HIJAB PROTESTS AND THE IRONY OF MODESTY

THE irony of Iranian women agitating against the hijab and Indian schoolgirls insisting on wearing it has not gone unnoticed. It's no clash of civilisations, though both are insisting on the right to be left alone. The real irony is that Indian opinionators, who should know better due to historical influences, apparently don't get the picture, and Iranians on the net are politely asking them to leave Iran alone.

- PRATIK KANJILAL

But it's the New Yorker that has pushed the envelope, projecting New York activist Masih Alinejad as 'The Exiled Dissident Fuelling the Hijab Protests in Iran'. That's the headline of their thrilling story, and the claim is so bizarre that its subject, who did originate the White Wednesday online movement in 2017-it did not actually reject Islamic clothing has had to clarify that the real leaders of the movement are, naturally, in Iran, not in NYC. Marjane Satrapi, the author of the bestselling graphic novel Persepolis, said that they were fighting for democracy, whose biggest enemy is the patriarchy.

That clear binary sets Indian observers apart from Iran. We have many more inequalities to address, almost all of which spring from patriarchy and its prominence in organised religion. Other nationalities find it difficult to understand that a thread looped over the shoulder can be a passport to power, opening doors everywhere and shutting them hard on the face of threadless people. They are alarmed to learn how easily that thread is exported to Silicon Valley and US university campuses, hidden under a T-shirt and hoodie. Cultural markers are rooted in a social context, and while we may understand what's going on with the hijab in Karnataka schools and why the matter has reached the Supreme Court, don't really know of the context in Iran.