In India's southern state of Karnataka, Muslim girls who wear hijabs are banned from attending school or university.
The decision to prohibit female students from attending their place of education if they wear religious garments has sparked outrage across the world, with Indian-Australians feeling the effects of the ongoing controversy.
Maria Zaidi, 23, is an Indian-Australian Muslim woman who chose to wear the hijab when she started high school in Sydney. That's a decision school-age Indian Muslim girls and women living in Karnataka do not have the right to make.
"The ban is a symbol of fascism in the modern world because by ... quite tacitly taking away these human rights, you sort of lay the foundation for socio-economic collapse of those people," Ms Zaidi told SBS News.
Maria Zaidi, 23, is an Indian-Australian Muslim woman who chose to wear the hijab when she was in high school. Source: Supplied / Maria Zaidi
How did this row begin?
Karnataka's High Court placed an interim order against the wearing of religious garments after a college in the Udupi district in the state shut its gates on five Muslim hijab-wearing students.
Protests of solidarity spread across India and Pakistan, with many calling on the government to allow girls the choice to wear their hijab, a garment they say is a religious requirement to be worn in public.
But the support for Muslim women has triggered Hindu nationalist groups to stage their own protests in support of the hijab ban.
Within these demonstrations, many Hindu men donned saffron scarves and in the context of these protests, Ms Zaidi said she saw that as a symbol of Hindu nationalism.
Amid the protests, Muslim girls in Karnataka filed two petitions to the state's courts to seek the ability to once again wear the hijab in schools, arguing the ban encroaches on their right to practise their religion.
Indian-Australians voice concerns
The matter has now reached its eighth day in Karnataka's High Court, as Indian-Australians wait for a final ruling they say will have rippling effects on Muslims who live across India.
One of them is Ms Zaidi, who said that the ban has forced Muslim women to make what she describes as an impossible choice to either follow their religious requirement of wearing their hijab, or to attain an education.
She said when Muslim girls are banned from wearing their hijab, it is an "insidious way" to prevent them from becoming literate, chasing their dreams and reaching their career goals in the future.
"[The ban] really reinforces the notion that you are the other and that you don't enjoy the same freedoms as others around you do."
Dozens of people gathered in Melbourne's CBD on Sunday to show their support for Muslim women in India, and a protest in Sydney is scheduled for Wednesday.
Congress workers shout slogans outside the Governor House during a protest against the recent hijab ban. Credit: Pacific Press/Sipa USA
Amanda Gilbertson is a senior research fellow in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne, and said India's constitution is enshrined on a "positive definition of secularism".
"In India, secularism is not understood generally as the absence of religion, it's about the freedom of everyone to practise their own religion,” she said.
According to the Indian census, literacy rates among Muslims in India are lower than the national population, but they are steadily improving - a trend Dr Gilbertson said could be stunted if a hijab ban was ordered.
"Anything that's going to make minorities feel more unwelcome in public spaces, particularly places of education, I think is to be discouraged," she said.
Dr Gilbertson harbours fears that if the High Court rules in favour of banning the hijab in educational institutions, there will be ramifications for India's secularism upon which its constitution was founded.
"A hijab ban in schools feels like a really, really significant step away from the framing of secularism in the Indian constitution," she said.
"I would anticipate that it would increase the sense of schools not being Muslim spaces and already even in a much more secular context."
Why ban the hijab?
Karnataka is ruled by the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), a state that has had embroiling tensions between Hindus and Muslims since Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power in 2014.
Mr Modi and his government have been strong supporters of the Uniform Civil Code, which would allow for all people to be "equal" with one another. According to the BJP, the hijab would disrupt such uniformity.
SBS News has contacted Australia's High Commission of India for comment.
In his submissions to the High Court on Monday, Karnataka's advocate-general Prabhuling Navadgi argued that a hijab is not a requirement for Muslim women - a claim that has been rebuked by many Muslims around the world.
Director and public officer of global not-for-profit organisation Vedic Global, Rakesh Raizada, is in staunch agreement with the government's position.
Mr Raizada who is also Vedic Global's Melbourne-based representative - said his secular organisation preaches human rights and world peace, absent of any one religion's values.
He said religion can be practised privately or in places of worship - but not in educational institutions, where people must respect the uniform policy of the college they attend.
"You're going to college? Follow the norms of the college. Because uniform means uniform, everybody has to wear a uniform," Mr Raizada said.
The Hijab row erupted in Karnataka colleges over Muslim students wearing religious dress to the college. Credit: SOPA Images/Sipa USA
"If Indians start wearing their traditional dress, then Sikhs start wearing their dress, it will become a chaos," he said.
"So why [should] one religion should be given preference? We have been giving preference to [Muslims] and they ... keep on demanding more and more."
Dr Gilbertson said this kind of rhetoric allows for the BJP to skew secularism away from assisting minority groups, including more than 200 million Muslims in India.
"[Secularism] is a way of translating the issue of the wearing of the hijab away from ... your constitutional right to practise your religion and towards a special treatment of a minority, a form of minority appeasement that is actually threatening to the quality of the public sphere," she said.
Muslim students were told not to wear hijabs at the institute premises. Credit: SOPA Images/Sipa USA
‘Purely politics’
Meanwhile, Indian Muslim Association of Australia’s public officer Sirajuddin Syed said the Indian diaspora in Australia are unfazed by a political agenda he believes is crafted by the BJP to stoke divisions between religious groups in India.
“I know this is politics being played … to appease the majority community by demonising the Muslim community,” he said.
“I don’t see this as ‘you versus me, me versus you' … it’s purely politics.”
He said Muslim women have worn the hijab for decades, but has only become a problem since the BJP came to power with an agenda to “target the Muslim girls”.
“From the time the government came in, they put the line: ‘No you are different, we are different, you belong to certain groups, they belong to certain groups',” Mr Syed said.
For Ms Zaidi, the religious obligation to wear the hijab is a "personal struggle", but it is one she has chosen to make.
She holds onto hope that the "symbol of women's own choices about their own bodies" is embraced in the court's final ruling.
"Placing these restrictions is not only encroaching on the freedom of Muslims ... but also for women everywhere."
SBS News contacted the Hindu Council of Australia but it did not respond to a request for comment.
