Sunday, August 01, 2010

Burqa diktat at Aliah University


Yet another Is This Legal? news, this time from West Bengal's Aliah University:

For the past three months, 24-year-old Sirin Middya has not been able to hold her classes at West Bengal’s first Muslim university. While the guidelines at Aliah University in Kolkata don’t stipulate the same, the students’ union has demanded that Middya can teach but only in burqa.

Middya was appointed a guest lecturer at the university in March this year and got the union “diktat” in the second week of April. “I was told that I would not be allowed to attend college if I did not agree to come in a burqa. The University Grants Commission does not prescribe any such dress code and even the university does not have a dress code. But the most unfortunate part is that students are forcing us to wear burqa,” Middya told The Indian Express.

Thanks to Jai for the pointer; his comment appeared in a post on Martha Nussbaum's rebuttal of arguments trotted out to support a burqa ban in France.

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