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Students in tears beg to be allowed in as two more institutions ban scarf
More colleges in Karnataka have begun stopping girls wearing hijab from entering, triggering protests after tearful pleas fell on deaf ears and spawning a communal counter from a section of male students turning up in saffron scarves and chanting “Jai Shri Ram” when stopped from setting foot on campus.
What had started at the Government Pre-University College in Udupi town, where six Muslim students have been forced to stay out of their classes for weeks for wearing the hijab, has now spread to at least two more educational institutions.
Twenty-three Muslim girls were denied entry to the Government Pre-University College at Kundapura taluk in Udupi district on Thursday, prompting them to begin a sit-in outside the campus that continued on Friday.
A private college a short distance away in Kundapura followed suit on Friday by turning away more than 20 students who had come wearing the hijab. The action was taken despite the calendar for Bhandarkar’s Arts and Science College’s current academic year clearly mentioning that girls are allowed to wear “scarf”.
The students who...