Mangaluru: Mangalore University Students’ Coordination Committee (Vidyarthi Samanvaya Samiti) has demanded University College and Mangalore University to provide justice to the students who have been denied permission to attend classes wearing headscarves at the college.
The committee has demanded that the issue should be resolved in two days.
“If agitating students who have been demanding justice fail to get justice, then we will hold a massive protest rally by uniting students from across the district,” warned Samiti Chairman Riyaz and other students of University College, who have been demanding the authorities to allow them to wear headscarves inside classrooms.
Gousiya, a final-year degree student of University College, in Mangaluru, said, “We have been wearing hijab inside classrooms even after the High Court verdict. It was on May 16 that we received a message from the college principal which directed all students to wear uniforms and attend classes without hijab.”
‘There was no issue’
Claiming that the High Court order on hijab is not applicable to university colleges, Gousiya said, “The Syndicate of Mangalore University took a decision banning headscarves inside the classrooms following a representation made by ABVP students. There was no issue with hijab in the college all these days. It cropped up recently.”
“We have given our representations to the college principal, Mangalore University VC and the deputy commissioner, appealing to allow us to wear hijab inside the classrooms till the end of our academic year. Some of us will be completing our graduation in the next two to three months. The decision taken by the Syndicate in the middle of the academic year will hamper our studies,” she said.
Further, she alleged, “We were neither allowed to sit outside the classrooms wearing hijab nor to visit the library to write our notes. A few of the ABVP-backed students had even harassed us inside the college campus by videographing us, commenting and abusing us from behind and unnecessarily arguing with us. Some had even shown saffron stoles at us when we visited the college campus. We had even submitted a complaint to the college principal about the harassment. However, no action is taken against them so far.”
She said that a legal fight will take a long time.
“Though we had urged the religious leaders from the community and like-minded organisations to come to our help, none have come to our help so far. The prospectus of the University College stated that students are allowed to wear the veil of their uniform as a headscarf,” she added.
“We are fighting for our rights and are hopeful of getting justice,” she said.
However, following the High Court verdict, Mangalore University Syndicate, in its meeting in May, had adopted a resolution making uniforms compulsory without hijab for students studying in its constituent colleges and paragraphs in the prospectus pertaining to headscarves have been removed.
Recently, when ABVP -backed students staged a protest inside the college campus, even outsiders too had joined the protest, alleged the students.
Further, students alleged that the college authorities had not even convened a meeting of the parents to discuss the decision of the Mangalore University Syndicate.
DHNS.