Mumbai: Kurla college bans burqas, skullcaps from classrooms

The college management said they only asked students to stick to the uniform on two days of the week. Pic/Sayed Sameer Abedi

Muslim students at a Kurla-based college have alleged that the management has banned burqas and skullcaps. With the help of an NGO, they have reached out to the education minister and police, alleging that the administration was fostering an ‘environment of hate and Islamophobia' on campus.

Students of the Bunts Sangha Anna Leela College at Kurla East allege that on Friday, one of the professors called a couple of them to his cabin and threatened to bar them from entering the campus if they continued to wear the burqa. He then told them to inform others as well to follow the rule and refrain from wearing either the niqab or a skullcap.

A student who wished not to be named, said, "On Friday, after some students were found in burqa and skullcap, we were told that we should not wear it. We were warned that if we repeat this the next Friday, we shall be punished. After this, we decided that enough is enough and approached an NGO to help us with this problem."

Long-running issue
A final year student at the institute told mid-day, "We have been dealing with this issue for several years now. I don't understand why our college is not allowing girls to wear burqa and boys to wear kurta or skullcap. Most of our families send girls to colleges only after they promise to wear the burqa every day. If the college comes up with these kind of bizarre diktats then it will difficult for them to continue with their education."

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One of the girls in the final year added, "Our college says that we are living in modern times, who wears burqa in this generation. They mostly target the junior college students and have completely banned them from wearing burqa. They told us ‘Remove your burqa and sit for lectures and wear it when you home. This is harassment."

The students approached Adil Khatri, an advocate and trustee of the Jai Ho Foundation, and informed him about their grievances. Khatri then wrote to the Commissioner of Police and to Vinod Tawade, Cabinet Minister for Education. His letter stated: "The college is not allowing students to sit for lectures if they wear any dress resembling Islam. An environment of hate and Islamophobia is being developed in the college by the management and teachers."

Speaking to mid-day, Khatri said, "After a few students approached me with this problem, I went to meet the state board authority to know if such rules are allowed in colleges, to which he said no such rules are being laid down anywhere."

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When this reporter contacted Mumbai Police, Joint Commissioner (Law and Order) Deven Bharti said, "The letter has not reached me till now. We will examine it and write to the education department to take necessary steps."

The other side
Krishna Shetty, director (Management) at Bunts Sangha Anna Leela College, said, "All these are baseless allegations. Our college has uniform days on Monday and Thursday, and we ask students to stick to the uniform only on those days. Rest of the days, we do not interfere with what they wear. In fact, it is the students who are adamant on breaking the rules even on these two days. We are not at all biased against any religion, especially not when our college is situated in an area that is predominantly Muslim. We have never asked anyone not to wear a burqa or a kurta."