Signing you in

On August 21, the Allahabad High Court dismissed Sukaina Rizvi’s petition seeking permission to wear a headscarf with her uniform at Tagore Public School in Prayagraj. Rizvi said she had worn the scarf from Class VI to Class X without objection. The Court held that a school may insist on a uniform dress code so long as it is bona fide and non-discriminatory. But the case takes on a different significance when viewed through the larger question of access to education for Muslim girls.

As per the 2024-25 UDISE+ data, Muslim girls accounted nationally for 18 per cent of female enrolment at the primary level, 16 per cent at upper-primary, 15.2 per cent at secondary and 12.9 per cent at higher-secondary. In Uttar Pradesh, the corresponding shares were 20.3, 16.4, 15 and 13.3 per cent. By the higher-secondary stage, their share is therefore 5.1 percentage points lower nationally than at primary level, and seven points lower in Uttar Pradesh. Rizvi’s dispute arose precisely at the transition to Class XI.

This is not a new policy concern. The Sachar Committee documented barriers affecting Muslim girls’ education, such as inadequate access beyond primary school, distance, safety concerns and limited hostel facilities. The Committee also noted that many schools were culturally hostile, with Muslim students experiencing an atmosphere of marginalisation and discrimination that it described as “subtle deterrents to school admissions”. At the same time, it recorded a strong desire for education among Muslim women and girls. The policy challenge has therefore long been not only expanding access, but ensuring that Muslim students can enter and remain in education.

The Allahabad High Court’s concern, however, lies elsewhere. It says uniforms instil discipline and equality, project institutional identity and promote a “religion neutral atmosphere”. Those purposes are legitimate. But a uniform can produce equality only among students already inside the classroom. Education, by contrast, can shape the conditions of equality far beyond it. Research from the World Bank and UNICEF links secondary schooling with higher earnings, later marriage and childbearing, greater decision-making power, and better health and nutrition outcomes for the next generation. Education therefore does more than improve an individual girl’s prospects; its effects travel through families and across generations. This matters particularly when Muslim girls already form a progressively smaller share of female enrolment as schooling advances. If a rule justified in equality’s name makes continued education harder, a court should ask whether the institutional benefit justifies that cost.

Rizvi’s history makes that inquiry possible. She said she had worn the headscarf for years without objection, and produced identity cards and photographs from Classes VIII, IX and X showing her in uniform with the scarf. The Court held that this did not create an estoppel against later enforcement. But that was not the only issue. If the scarf had coexisted with the uniform for years, what changed by Class XI to make it incompatible with the school’s understanding of equality, discipline or institutional identity?

There was also a middle course worth considering. Accommodation need not mean that students determine the uniform. A school could permit a headscarf consistent with the prescribed dress, while retaining rules necessary for identification, safety and discipline. The institution would still control the uniform. The Karnataka High Court rejected a similar proposal in the earlier hijab litigation because, in its view, the “school uniform ceases to be uniform”. But that assumes absolute visual sameness is itself the purpose of a uniform, rather than asking what legitimate functions uniformity serves.

Indian constitutional law has room for this accommodation-based approach. In Bijoe Emmanuel, the Supreme Court protected Jehovah’s Witness schoolchildren who stood respectfully for the National Anthem but declined to sing it because of conscience. The Court said the “real test of a true democracy” was whether even an insignificant minority could find its identity under the Constitution.

None of this means schools cannot prescribe uniforms or refuse changes that compromise safety, identification, pedagogy or discipline. The narrower point is that where a difference can be accommodated without defeating a common rule’s purposes, exclusion should not be the first answer. Justice Dhulia wrote that reasonable accommodation would be “a sign of a mature society which has learnt to live and adjust with its differences”. A uniform may symbolise equality inside the classroom, but it should not become a barrier to the very education through which genuine equality outside it becomes possible.