Muskan Khan and the Fight for Rights: Education and the Hijab Protest
Muskan Khan became a face of the Karnataka hijab protests. You know the photo. Her hand raised, shouting ‘Allahu-Akbar,’ right when some saffron-shawled students asked her to take off her veil before she could even enter college. It was that moment that caught everyone’s eye.
Then the state government finally acted. They released an order. It let students wear some religious symbols, along with uniforms. For girls like Muskan, whose schooling got totally derailed by all the noise, that felt like a huge relief.
She and some other students had been pushing for the hijab while still trying to study. They kept pushing against the restrictions the BJP government put in place about religious clothing in schools.
Muskan spoke to CNN-News18 about it. She called it restoring a right. A right many students had actually fought for.
“I want to thank the Karnataka government,” she said. “For taking this good step. Thank them all for standing with us and giving our rights back. Because the hijab ban meant a lot of girls dropped their exams. Now we can actually continue studying.”
The fallout, though, hit her hard. Muskan explained that the whole protest directly messed up her education. “During the exams, that protest was happening. They started giving us a choice between our religion and our education. Because of all that, our exams got affected. Then I went to an open university because a lot of colleges just wouldn’t admit me. So I moved there, joined other courses, and finished them.”
She remembered the day she became the focus of everything. She said she just walked into college, not knowing what was going on outside.
“I just went to hand in an assignment. I didn’t know about this hijab protest happening. I saw a bunch of boys coming at me, telling me to take off the hijab. I thought I’d just leave. But then I saw two or three boys chanting slogans right in front of me. So I just chanted Allahu Akbar to protect myself.” She paused there. “Remember what Gandhi ji said, ‘Hey Ram’ before he passed away? He called his God when he was under attack. I called my God when I felt threatened.”
The college authorities stepped in too. “Our lecturers and teachers came forward to support me and protect me. Our principal came and protected me,” she added.
When it came to the new order, she kept steering the conversation back to personal choice. She framed it around rights.
“Hijab is my right. Hijab is my choice. I won’t talk about how important it is to wear the hijab because it’s my religion. I won’t talk about how mandatory it is in Islam. I will talk about my right. I will talk about my choice,” she insisted.
“No one can stop me. Every girl has her own right. Every girl should decide what she wants to wear.”
She also made a point about uniforms. She argued that the hijab didn’t mess with the dress codes schools already had.
“Hijab is just a veil. This is niqab. This is burqa. We are fighting for the hijab. Since the order is official now, they said the uniform isn’t disturbed. As usual, we wear the uniform and then we just put the veil over it,” she explained.
She had a message for the girls who had to stop their studies during the protests.
“Now the official order is out. We got our rights back. Every girl who wants to wear a hijab and continue her studies needs to step up. Education is the main thing in our lives. We need to focus on that.”
“I want to encourage all the girls who missed exams because of the hijab ban. Please come forward and keep studying. Especially the young girls in Udupi. Many of them couldn’t continue for a long time. This break in education causes huge problems for their future.”
For Muskan, the fight is shifting. It’s moving away from the streets and back into the classrooms now.
“We got our rights back. So we need to focus on education because it’s the main platform. If we educate ourselves, I think we’ll understand our rights.”
“If I hadn’t been educated, I never would have stood there. Education is what teaches you your rights and makes you brave. We need to focus on education. We need to educate ourselves,” she finished. She said she hopes to become a lawyer someday.
Written by Gree News Team — Senior Editorial Board
Gree News Team covers international news and global affairs at Gree News. Our collective of senior editors is dedicated to providing independent, accurate, and responsible journalism for a global audience.
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