Barkha Dutt: There are few sights more disturbing than that of young women being locked outside the gates of their high schools and colleges. But that is what recently happened in the southern Indian state of Karnataka, where Muslim girls — many of them teenagers — are being denied their fundamental right to an education in several campuses over their insistence on wearing hijabs in class.

Opinions to start the day, in your inbox. Sign up.

Indian educational institutions have only just begun to emerge from a two-year lockdown, and an estimated 57 percent of Indian girls drop out of school by 11th grade. Those numbers are even bleaker for Muslim women: They experience lower literacy rates than women of other religious denominations, while Muslims have the lowest rate of enrollment in higher education.

Given that one of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s key slogans has been “Beti Padhao, Beti Bachao” (“Educate the Girl to Save the Girl”), one would think that the government and institutions would be focusing their energy on how to encourage more girls to get college degrees and become self-reliant. Instead, we are seeing appalling images of hijab-wearing girls prevented from entering the classroom by stern and hostile guards.

The hijab has long divided feminists. Some see in it a manifestation of patriarchal notions of female modesty; others see it as a matter of personal choice. Multiculturalists see it as an assertion of identity; modernists see it as antediluvian. Personally, I am uncomfortable with any ritual, custom or practice, in any faith, that is required of women but not of men.

It is also true that — whether it is the hijab at one end of our social fault lines, or the hypersexualization of women at the other — the covering and uncovering of the female body is inseparable from patriarchal culture and mass media. The filter-enabled, bikini-clad images of beauty on our Instagram feeds can be just as oppressive and sexist as draping a woman in swaths of black. Most of us spend lifetimes contesting our conditioning.

But right now, all this is entirely academic and immaterial. Wherever you stand on the hijab, it is simply unforgivable to punish Muslim girls for it. In fact, if you believe they have been indoctrinated by the orthodoxy of their community into wearing one, why would you penalize them twice over?

The controversy first erupted when six girls in the coastal town of Udipi petitioned the court to allow them to wear the hijab inside their college classrooms. Until now, students would keep the covering on when they left their homes for campus but would take it off inside the classroom.

The Karnataka government has blamed the student wing of the Popular Front of India (PFI), an Islamist organization, for instigating the protests. As the conflict spread like fire across the state and pitted students from right-wing Hindu groups against young Muslim girls, what should have been an issue for individual institutions to resolve amicably between parents, teachers and students got an official stamp: The state government issued an order banning clothing that “disturb equality, integrity and public law and order.”

The political validation was unnecessary. As clashes escalated, schools and colleges had to be closed.

Many of the young women I’ve spoken to say the hijab is also a form of protest against the unapologetic Islamophobia all around them. Parliamentarians can wear saffron robes reflecting their Hindu faith; the rabble-rousing Hindutva poster boy Yogi Adityanath, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, India’s most politically significant state, is always dressed in attire that signals his religion; and, in recent months, gatherings of saffron-robed men have openly called for violence against Muslims. The girls say none of this can be separated from their right to religious attire.

Muskan Khan, a college student in Karnataka, was heckled by a jeering mob of Hindu protesters — some students, some outsiders — wearing saffron scarves. She turned around and shouted “Allahu akbar” to their chants of “Jai Shri Ram” (“Glory to Lord Ram”). As her video went viral, she told my media organization Mojo Story: “All of India stands with me.”

Tragically, though, Indians are bitterly divided on the issue as never before.

The debate is not confined to states governed by the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party. In Kerala, led by communists, the state government refused to greenlight wearing the hijab for a student police cadet in a government school. A few years earlier, a group of Kerala Muslim educationists overseeing 150 institutions decreed that no girl could be allowed to cover her face inside the classroom.

Zakia Soman, a Muslim activist, told me she does not advocate for the hijab, but that “any reform will have to be led by women from within the community.” She calls for legal action against men threatening and heckling young girls in Karnataka: “These girls in hijab have been singled out. It is a clear-cut case of discrimination, especially since we have so much religion all around. … We are for gender justice but we are also equally for right to religious freedom and upholding our democratic freedoms.”

Finding that equilibrium could take decades. In the meantime, denying girls the right to school for any period is unconscionable.

Author: Barkha Dutt is an award-winning TV journalist and anchor with more than two decades of reporting experience. She is the author of “This Unquiet Land: Stories from India’s Fault Lines.” Dutt is based in New Delhi.