Source: Reuters
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Nishat Hussain's green eyes flash angrily as she talks about the day years ago when she stopped wearing the burqa because of the discrimination and hostility she faced for putting on the head-to-toe garment.
"Once I was stopped from entering a hospital by a peon because I was wearing the burqa while other women who were not dressed like me were allowed in," said the 53-year-old Muslim woman from the western Indian city of Jaipur.
Things have not changed today for Muslim women who wear headscarves or burqas in officially secular India, according to Hussain, a social worker with the National Muslim Women's Welfare Society who attended a conference of Muslim women's groups in New Delhi this week.
"From A to Z, whether dealing with schools or the administration or hospitals, there is hostility for women wearing the burqa and the hijab," said Hussain, dressed in a salwar-kameez (loose pyjamas and kurta) with her head uncovered.
In November, a federal government-appointed panel said women wearing the head-covering hijab found it difficult to get jobs while Muslim women dressed in a burqa complained of rude treatment at markets, hospitals, schools and on public transport.
Muslims make up around 13 percent of mainly Hindu India's 1 billion population and are the country's poorest religious community. They lag behind in literacy and in higher education, with the gap wider for Muslim women, according to the panel.