The Karnataka High Court has refused to entertain the petitioner’s plea to provide interim relief in the hijab case and referred it to a larger bench. During the hearing the petitioner’s lawyer, a Congress man, shamelessly lied that the girls wearing hijab were made to sit separately and termed it as religious apartheid. He had quoted Quranic verses in the court to argue why hijab should be allowed in institutions. He said that as per Quran, menstruating women are not allowed to show any part of their body to strangers except hands and face.
After a PU-University college in Karnataka had banned wearing hijab inside college after other students protested against it. The Muslim girls who have started wearing hijab all of a sudden, reportedly incited by Campus Front, and filed a petition in the Karnataka HC seeking to allow wearing hijab inside classrooms. Advocate Devdutt Kamat had appeared as counsel for the petitioners and argued by quoting a hadith in the court. He argued that wearing hijab is an essential practice of Islam and that it is protected by the right to privacy.
Revealing that he is a Brahmin he asked “My son wears Namam to school. Can the school tomorrow say it affects public order?”. He argued that secularism practiced in Bharat is different, a so-called positive secularism. He claimed that it allows students to wear Namam(Tripundra), hijab or cross. He conveniently neglected the fact that, the very minorities seeking religious freedom to wear hijab, are immune from having to extend the same courtesy to Hindus in institutions run by them. He read the Quranic verse 24.31 which mandates that the neckline should not be revealed to anyone other than husband.
He went on to claim that hijab wearing students were made to sit in a separate class and termed it as religious apartheid. In truth, the girls who were protesting were allowed to go inside the campus. Education minister BC Nagesh clarified that it was the students who chose to sit in a separate classroom and continue their protest. Yet Kamat shamelessly repeated the lie perpetrated by media in the court and drew parallel with racial discrimination in the US. He referred to Brown vs Board of Education on segregation of black and white students in the US and argued that making hijab wearing girls sit in a separate class violates rights guaranteed under Article 14. However the AG objected to it and refuted the claim as a baseless one.
Devadatt Kamat appears to be a Congress member and has frequently appeared for Congress and its allies in many cases. He argued for Mumbai police in the media trial in the Sushant Singh Rajput case. He represented Mumbai police in Shiv Sena’s vindictive TRP case against Arnab Goswami and Republic TV. He also appeared as the counsel of Congress, Shiv sena, and NCP in the issue of formation of Maharashtra government. Recently he has been appointed as the chairman of the Congress legal coordination committee for the UP election. It appears that Congress has once again joined hands with Breaking India Forces to foment trouble in the country by disturbing communal harmony and gain through it in the elections.
