Justice Sudhanshu Dhulia, who ruled against Karnataka’s hijab ban in a recent split verdict of the Supreme Court, drew the ire of a section on social media that also dragged his filmmaker brother Tigmanshu Dhulia into the debate. Director Vivek Agnihotri shared news on Friday that the Swiss government plans to impose a $1,000 fine on people who violate the burqa ban. Agnihotri mocked the Supreme Court judge, writing that he would like to know Justice Dhulia’s views on this “international Islamophobic conspiracy against the burqa”.
In his verdict on hijab, Sudhanshu Dhulia said it is a matter of choice and the question that needs to be addressed is whether a girl’s life is improved if she is denied education because of hijab. He also mentioned the issue of privacy. In a separate 73-page judgement, Justice Dhulia said: “Requiring girls to remove their hijab before entering the school gates is first an invasion of their privacy, then an attack on their dignity and finally it is denying them a secular education.”
Justice Hemant Gupta, on the other hand, upheld the ban and said the Karnataka government was empowered to issue such orders for its educational institutions. Secular as accepted in the constitution is that religion cannot be intertwined with any of the secular activities of the state, he said. Delivering his farewell speech on Friday, a day after the top court’s split verdict, Justice Gupta said a judge’s role is not to please people but to decide cases according to law. The hijab dispute will now be heard by the relevant bench as the two judges gave opposing verdicts.
