Challenging the Hijab Ban in India: Plural Embodiment and Secular Constitutionalism

This paper examines the core twin concepts of secularism and pluralism and their location within the Indian constitutional discourse, through a discussion of the hijab ban in the South Indian state of Karnataka. I suggest that attempts at Hindu majoritarian subversion of these core principles face challenges due to the structure of the Indian Constitution, and due to the constitutional agency and mutinies set in motion by women through their legal challenge of state action. In doing so, I undertake a political reading of the place of constitutionalism in the current moment. I discuss the hijab ban in India and the two judgments on the ban as an example of this attempted subversion but also its failure, by suggesting that these judgments fall short in their reading of this interrelationship between secularism and pluralism. In doing so, I introduce a three-fold analytical categorisation, pluralist constitutionalism, constitutional appropriation, and constitutional derailment, to help us outline the tensions inherent in constitutional politics in the present.