LONG, colourful coats were coming into vogue. Modest wear was quietly evolving, moving away from the monotony of the all-black burqa towards coats in softer hues, adorned with elegant buttons and subtle flair. It was during this early shift, long before “trending” itself became a trend, that I told my father I wanted to be part of this new wave.
After my Class 10 pre-boards, I gathered courage to ask him for a long grey overcoat. His response was immediate and clear- NO! The bluntness of it stunned me. He was a practicing Muslim who was deeply invested in raising his children with strong Islamic values, ethics, and discipline, and in that moment, his refusal felt final and immovable.
A day or two later, my father returned with an Urdu book in his hands. It was Pardah, written by Maulana Abul A‘ala Maududi. He placed it before me and said, “Read this book. Understand it fully. If, after that, you still wish to wear an overcoat, I will buy you exactly what you’ve asked for. If not, then there is no compulsion.”
At the time, his words felt less like an offer and more like a quiet dismissal of my request. Yet I chose to read the book. Alongside my board exam preparations, I began carving out time for something entirely new to me, the first “thick” book of my life, read not for marks, but for meaning.
It took me three months to complete reading the book. When I finally did, one evening I went to my father and said, almost with certainty, “Now, I truly want to wear the hijab.”
I still remember my beloved Abbu sitting beside me, speaking gently, offering guidance that I continue to follow today as a parent myself. He said, “I’m glad you read the book. When you asked for the overcoat, I could have easily bought you one. But a Muslim girl choosing to cover herself is a higher spiritual stage of self-development. It requires understanding and commitment, it cannot be reduced to a fashion statement.”
He paused and then added words that stayed with me forever. Words that I followed as a parent. He said “Islam is not about forcing someone to follow its tenets. It is about choice and I am happy you were able to decide for yourself. And had you chosen not to cover yourself, I would have accepted that just as willingly.”
Then he smiled and said, “Now, let’s go to the best cloth shop and buy a piece of your choice for your coat.”
For more than four decades, the hijab has been a conscious, deeply personal choice for me. It is not a symbol imposed upon my body. It is the one I carry with pride, dignity, and conviction. So, when Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar was seen pulling the veil of a Muslim woman as she stepped forward to receive her appointment letter as a doctor of alternative medicine at a public ceremony in Patna earlier this month, it felt like a violation far beyond the screen. It felt as if someone had reached out and pulled the cloth from my own head. It felt personal. It felt humiliating.
What made the moment even more disturbing was the ease with which it was defended. Union Minister Giriraj Singh brushed aside the outrage, declaring that the chief minister had done nothing wrong. “If someone is going to collect an appointment letter, shouldn’t their face be visible?” he asked, as though dignity, consent, and personal choice were inconveniences to be managed rather than rights to be respected.
Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah posed a question, “If I had lifted the veil of a Hindu woman in Rajasthan, would the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) have reacted the same way?”
Adding to the outrage, Uttar Pradesh minister Sanjay Nishad rushed to defend Nitish Kumar with a remark that was as shocking as it was revealing. “What would have happened if he had touched her somewhere else?” he asked. With this question he reduced a woman’s bodily autonomy to a crude hypothetical, as though the violation lay only in the degree of intrusion and not in the act itself.
When the backlash grew too loud to ignore, the familiar retreat followed. Minister Nishad took a U-turn. He claimed his words had been tweaked and twisted, that they were misinterpreted. But words spoken from positions of power do not lose their meaning so easily. While they expose intent, mindset and entitlement, no amount of clarification can undo the damage caused when those entrusted with governance speak about women’s bodies with such casual disregard.
These comments went viral, not because they were shocking, but because they were revealing. They exposed the hollowness behind slogans like “Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao” grand words that crumble the moment a woman asserts autonomy over her own body. What we witnessed was not an isolated lapse in judgment, nor a debate about religion, or an issue of one man’s mental state. In moments like these, it becomes clear that the problem is not a single sentence or a single gesture, it is a deeply embedded culture that trivialises consent and normalises intrusion, especially when the woman in question is Muslim.
The Indian Constitution is clear on this matter. It guarantees every citizen the freedom of conscience, the right to profess, practice and propagate one’s faith, and the liberty to live with dignity. These freedoms are not conditional. They are not suspended at public ceremonies, nor do they disappear when a woman steps into a government hall to claim what she has earned through years of education and service. The Constitution does not ask a woman to unveil herself to be seen, validated, or deemed worthy.
Yet, what unfolded in Patna and what followed in its defence reveal a deeper rot. Women’s bodies and choices are increasingly treated as public property, open to commentary, correction, and even mockery within the corridors of power. The language used to justify the act was not just careless; it was objectifying. It reduced a professional woman, standing there on merit, to a spectacle, her body turned into a point of discussion and entertainment rather than respect. When such remarks come from those in authority, they legitimise a culture where intrusion is normalised and consent becomes negotiable. India has been witnessing such intrusions for years now, in all forms political, brutal and bureaucratic. From the lynching of Mohammad Akhlaq in Dadri in Uttar Pradesh over what he ate, to the killing in Kerala of Ram Narayan, a Dalit migrant labourer from Chhattisgarh, whose vulnerability became his death sentence; from the Hathras rape victim being denied dignity even in death through hasty, forced last rites, to the rejection of bail for those who dared to question power, intrusion has steadily transformed into atrocity, and atrocity into routine.
What unites these incidents is not just violence, but the state’s quiet complicity in normalising it. Bodies are touched without consent, grief is managed without empathy, justice is delayed or denied without shame. Lives, especially those of Muslims, Dalits, the poor and women, are treated as expendable, their autonomy negotiable, their pain inconvenient.
With the Nitish Kumar intrusion, this is particularly damaging in a culture that prides itself on invoking the image of the woman as Shakti, Devi, as someone to be worshipped. What does that reverence mean if, in reality, women are stripped of their choice in public spaces? What does it say about our democracy when symbolism replaces substance, when goddesses are revered in temples but women are humiliated in government functions?
The niqab incident was not about Muslim women versus Hindu women. It is about how the state normalises misogyny. It is about how, in a democracy, individual choices, what we wear, what we eat, what we believe, how we live, are increasingly treated as permissions granted by those in power rather than freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution. It is about a disturbing mindset that extends far beyond one act, which echoes clearly in the words of policymakers who feel entitled to touch, uncover, correct, and control women in public spaces.
This is not about religion. It is not about a piece of cloth. It is about the erosion of constitutional morality and the casual cruelty with which women’s autonomy is dismissed. When the state fails to protect a woman’s right to choose, how she dresses, how she believes, how she exists, it fails the very Constitution it swore to uphold.
When such intrusion becomes the new norm, democracy begins to hollow out from within. What we are left with is not governance rooted in constitutional values. But a culture of control, where power no longer protects citizens, it polices their existence. And in this climate, the question is no longer who is safe, but who is next.
If India truly aspires to be a democracy that honours its citizens, it must begin by respecting their consent, their choices and their dignity. Neither in slogans, nor in rituals, but in action.
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Sajida A Zubair is an educator, freelance writer, and documentary scriptwriter. The views expressed here are the writer’s own and Clarion India does not necessarily subscribe to them. She can be reached at sajizuby@gmail.com
