Why Do I Wear My Hijab?

I was in fourth grade when I started wearing a hijab. Not out of choice, but because I was born and brought up in Saudi Arabia, where all women wore an ‘abaya’ or a burqah, a loose garment that covers the entire body, in public spaces. Most of them covered their heads. Even foreigners, non-Muslim women, wore abaya when they left their house.

As a ten-year-old, I do not recall asking my parents or teachers as to why I couldn’t wear jeans or trousers outside anymore. Partly because I had never seen a young girl or a woman wear anything aside from the traditional black garment in the streets. But also because most girls in my school wore it. So it was only normal for me to wear it so that I wouldn’t appear odd among my schoolmates.

I went to an all-girls International Indian school that was under the supervision of the Saudi Ministry of Education and the Indian embassy. Growing up with peers from various states and religions, we were united by our identity as Indians, the pledge we took every morning, singing the Indian and Saudi national anthems and our uniforms.

Though we had to wear an abaya and headscarf to school, we were permitted to take it off once we were on the school campus, where there were hardly any men. In my early teen years, I understood the religious significance of it. The Quran emphasizes decency and modesty in the interaction between members of the opposite sex.

There are two specific verses in the Quran where the hijab is explained. In Chapter 24, known as an-Nur (the Light), in verses 30 and 31, Allah commands Prophet Muhammad to direct Muslim men and women to lower their gaze when they look at people of the opposite sex who are unrelated to them so as to prevent the possibility of temptation. This is often described as the “hijab of the eyes“, which is scarcely discussed in today’s mind-numbing discourse around the hijab.

Verse 31 also directs Muslim women, in particular, to “not display their beauty except what is apparent, and they should place their khumur over their bosoms…” The word ‘khumur‘ is defined in the Arabic dictionary as something with which a woman conceals her head. ‘Placing the Khumur over the bosom’ refers to extending the headscarf to cover the neck and upper bosom. In another verse of the Quran, Muslim women are instructed to wear the ‘Jalabib‘ or a loose outer garment along with the ‘Khumur‘.

As one may notice, the word ‘hijab‘ has not been used in the above verses. It is an Arabic word that translates to a barrier or a veil that aims to protect Muslim women and is interpreted as the code of modesty prescribed in the Quran. There are different kinds of coverings worn by Muslim women influenced by religion and culture.

In 2018, I shifted to India permanently. The same year, in an interview with CBS, the Saudi Crown Prince said that Muslim women are not mandated by law to wear the traditional black abaya or black headscarf and that they are free to decide what type of decent and respectful attire suits their needs. At the time, this was widely misquoted, and instances of Muslim women ‘breaking free‘ from the burqa and hijab at large caused dismay among conservative Arabs and Muslims.

However, I was not shocked by their actions. I knew a lot of Indian Muslim girls and women who would choose not to wear the hijab when they travelled outside the country. While I believed that I did not have much choice in terms of whether or not I could wear hijab in a theocracy, I had a choice in a democratic India.

My liberation was in my autonomy over my body. I decided to continue wearing a headscarf and a burqa or sometimes a loose coat or shrug. It became a part of my identity and made me stand out in democratic, public spaces.

Given how much our politics is rooted in religious and sexual identities, being a Muslim woman who wears a hijab became a political statement. This was not an intended consequence, but I welcomed it as my hijab became a symbol of resistance to the vision of India as a ‘Hindu nation’. Far from deterring education job opportunities, it was liberating because I ‘chose’ to wear it.

The recent judgment by the Karnataka High Court sets a dangerous precedent of taking away the choice of women in India to wear their religious, cultural and political identities. By banning the hijab in educational institutions (especially co-educational), the state encourages discrimination in schools and hinders education opportunities for Muslim women.

I say, let Muslim women decide whether or not hijab is an essential aspect of their faith. We do not need the government to ‘liberate’ us by subjecting us to non-inclusive uniform codes.