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A hijab dispute at St. Rita’s Public School in Palluruthy has snowballed into a community flashpoint, forcing the CBSE-affiliated institution, run by the Latin Catholic Church, to shut down for two days.
The school announced a holiday on Monday and Tuesday after a heated confrontation broke out when a student arrived wearing a hijab, an attire the school does not permit. According to sources, the student’s parents and six others created a ruckus on the campus, demanded she be allowed to wear the Islamic headgear.
Principal Sr. Heleena Alby, in a letter to parents dated October 12, said the closure was necessitated by “mental stress caused by the situation” and because several staff members had gone on leave. Without naming the controversy, she mentioned a “student who came in attire not permitted by the school” and urged parents to cooperate with the school’s code of discipline.
Speaking to a TV channel, Sr. Heleena revealed that she had lodged a police complaint after the student’s father and a group of men behaved in a “provocative and threatening” manner on the premises.
The incident comes at a time of increasing unease between Christian and Muslim communities in central Kerala. Just last year, Nirmala College in Muvattupuzha saw similar tensions over demands for a prayer room. The current episode also follows the Kerala High Court’s ruling last week that land in Munambam, claimed by the Waqf Board but home to around 600 Latin Catholic families, was not waqf property.
As the hijab row once again reopens debates on religious symbols and institutional autonomy, Kerala finds itself grappling with another test of its fragile communal balance.
