NEW DELHI (Dispatches) --
Police arrested dozens of student activists after protests erupted on Thursday in New Delhi, challenging the government’s ban on wearing hijabs in colleges.
The All India Students’ Association (AISA) staged a protest outside the Karnataka Bhawan to support Muslim students.
Security forces and police were seen forcefully arresting dozens of protesters and carrying them to the service buses to transport the detainees to the police department.
Hundreds of agents were deployed in the city, and several streets were blocked to keep the massive rally under control.
Students and activists have also marched in cities including Hyderabad and Kolkata in recent days.
On Thursday, a court in the southern state of Karnataka told students not to wear any religious clothing until it delivers a verdict on petitions seeking to overturn the ban on hijabs, headscarves worn by Muslim women.
“We will pass an order. But till the matter is resolved, no student should insist on wearing religious dress,” the Press Trust of India news agency quoted Chief Justice Ritu Raj Awasthi as saying.
The court also directed the state to reopen schools and colleges, which the chief minister had shut for three days as protests over the ban escalated earlier this week.
The issue grabbed headlines last month when a government-run school in Karnataka’s Udupi district barred students wearing hijabs from entering classrooms, triggering protests outside the school gate. More schools in the state followed with similar bans, forcing the state’s top court to intervene.
The uneasy standoff has raised fears among Muslim students who say they are being deprived of their religious rights in the Hindu-majority nation. On Monday, hundreds of students and parents took to the streets to protest the restriction.

It also captured attention in neighboring Muslim-majority Pakistan.
“Depriving Muslim girls of an education is a grave violation of fundamental human rights,” its foreign minister, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, tweeted on Wednesday, calling the situation “absolutely oppressive.”
For many Muslim women, the hijab is part of their faith and a way to maintain modesty. It has been under attack for decades in some Western countries, particularly in France, which in 2004 banned them from being worn in public schools.
In India, where Muslims make up about 14 percent of the country’s almost 1.4 billion people, they are not banned or restricted in public places and are a common sight.
Some rights activists have voiced concerns that the bans could increase Islamophobia. Violence and hate speech against Muslims have increased under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s governing Hindu nationalist party, which also governs Karnataka state.