Educational Institutions: For Domination or Distinction?

The recent rather politically planted controversy that involves banning the hijab in educational institutions in Karnataka seeks to give priority to uniformity in school or college dress over the very modernist thrust of educational institutions. It is needless to re-emphasise that the modernist thrust would put a premium on academic excellence that promises both individual progress as well as the enrichment of a society. Educational excellence depends on cognitive learning that should form a substantive code rather than an external or formal dress code. Therefore, clearly, it is the innovative and exciting content of the education curriculum that needs to be seen as a substantive concern which may produce meritorious students. This only means that the dress code may not always have a bearing on the motivation for education as well as excellence in it.

An educational institution is a place where one acquires a sense of oneself not as a religious person but as a person who is interested in pursuing the life of the mind. In a more pragmatic sense, within the education set-up, a person clad in any dress feels encouraged to compete for individual merit that ultimately contributes to institutional excellence. The individual’s academic distinction thus becomes coextensive with the distinction of an educational institution. However, such a competitive academic culture aimed at creating institutions of academic excellence gets replaced by communal conflict, which arguably is politically created by targeting the attire of a minority person.