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Bharat Pakistan Terrorism United States USA War World
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Pakistan May Use Iran as a Smokescreen to Spread Terror in India

Intelligence warnings are flashing red. The arrests are piling up. Pakistan does not need a reason to export terror to India. It needs an opportunity. And right now, with West Asia in open conflict, Pakistan’s deep state believes it has exactly that. Rahul PAWA | X – @imrahulpawa Every major world crisis has provided Pakistan’s terror machinery with operational cover to strike India, timed with cold precision to moments of maximum international distraction or diplomatic leverage. On March 20, 2000, the eve of Bill Clinton’s arrival in India, 35 Sikh men were lined up and shot dead in Chittisinghpora village in Jammu and Kashmir’s Anantnag district. The terrorists wore Indian Army uniforms and spoke Punjabi and Urdu, a calculated false flag designed to hand the visiting American president fresh images of fabricated Indian Army atrocities in Jammu and Kashmir. It was Lashkar-e-Taiba, operating under the Pakistan Army’s direction and its foreign intelligence agency ISI’s direct command. After 9/11, with American attention consumed by Afghanistan and the world watching Islamabad perform as a frontline ally in its “war against terror”, Pakistan’s deep state moved with characteristic audacity. On December 13, 2001, LeT and Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorists stormed the Indian Parliament in New Delhi, killing nine security personnel and nearly triggering a full-scale war. The attack was not opportunistic. It was a calculated attempt to internationalise Jammu and Kashmir at a moment when the world was already in crisis and the Islamic world was split. In November 2008, as Gaza descended into violent escalation and global Islamic outrage peaked, ten Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists sailed into Mumbai and held the city hostage for sixty hours, killing 166 people across multiple coordinated sites including the Taj Mahal Palace hotel, Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, and the Nariman House Jewish centre. The terrorist attack was meticulously planned, with Pakistan Army and its ISI providing training, logistics, and real-time operational guidance. This is not Pakistan-sponsored terrorism born of desperation. It was Pakistan Army strategy, executed with maximum cynicism. In 2001 it wore the mask of America’s indispensable ally against terror while simultaneously directing terror at India. Today it wears the mask of a responsible Islamic middle power and self-appointed Iran mediator while running active cells across Indian cities. The mask changes. The target never does. Domestically, the amendment of Article 370 of the Indian constitution in August 2019 began delivering what Pakistan had spent decades of propaganda insisting was impossible. Pakistani generals watched in horror as peace and normalcy returned to Jammu and Kashmir. Tourism surged. Investment flowed. A new generation of Kashmiris was experiencing connectivity and economic opportunity rather than terror branded as jihad. The Kashmir valley, whose civilisational roots run deep into Hindu tradition, whose saints and ancient temples reflect centuries of Hindu practice long preceding the region’s recent history, was beginning to rediscover itself on its own terms. The Pakistan Army could not allow this. A peaceful, prosperous Jammu and Kashmir demolished the foundational premise of Pakistan’s existence and its seventy-year investment in terror, war, and propaganda. So it recalibrated and struck. On April 22, 2025, three Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists armed with American M4 carbines, AK-47s, and a GoPro camera traced to a Chinese distributor and activated in Dongguan fourteen months before the attack, descended into Baisaran Valley and separated Hindu men from their wives and children before executing them in cold blood. They fled before Indian security forces arrived and were hunted down a few months later, with Home Minister Amit Shah confirming their elimination in Indian Parliament on July 29. From the bodies of attackers, investigators recovered Pakistani voter ID slips linked to Lahore constituency NA-125 and Gujranwala constituency NA-79, and biometric data from Pakistan’s National Database on a micro-SD card recovered from a broken satellite phone. The objective, as evidenced by the immediate operational claim on social media by The Resistance Front, a proscribed outfit and proxy of Lashkar-e-Taiba operating out of Muridke, was precise. Blame Hindus, declare Kashmir exclusively Islamic land, and manufacture an outsider and insider narrative implying that the very Hindus who form the civilisational core of Kashmir since its existence were settlers and occupiers. A fabricated narrative lifted directly from recent collaborators Hamas and Hezbollah’s playbooks in West Asia, designed to erase the Hindu soul of a valley Pakistan has spent decades trying to destabilise. India’s response was decisive and precise. Operation Sindoor struck nine confirmed terrorist training sites: Markaz Taiba in Muridke, LeT’s headquarters where the 26/11 Mumbai attackers were trained; Markaz Subhan Allah in Bahawalpur, Jaish-e-Mohammed’s nerve centre; the Masjid Syedna Bilal camp in Muzaffarabad; the Gulpur camp in Kotli; the Sawai Nala camp in Muzaffarabad; the Abbas camp in Kotli; the Mehmoona Joya facility of Hizbul Mujahideen in Sialkot; the Barnala camp in Bhimber; and the Sarjal facility at Tehra Kalan, a key weapons storage site. These were not arbitrary targets. They were the nerve centres behind decades of attacks on India including the IC-814 hijacking, the 2001 Indian Parliament attacks, and the 2008 Mumbai carnage. Pakistan’s response was to have its generals and senior officers attend the funerals of globally proscribed terrorists and then escalate. Pakistani forces deployed KARGU-2 loitering munitions and Bayraktar TB2 drones procured from Turkey and China in waves against Indian civilian and military targets. On the night of May 9 to 10, Indian air defence intercepted a Pakistani Fatah-II hypersonic ballistic missile over Sirsa in Haryana, aimed at targets near Delhi.  In response to Pakistani escalation, Indian armed forces struck eleven Pakistani airbases including Nur Khan in Rawalpindi, the Pakistan Air Force’s central command and logistics hub, Rafiqui in Shorkot, Sargodha’s Mushaf Base, Murid in Chakwal, Skardu in Gilgit-Baltistan, and Bholari in Sindh, degrading frontline squadrons, runway infrastructure, drone hubs, and radar installations across the country. SEAD operations disabled air defence radars in Lahore and Gujranwala. The Indian Navy’s Western Fleet, including an aircraft carrier, repositioned in the northern Arabian Sea within operational range of Karachi. The intensity and reach of India’s strikes forced Pakistan’s DGMO to call his Indian counterpart and

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Geopolitics International United States USA War World
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Washington’s Narrowest Gamble: A Seizure, Not an Invasion

Three places will signal when this war evolves: the Strait of Hormuz, Kharg Island, and the hills above southern Lebanon. Everything else is noise. Rahul PAWA | X – @imrahulpawa There is a particular kind of tension that settles over a theatre of war when everything is in place and nothing has yet happened. It is the tension of a held breath. That is where West Asia finds itself today. The aircraft carriers are in position. The Marines are at sea. The Israeli Defense Forces are clearing southern Lebanese hills. And yet the orders to cross into Iran has not been given, and may not be. Late last week, U.S. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth confirmed the deployment of roughly 5,000 Marines to West Asia aboard amphibious assault ships, including the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit sailing from Japan and the 11th from California. An 82nd Airborne rapid-reaction brigade is already in the region. This is the largest American force concentration since the war with Iran began on February 28th. It is not subtle. It is not meant to be. And yet President Trump, asked directly whether he was considering a ground invasion, said he was not. He spoke instead of being “close to our goals.” His Secretary of Defence said something rather different. Analysts say something different still. This is not necessarily contradiction. It may simply be the grammar of coercion: you do not announce a landing before you need to make one. What, then, are these forces actually for? The honest answer is that they are for several things at once. They are a signal to Tehran that the cost of continued resistance is rising. They are an insurance policy against Iranian escalation in the Strait of Hormuz. And they are, according to several ground reports, the forward edge of contingency plans to seize Kharg Island, the oil export terminal that accounts for the majority of Iran’s crude shipments, along with the islands of Abu Musa and the Tunbs. Seizing Kharg would be a surgical act of economic strangulation rather than an invasion in the traditional sense. U.S. air power has already struck the island’s coastal defences, deliberately sparing the oil tanks themselves. The logic is legible: destroy Iran’s ability to sell oil and you destroy its ability to fund a war, without needing to take Tehran. The Marines would be the lock, not the key. Further north, Israel is pursuing what it sees not as an open-ended war of choice, but as a necessary security campaign with increasingly durable aims. Defence Minister Israel Katz has signalled that Israel may seek to hold southern Lebanon up to the Litani River, roughly twenty miles from the Israeli border. Since mid-March, Israeli ground forces have been clearing villages, bridges, and access routes across a broad arc, with the objective of creating greater strategic depth against Hezbollah and other Iran-backed armed groups. From Israel’s perspective, the logic is clear: push the threat farther north, deny hostile forces proximity to the border, and prevent the northern front from once again becoming a platform for sustained attack. Hezbollah has vowed to resist. What is taking shape, therefore, looks less like a temporary manoeuvre and more like the early outline of a more enduring military posture. Israel’s calculus is that Hezbollah cannot be defanged from the air alone. Netanyahu has said as much, repeatedly. But holding southern Lebanon is not a surgical strike. It is an open-ended commitment that risks inflaming the region and straining the alliance with Washington, which has its own timelines and its own thresholds. The two campaigns, the American one in West Asia and the Israeli one in Lebanon, are coordinated in broad strategic terms but not necessarily in lockstep. To the east, Pakistan has quietly closed its border crossings with Iran and reinforced its long held Balochistan frontier. Islamabad is not preparing to join any offensive. It is preparing for the consequences of one: refugee flows, cross-border terrorism, the destabilisation of a region already stretched thin. Pakistan’s deputy prime minister has been making calls, invoking a Saudi defence pact to urge Iranian restraint. The mountains of Balochistan, are not friendly to armoured advances in any direction. Iran, for its part, is not without leverage. Its missile and drone inventory, numbering in the thousands, remains largely intact. Its networks in Iraq and Syria are on alert. The Houthi rebels in Yemen have declared themselves ready to strike Gulf shipping routes the moment Iran gives the word, threatening to close the Bab al-Mandeb strait as a second chokepoint alongside Hormuz. Iranian officials have warned that any strike on its coastline would trigger naval mining operations across straits, with consequences for world oil markets that no government in the West is eager to contemplate. Diplomacy has not provided an exit. A fifteen-point Saudi-led ceasefire proposal was rejected by Tehran. Germany and France have said they will not endorse military escalation absent a truce framework. In the United States, public appetite for a ground war in Iran is low, even as polling suggests most Americans expect ground troops to go eventually. That gap between expectation and appetite is the space in which policy is made, and it is a narrow one. What this moment most resembles is not the eve of a great offensive. It resembles the final hours of a negotiation conducted entirely through the movement of ships and soldiers: a bid to extract a concession from Tehran before the Marines are ordered ashore. Whether Iran will read it that way, or whether it will conclude that the Americans are bluffing, will determine what happens next. The honest assessment is this. Three thousand six hundred combat troops, divided between two Marine battalions and a paratroop brigade, are not an invasion force for a country of ninety million people and one of the largest standing armies in the region. They are, at most, a raiding party with strategic objectives. Kharg Island. The Hormuz approaches. Time-limited. Defined. Reversible, if things go wrong quickly enough. Whether

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Defence Geopolitics Policy Security Technology United States USA War World
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Inside Iran’s Military Mosaic

Iran always knew this day would come. For two decades, it built a warfare architecture that could not be centred, could not be decapitated, could not be won from the air. Rahul PAWA | March 9, 2026 |  x- imrahulpawa On the morning of March 8, 2026, black rain fell on Tehran. The Iranian capital was engulfed in a cloud of toxic smoke that unleashed oil-tainted rainfall dozens of miles away after overnight Israeli strikes hit several fuel depots, causing fires to burn for hours. Four oil depots and a petroleum products transfer center in the Tehran and Alborz provinces were under Israeli fire and damaged, and four personnel, including two oil tanker drivers, were killed. By 10:30 in the morning, cars on Valiasr Street, Tehran’s main north-south artery, still needed their headlights on to navigate the darkness. It was a catastrophic image, and it was designed to be one. But here is what the architects of this air campaign may be miscalculating: Iran was not built to survive this war from the top. It was built to survive it from the bottom. This is the Mosaic Defence, and it is arguably the most consequential military framework to emerge from the Middle East in the past two decades. Its origins trace back to 2009, when then-IRGC Commander Mohammad Ali Jafari formally reorganised the Revolutionary Guards around a single, haunting lesson drawn from watching American military power eviscerate two neighbouring states. Afghanistan fell in weeks. Baghdad collapsed in three. In both cases, destruction of centralised command produced almost immediate systemic failure. Tehran incorporated those lessons: don’t fight the enemy’s preferred war. The US advantage is high-end airpower, precision strikes, and intelligence dominance. Mosaic Defence tries to make those strengths less decisive by ensuring there is no single headquarters, city, or leader whose loss collapses the fight. The architecture that emerged is methodical. Each of Iran’s 31 provincial IRGC commanders operates with his own weapons arsenal, logistics chains, intelligence services, and Basij militias, explicitly trained to make independent military decisions, plan attacks, and wage guerrilla warfare without consulting Tehran. The formal language inside IRGC operational culture refers to this as the “operational autonomy protocol,” triggered automatically when central command goes dark. Iranian Deputy Defence Minister Reza Talaeinik confirmed publicly that each figure in the command structure has named successors stretching three ranks down. You kill the general, his brigadier already has orders. You kill the brigadier, the colonel carries on. On March 1, after Israeli strikes killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi posted on X in direct, unflinching terms: “Bombings in our capital have no impact on our ability to conduct war. Decentralised Mosaic Defense enables us to decide when, and how, the war will end.” It was not bravado alone. It was a precise articulation of a deeply embedded strategic posture. The Basij is the human tissue that holds this organism together. Established in 1979 by Ayatollah Khomeini as a people’s volunteer force and now operating as a subsidiary arm of the IRGC, its estimated one million members form the paramilitary backbone beneath the Revolutionary Guard’s 150,000 professional troops. In the coastal provinces, “Ashura” and “Imam Hussein” battalions are organised in towns to operate autonomously, defending designated geographic areas, leveraging proximity to logistics centers and coastal road networks to ensure flexible, rapid movement of combat assets between sectors. These are not conscript armies waiting for radio orders. They have pre-assigned mission packages. They know their terrain the way a farmer knows his field. The strategic calculation is brutally simple: to defeat Iran, you do not take Tehran. You take 31 separate, motivated, geographically embedded armies simultaneously. Operationally, this manifests in ways that have already unnerved American planners. In February’s “Smart Control” exercises in the Strait of Hormuz, IRGC fast-attack craft swarmed in coordinated patterns, electronic warfare systems blinded radars, and decentralised orders were executed without central authorisation. This is the rehearsal. The Strait, through which roughly a fifth of the world’s traded oil passes, is now overseen not by a single naval command in Tehran but by distributed coastal units that can independently initiate harassment, mining, or blockade operations. The UAE’s Ministry of Defence reported intercepting over 1,400 drones, eight cruise missiles, and 238 ballistic missiles from Iran in under a week of conflict. Some of that volume reflects this posture, not desperation: swarm the adversary’s interception capacity until something gets through. The darker edge of this framework is its unpredictability under pressure. While disciplined elite units will sustain coherent operations, less experienced units will fall victim to confusion and disorder, raising the risk of uncoordinated strikes and navigation errors that could trigger unintended escalation. The Iranian drone that reportedly struck Oman, a country actively mediating ceasefire talks, illustrated exactly this: autonomous units operating on pre-issued orders with no one in Tehran in a position to call them back in real time. The oil rain over Tehran, apocalyptic as it appeared, does not break this system. Iran’s oil distribution company confirmed that despite the strikes, sufficient gasoline reserves remained. Fuel disruption to a city of ten million is a genuine hardship and a psychological blow. But Mosaic Defence was never designed around keeping Tehran’s refineries lit. It was designed around the premise that even if Tehran burns, Khuzestan fights, Isfahan launches, and the IRGC navy at Bandar Abbas decides on its own when to close the Hormuz chokepoint. The question the US and Israel face is not whether they can win a battle. It is whether there is a battle to win. You cannot break a mosaic; you can only rearrange its pieces. And the pieces, right now, are fighting on their own. The author is an international criminal lawyer and director of research at New Delhi based think tank Centre for Integrated and Holistic Studies (CIHS).

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Lions, Shadows & Silk Roads
Geopolitics International Terrorism United States War
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Lions, Shadows & Silk Roads

Israel-Iran clash reshaped West Asia’s strategic chessboard with US getting in. India will have to display maturity, dexterity, openness and exercise its strategic autonomy. N. C. Bipindra The Middle East was thrust into dramatic escalation of hostilities as Israel launched “Operation Rising Lion,” a comprehensive preemptive military campaign against Iranian targets, taking out military and nuclear facilities, on June 13, 2025. The operation, which included airstrikes, cyber-attacks and targeted assassinations was Israel’s most extensive cross-border military endeavour in recent years. In response, Iran activated proxy militias, launched missile attacks via Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and escalated its hybrid warfare tactics across the region. After calling for asking Iran to surrender, US President Donald Trump approved American air strikes completely obliterating three key Iranian nuclear facilities at Natanz, Fordow and Isfahan, yet noting “now is the time for peace.” This confrontation has far-reaching implications for regional stability, global oil markets, US foreign policy and emerging trade corridors like India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) and India-Isreal-UAE-USA (I2U2) group. For India, which has been investing heavily in regional diplomacy and infrastructure partnerships such as IMEC and I2U2, the conflict raises urgent questions about risk, resilience and realignment in its West Asia strategy. Operation Rising Lion, Israel’s Gambit Israel’s Operation Rising Lion was triggered by a surge in Iranian backed attacks on Israeli diplomatic and economic interests in northern Iraq, Syria and transfer of precision-guided missiles to Hezbollah in Lebanon apart from repeated calls for use of nukes to annihilate Israelis. The operation marked a shift in Israel’s longstanding “campaign between the wars” doctrine into an open and assertive military campaign targeting Iranian infrastructure, weapons convoys and senior commanders in multiple theatres. Key components of the operation included coordinated airstrikes on IRGC installations, targeted killing of senior operatives, military leadership and taking out nuclear facilities. The operation included cyber strikes and group covert attacks that disrupted Iranian air defence networks, missile stations and fuel supply chains. Anticipating a counterstrike from Iran, Israel deployed its new laser-based missile defence system which had been tested successfully against Iranian cruise missile barrages. Most of the Iranian attacks were intercepted though some have penetrated the air defence system to hit Israeli cities and towns including a hospital complex. Israel declared the operation a strategic necessity to “decapitate Iran’s regional encirclement architecture” and pre-empt future multi-front attacks including the nukes. While tactically effective, it has risked triggering a full-scale war with Iran and its axis of resistance apart from getting US and Russia-China involved in the war. Iran’s Proxy Retaliation, Strategic Posturing Iran’s counter-response blended military retaliation, strategic ambiguity, and proxy warfare. Apart from direct state-to-state confrontation with Israel — still a risky escalation — Iran relied heavily on asymmetric tactics. Iran fired hundreds of drones and rockets into Israel, overwhelming Iron Dome systems despite Israeli air superiority. The Houthis, an Iranian proxy in Yemen, have dubbed the US strikes on Iran as a “declaration of war” and have fired several missiles at Israel. Iran’s missile strike on Israel marked the first direct hit from Iranian territory since the April 2024 skirmish, indicating a new threshold of confrontation. Though Iran is trying to avoid full-scale war, its response is carefully calibrated to bleed Israel politically and militarily, while also testing the resolve of US deterrence commitments in the region. US Strategic Overstretch? The US was quickly pulled into the maelstrom, just over a week into the launch of military hostilities. Though Trump only issued warnings for a week, providing intelligence support to Israel and deploying at least two aircraft carriers to the region, his administration seems to have decided that enough is enough. Washington now faces accusations of strategic inconsistency. While it pushed for de-escalation publicly, on the parallel it supported Israeli operational aims covertly. This dualism will further strain US ties with Gulf States like Oman and Kuwait who fear further regional de-stabilisation. Furthermore, as tensions peaked, Trump administration’s G7 engagement was interrupted, which complicates America’s long-term global balancing act. Disruptions, Opportunity for India India has deep economic, energy and strategic stakes in West Asia. Operation Rising Lion and its aftermath present both direct threats and unexpected opportunities for New Delhi. IMEC Corridor in Jeopardy: The IMEC, announced at the 2023 G20 Summit, depends on regional stability across UAE, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Jordan. The Israel-Iran conflict has disrupted port operations in Haifa and Eilat, key to IMEC’s Mediterranean leg. It has jeopardised land connectivity across Jordan due to increased Israeli military mobilisation. The insurance premiums on Red Sea maritime routes are expected to spike by about 35 per cent hurting Indian exporters. While not dead, IMEC’s viability is now under serious question until a ceasefire or détente is re-established. I2U2 Faces Diplomatic Strain: The I2U2 grouping aimed at high-tech cooperation, food security and infrastructure investment now faces political turbulence. UAE, a key I2U2 pillar, is deeply wary of regional conflict spilling over and has called for restraint putting it at odds with Israel’s aggressive posture. India is caught between maintaining its longstanding ties with Israel and its desire to deepen linkages with Iran, UAE and the Arab world, especially after recent Chabahar Port developments. India’s diplomatic tightrope is getting narrower. Energy Security and Diaspora Risks: Iran’s retaliation threatens commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz if India is seen backing Israel. While largely rhetorical, these threats would increase Brent crude prices beyond current rates, putting India’s inflation control at risk. There is heightened concern on nine million-strong Indian diaspora in the Gulf, as militias near Kuwait and Bahrain showed signs of mobilisation. India has had to yet again evacuate her citizens from Iran, Israel and the spill over of the conflict to other States in the region would compound the evacuation tasks on hand. Strategic Recommendations for India In navigating the evolving West Asian crisis, India must pursue a multi-vector strategy. It must reinvigorate strategic neutrality. India must avoid taking sides publicly while conducting quiet shuttle diplomacy between Israel, Iran and Gulf countries. A role in

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Disinformation Fact Sheet Human Rights Misinformation World
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Dichotomy, Fault Lines & Lies

Muslim women globally seek to free from hijab and burka. In India, its other way, radical religious fanatics push for regressive dress code Neha Dahiya Why’s it that there’s so much furore on the headgear, face cover or someone covering his or her body partially or in full? Incidents reported in last few weeks on Hijab in particular across the world seem lot more disturbing from humanity and civilizational perspective. Big question that continues to taunt the Islamic world was how a 22-year old Mahsa Amini from Sagrez in Iran was murdered by Iranian police on September 13 for allegedly not covering her head in full. And, there after the repression unleashed by Iranian government that made wane attempts to justify the broad daylight murder of Mahsa Amini is rather appalling and inhuman. Iranian President Sayyid Ebrahim Raisolsadati otherwise known as Ebrahim Raisi seems to have gone overboard to justify the brutal murder of Mahsa Amini. The claim from the Iranian administration seems to be that Hijab was mandated by Islam and there’s no way anyone can be free from the Islamic tradition of covering the head from top to toe with Hijab and a burkha. While the extremist islamist – jihadists came to claim the link between hijab and islam, women and girls have made attempts to free women from this barbaric tradition. Otherwise, how would one explain several nations mostly run by muslim leadership discarding the black robe and hijab that suffocated the women and girls over ages? Mahsa Amini was on a trip to Tehran with her brother Kairash when the morality police hitherto known as Gasht-e-Ershad  abducted her on Shahid Haghini expressway. As per reports Mahsa Amini was brutally beaten in the van and later on Vozara Avenue. As per reports, outside the detention centre, Kairash witnessed women taken inside that screamed for their lives. Mahsa Amini collapsed and slipped into coma and succumbed to beatings three days later. Under Iran’s sharia (Islamic) law, imposed since Ayatollah Khomeini took reins in 1979, women were bound to cover their hair and wear long, loose-fitting clothes to disguise their body. Even slightest signs of disobedience led to severe punishments and physical torture in detention centres commonly known as‘re-education’ run by the ruthless morality police. Muslim women world over including Iran have periodically campaigned against Hijab that has nothing to do with Islam in the strict sense. Women reportedly first took to streets against Hijab in Iran weeks after Khomeini’s arrival decades ago. India was no exception to such Anti-Hijab protests till December 2021 when six girls ebbed by the jihadists entered the Udupi government-run pre-university college in the Indian southern state of Karnataka swearing hijab to classes Most interesting is their indoctrination that claimed hijab was part of their religious practice. When they were turned out of the classrooms for not complying with the college uniform rules they argued for freedom to practice their religion and attire associated with it. Unlike many of their counterparts in dozens of countries, these girls wanted to wear a Burqa and Niqab covering their full body and a face veil concealing the uniform and identity of the student. The girls went to the Karnataka high court demanding to wear hijab on the campus premises. There is no law in Indian constitution mandating a code of conduct for women as in the case of Iranian theocracy. Instead, protected by the “Right to Live with Human Dignity” under Article 21 of the Indian Constitution, there are absolutely no legal restrictions on Muslim women in India wearing the hijab or even the burqa in public. One needs to acknowledge that an institution has the power to impose a dress code on its premises. The freedom of a woman to wear whatever she pleases does not supersede an institution’s authority to decide a dress code for its registrants. The rule was applicable to any public or private office space, not just colleges. It also applied to hotels, dining establishments, places of worship, and other similar establishments. Arguments that wearing hijab was essential practice in Islam may not hold water. Hijab has roots in Persian and known as ḥajaba or the veil in Arabic. In Quran, hijab is termed as ‘Khimar’ which means curtain or partition in literal or metaphorical sense. Khimar originated from trilateral verb ‘khamara’ which again means ‘ghatta’, to conceal, hide, or cover something. Quran Surah al-Ahzab, verse-53 said, “Let them wear their Khimar over their juyub” referring to their chest. Allah instructed the believing women to bring the fabric to their front by drawing Khimar over their chests, as a covering. Khumurihina (plural of Khimar) used in this Quran verse refers to scarves that females wore on the Arabian Peninsula at the time. Given the clear distinction, justifiably one wonders as to why Hijab is used while Quran refers to as scarf or Khimar. Subsequently, verse 30 in chapter 24 and verse 54 in Chapter 33, Holy Quran asked both men and women to act with “decency” and “integrity,” both physically and morally. The Quran did not mandate a strictly religious “uniform,” and the first spiritual message did not mean to impose strict or “fixed” dress rules once and for all as propagated by Islamist fanatics but rather to “recommend” an “attitude” or “ethic” towards the body and soul. Khimar versus hijab is not one of Islam’s pillars but rather relate to moral principles, behaviour and relational ethics. Only when religious faith is exercised freely can it meaning something. As a result, discussing Islamic obligation to wear a hijab or Khimar is spiritually and technically incorrect as the Quran states, “No compulsion in religion.” (256 of Al-Baqara). Karnataka High court had ruled that hijab was not essential to religious practice of Islam and upheld the state government order on adhering to uniforms in educational institutions. The recent Supreme Court split verdict on Hijab and its reference to a larger bench has made the debate all the more intense. Six- Muslim girls that

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