The father of a Class 6 student has alleged she was humiliated by authorities in a government school in north-east Delhi’s Mustafabad for wearing the hijab to school, even as the principal said on Wednesday that no such incident took place.
The matter came to light after a video of the girl talking about the alleged incident was posted on Twitter by a user, Kashif Afroz, and was widely shared amid the ongoing controversy over girls wearing the hijab to schools in Karnataka.
Mohammad Ayyub Gauri, 38, father of the girl, said it was his daughter’s first day at the school and she studied at a private school earlier.
“My daughter went to the school on Monday, her first day in the school. The teacher in her class humiliated her in front of the entire class and rebuked her. ‘What are you wearing? Don’t act like a mother and wear this to the classroom again,’ the teacher told her. She was harassed in front of 40-50 children and was on the verge of breaking down. She removed her hijab after that,” Gauri said.
He said he met the school principal on Tuesday and gave a written “application”. “I asked the principal if there was any order from the Delhi government restricting the hijab in classrooms. They said that the Delhi government orders require students to wear a proper dress. I told them that my daughter was dressed in the uniform only,” he said.
{{/usCountry}}He said he met the school principal on Tuesday and gave a written “application”. “I asked the principal if there was any order from the Delhi government restricting the hijab in classrooms. They said that the Delhi government orders require students to wear a proper dress. I told them that my daughter was dressed in the uniform only,” he said.
{{/usCountry}}Delhi government spokespersons did not respond to requests for a comment on the matter.
Sushila Devi, the school principal, told news portal The Wire, that no such instance had taken place. She added that young Muslim students had been taking off their hijabs while entering classrooms prior to the issue being brought to the national forefront.
“This has been happening for a long time, it is nothing special. The girls pack their hijabs in their bags while attending classes,” Devi told The Wire.
The tweet identified the girl as a student of a Delhi government school in Tukhmirpur, near Mustafabad. “The girl was asked to not act like a mother. Along with her, the hijab of two other girls was also removed,” Afroz tweeted.
In the video, the girl can be seen relaying the incident. “Don’t wear a scarf from tomorrow. Don’t become a mummy. You wear a scarf like (your) mummy,” she says in the video. On being prodded by someone if the hijab of other students had been removed, she said: “Yes. There were two more girls. Even they were asked to remove their hijab.”
The girl’s father said he lodged a complaint with the local MLA and the education department. “We did not file a police complaint, but police came to enquire about the incident today,” he said.
An officer of the local police said no complaint has been filed in the matter.