It is vital to underscore the universality of women’s rights - they can’t be held to ransom by parents, political parties, religious organisations or even governments. And, of course, these values cannot be defined by the hatred for PM Narendra Modi or the BJP. The liberal values of modernity ought to be absolute and universal, not selective or communal. Similarly, even future generations of liberals will lose their legitimacy if they do not denounce the hijab as a patriarchal object of control. In fact, a large chunk of the middle class shifted to the right when it saw the Congress bending over backwards to help the vote-contractors among the clergy keep Muslim voters tightly under its control. Had the then Congress government not enacted a law to impose the will of the regressive Muslim clergy over the Supreme Court - and thereby, the Constitution - in the Shah Bano case, the rise of the Hindutva right would have had no middle-class legitimacy. Unfortunately, Indian liberals do not realise that they are at a historic crossroads - but, yet again, they fail to see what is moral, ethical and truly liberal. What is wrong in Iran cannot be right in India.
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