Karnataka withdraws its 2022 order barring hijab in classrooms

The Karnataka government has withdrawn the instruction it issued in September 2022 directing schools in the state to bar the hijab in classrooms. Deccan Herald reported the rollback on May 13, describing it as the reversal of one of the most contested administrative orders of the previous government in the state.

The order was framed at the time as a uniform dress code rather than a religious restriction, and that distinction was contested for its entire duration. Students and families challenged it in court, and the debate spread well beyond Karnataka into national politics.

The reaction

The criticism came immediately and from an unusual direction. Union minister Pralhad Joshi, a BJP leader from Maharashtra, said on May 14 that the Congress move lifting the ban in Karnataka schools disrespects the judicial process. On the other side, organisations that had opposed the 2022 instruction said they would keep up their agitation against the reversal.

Both reactions point at the same unresolved thing. An administrative order governing what students wear in a classroom sat in a category that blurred education policy, religious practice and the limits of what a state may regulate. Withdrawing it returns the question to the states rather than settling it, and the litigation that followed the 2022 order does not disappear because the instruction has been cancelled.