religious also be very much secular? The popular perception would be that a woman fully covered, wearing a hijab, is the other, she cannot be a feminist, can’t be a Marxist, can never be radical… she only has one identity. Even if she has many liberal and radical ideas just by her appearance one feels she can’t actually have those kinds of ideas. A sari and a bindi is seen as secular or very Indian but the hijab is seen as only largely reinforcing a Muslim identity and of course it’s not an Indian attire, it’s pushed towards the boundaries of the other.
Edward Said has used the term ‘Orient’ which is represented by political forces that brought the ‘orient’ into western learning. It exists for the west and is constructed in relation to the West. It is a mirror image of what is inferior or alien (other) to the west. This can be applied in any society where one of the cultures is seen as the other. In this context the hijab becomes ‘the other’ attire. Agreeing that the hijab gives semblance of a woman’s affiliation with Islam, it does not mean she is not secular. I feel there is a need for a space where people would see attire like this as secular and not conservative or orthodox. After all in the Indian context secularism could be seen as an attitude that is not biased in favour of or against any religion- the doctrine by which the state does not discriminate between different religions and shows equal respect to all.
What I fail to comprehend is that why are we not open to a dialogue or ready to lift the veil from our minds and have an alternate understanding of this discourse on the hijab. After all it is said that there are no hijabi monologues only hijabi dialogues. Most people argue that taking hijab is a backward step for Muslim women. And people perceive this without actually interacting or knowing a Muslim woman and her hijab. My preference for hijab opened me to lot of aspects of its debate. One of which being as Amina Wadud has said that in reality, the hijab of coercion and the hijab of choice look the same. The hijab of oppression and the hijab of liberation look the same. The hijab of deception and the hijab of integrity look the same. One’s preference for wearing of hijab has self inscribed meaning- not at all apparent to an outside observer. The articulation of the difference between these meanings of the hijab can only be given by the woman who wears it. Muslim women observe or ignore the hijab, sometimes it’s by choice sometimes forced, it has been given significant symbolism within and without Muslim communities, and my position is that Muslim women must be allowed (and accepted) to claim their spiritual space in the public sphere.
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Sana Khan is currently pursuing her M.Phil from JNU, working on Sociology of Literature. Good food, literature, winter and mountains keep her enchanted.