Karnataka Hijab Row: 28 students sent back from two colleges in Mangaluru

Mangaluru: As many as 28 students in two colleges in the city were sent back home on Wednesday for wearing hijab to classes. Mangaluru police commissioner N Shashi Kumar told reporters here that in four other colleges, students who came to classes wearing hijabs were allowed inside classrooms after removing their scarves.

Classes went on smoothly in all the colleges, which reopened today after a week-long holiday declared by the government following trouble in some campuses over the hijab issue. The commissioner said the hijab issue came up in six colleges on the day.

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The authorities at Pompei PU college sent back 26 hijab-clad students after telling them about the High Court order, while at the Dayanand Pai degree college, two students who wore hijab were sent home. In four other colleges, hijab-clad students were allowed inside classes after removing their headscarves, Shashi Kumar said, adding, there was no case of any student wearing saffron shawls in campuses.

High schools reopened on Monday. On January one, six girl students of a college in Udupi attended a press conference held by Campus Front of India (CFI) in the coastal town protesting against the college authorities denying them entry into the classroom by wearing Hijab. This was four days after they requested the principal permission to wear Hijabs in classes which was not allowed.

Till then, students used to wear Hijab to the campus and entered the classroom after removing the scarves, the college principal Rudre Gowda had said. "The institution did not have any rule on Hijab-wearing as such and since no one used to wear it to the classroom in the last 35 years. The students who came with the demand had the backing of outside forces," Rudre Gowda had said.