The Spanish newspaper “El Mundo” published a report in which it talked about the campaign launched by the Hindus to ban the veil in schools, coinciding with the electoral season in seven Indian states.
In its report, the newspaper said that in late January, a picture of six Muslim students outside the classroom spread on Indian social media platforms, who were asked to remove their headscarves to enter the classroom, but they refused.
By February, protests against the headscarf ban in educational institutions swept the streets of Udupi, the largest city in the southern state of Karnataka.
The number of female pilgrims who defend the veil, which for them constitutes part of their faith, doubled, stressing that wearing it is a right guaranteed by the secular constitution of India.
On February 5, the Karnataka state government led by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in which 12 percent of the population is Muslim, announced that all schools must follow the established dress code, which prohibits female students who wear the Islamic headscarf from entering classrooms. A procedure that has already spread to other Indian states.
The newspaper reported that the far-right Hindu groups began to besiege Karnataka colleges and universities, in an attempt to prevent Muslim girls from entering them.
The newspaper pointed out that many activists accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi, also of the Bharatiya Janata Party, of promoting the persecution and marginalization of the Muslim minority of 200 million people in a country of 1.3 billion people.
