Prayagraj : The Allahabad High Court has dismissed a petition filed by a Muslim student seeking permission to wear a hijab with her prescribed school uniform. A division bench of Justice JJ Munir and Justice Indrajeet Shukla, hearing the plea filed by a Class 11 student of a school in Prayagraj, asserted that wearing the hijab cannot be considered an essential religious practice protected under Article 25 of the Constitution.
The court refused to accept the argument, saying a mere claim of religious practice was not sufficient to seek protection under the right to religious freedom. The court noted that no sufficient religious or legal grounds had been placed before it to establish that wearing a headscarf was an obligatory practice in Islam, without which a person’s faith would be affected.
A perusal of the writ petition shows that there are no pleadings to that effect by the petitioner, except that she has been doing it since she was a child and ever since she joined the School in Class VI,” the bench said. The High Court also upheld the importance of a uniform dress code in educational institutions. It observed that where a school’s dress policy is uniform, non-discriminatory and intended to maintain discipline and institutional identity, individual students cannot seek changes based on personal preferences.
The court observed that the institution’s earlier acceptance did not create a legal right to continue wearing the headscarf if the school subsequently decided to enforce its prescribed uniform policy. “In the past, the school might not have raised an objection to the petitioner wearing a headscarf when she was reading in the lower classes, either due to lethargy, inaction, lack of will, non-enforcement of the uniform policy, even courtesy or hesitation.
The bench also referred to previous judgments on the issue and noted that various High Courts had held that wearing a headscarf is not an essential part of Islamic faith for women. The court said there was no reason to take a different view from an earlier judgment of the Karnataka High Court on the matter.
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