A social activist and a champion of women’s rights, especially Muslims, Fathima was catapulted into electoral politics a few months before the 2018 assembly polls, when her husband Qamarul Islam, a minister and six-term local MLA, died.
Team Clarion
NEW DELHI — Kaneez Fathima, a strong opponent of the ban on hijab for Muslim girls in educational institutions and the lone Muslim woman candidate fielded by Congress in the Karnataka elections, has retained the Gulbarga North constituency for her party.
Fathima, who herself dons the hijab in public, led last year’s huge protests in Gulbarga over the ban on hijab in educational institutes by the Basavaraj Bommai-led BJP government. The government’s decision barred Muslim girls from state-run colleges for insisting on wearing hijab. Fathima also was at the forefront of women’s protest against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act in 2020.
Fathima defeated Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate Chandrakant B. Patil, a Lingayat youth leader who lost the 2018 election to her by about 6,000 votes.
A social activist and a champion of women’s rights, especially Muslims, Fathima was catapulted into electoral politics a few months before the 2018 assembly polls, when her husband Qamarul Islam, a minister and six-term local MLA, died.
Leading the anti-hijab ban protests in the city, Fathima maintained that it was the right of Muslim girls to wear hijab.
“In independent India, we have our freedoms. We do not question people about their clothes. Girls must not be prevented from going to colleges over this issue,” Fathima had said at the peak of the hijab controversy in the state raked up by Hindutva fanatics fully supported by the BJP government in the state and at the Centre.
In February 2022, the Karnataka government banned hijab in educational institutions. This led to widespread harassment of women students in hijab in schools which continued even a year after the Karnataka hijab ban was imposed. Alongside, there were state-wide protests in Karnataka, with Kaneez Fatima as one of the protest leaders.
In October 2022, the Supreme Court delivered a split verdict on the hijab ban. After hearing the matter for 10 days, Justice Hemant Gupta’s verdict upheld the Karnataka High Court’s order to ban hijab in education institutions, whereas Justice Sudhanshshu Dhuli allowed all the appeals and set aside the judgment of the high court.
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Photo: Kaneez Fathima (Facebook)