The persistence of split judicial verdicts on the hijab issue reflects deeper tensions between secularism and religious freedom in India. Discuss.

Article 25 guarantees freedom of conscience and the right to profess and practise religion, subject to public order, morality and health [3]. Yet Indian courts remain divided on whether the hijab is protected by it — a divergence that is less about dress than about the meaning of Indian secularism itself.

The persisting judicial divergence

• The Supreme Court's split verdict (13 October 2022): Justice Gupta upheld the Karnataka ban, holding that apparent symbols of religious belief cannot enter secular schools maintained from State funds; Justice Dhulia set it aside, reading secularism as tolerance of diversity and rejecting the essentiality test for an individual's claim against the State [1].
• The matter stands referred to a larger Bench and is unresolved [1]. Consequently the Allahabad High Court (21 August 2026, Justices J.J. Munir and Indrajeet Shukla) treated the Karnataka High Court's 2022 ruling as merely persuasive, holding that the student had not established the headscarf as an essential religious practice [4].
• It further held that long tolerance of the practice creates no vested right; the plea rested on Articles 14 and 19(1)(a) [3][4].

Deeper tensions the split exposes

• Two secularisms: institutional neutrality and uniformity versus principled distance that accommodates plural identity [1].
• Doctrinal strain: the essentiality doctrine, evolved in the Shirur Mutt case (1954), casts judges as arbiters of theology [2], while the competing standard tests only the reasonableness of restriction on individual liberty under Article 19 [3].
• Governance vacuum: absent any national policy on religious attire in schools, dress codes are settled case-by-case through litigation.
• Social cost: prolonged uncertainty risks pushing Muslim girls out of classrooms, converting a religious-freedom dispute into an education-access one.

The split is therefore a symptom, not an aberration. An early authoritative pronouncement by the larger Bench, supplemented by school dress norms framed through consultation and reasonable accommodation, can reconcile institutional discipline with conscience — honouring the Preamble's promise of liberty of belief and fraternity assuring individual dignity [3].