-TheWire.in One of the oddities of the ongoing hijab ban case, is how a Secular court has to decide whether wearing a hijab is mandated by Islam. One cannot fault the Karnataka high court beyond a point, as it is merely following ‘Essential Religious Practices Test’ laid down by the Supreme Court of India. Courts use this test to determine whether a practice is essential to the religion, in order to decide...

-The Hindu Many students have vowed not to enter classrooms without their hijabs Bengaluru: Young women wearing religious headscarves tearfully pleading to be allowed entry into schools and colleges with many vowing not to remove their hijabs has raised concerns on the impact this will have on their education. While the case is in the High Court of Karnataka, several writers and activists from the Muslim community and education experts have expressed fear...

-The Hindu Only if the Samajwadi Party-led coalition wins by a large margin can it be assured of government formation It is clear that the fierce electoral battle for Uttar Pradesh is mainly between the Akhilesh Yadav-led gathbandhan (coalition) and the Yogi Adityanath-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), even if it appears multi-cornered on paper. The failure of unity among supposedly Secular parties against the BJP once again demonstrates not just their half-hearted...

-Scroll.in Most of the prominent faces of the December 2019 protests battle police cases. These days, 24-year-old Sharjeel Usmani spends most of his time travelling from one Aligarh court to another for hazri, attendance. There are four cases against the Aligarh Muslim University student, all of them connected to protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act passed by Parliament on December 11, 2019. As the law was passed, protests erupted across the country and...

The virility of Muslim men vis-à-vis men from other religious communities have often been used as a political tool and to create a divisive agenda just before elections for getting votes from the majority of the Indian electorate who are Hindus. Instead of focusing on positive agendas like human development, employment generation, and poverty reduction, political campaigns just before the elections oftentimes reduce to mere communal propaganda (when a lot...