Daijiworld Media Network - New Delhi (SP)
New Delhi, Apr 1: The Supreme Court which rejected the plea of a Muslim student to permit him to attend the convent school of which he is a student, duly sporting a beard, said that 'the concept of secularism should not be stretched beyond certain limits and Talibanization can not be allowed to spread in the country'.
"We do not want Talibanis to flourish in this country. Some day, a girl student might approach us with a demand to allow her to attend schools with burkha on. Can we permit such requests?" questioned Justice Markandeya Katju, of the Supreme Court bench headed by Justice Ravindran which took up the student’s petition. While claiming to be strongly secular himself, Justice Katju felt that religious faiths should not be unduly extended.
"I am a secular person. But we need to strike a balance between rights and personal beliefs. We should never indulge in stretching secularism," Katju said, while dismissing an application made by Mohammed Salim, a student of Nirmala Convent High School, a minority institution being run in Madhya Pradesh, with government recognition. The school rules say that the students attending the school should be clean-shaven.
Salim's application made against the school management's rules had earlier been declined by Madhya Pradesh High Court. "Every citizen of the country has the right to follow the tenets and traditions of his own religion. No one can stop people from following the practices of the religion he follows, which is the right available to every one in India," he had argued, in support of his plea to allow him to sport a beard while attending the school. Retired Justice B A Khan, who was the counsel for Salim, had also argued before the bench that sporting a beard forms part and parcel of the tenets of Islam.