Congress backs women’s right to choose attire, says bodily autonomy ‘firmly’ supported

Congress leader Pawan Khera on Tuesday (August 25, 2026) said the party stood firmly for women’s bodily autonomy and agency, asserting that every woman, irrespective of her caste, class or religion, had the right to choose what she wore.

“Whether the hijab is essential to Islam or not is for religious scholars to decide. From a socio-political standpoint, we stand firmly for women’s bodily autonomy and agency,” Mr. Khera said in a post on social media platform X.

“Every woman, irrespective of caste, class or religion, is entitled to wear what she chooses — hijab, ghoonghat or anything else,” he said, using the hashtags #BreakTheCage and #SmashThePatriarchy.

His remarks came on a day when the Allahabad High Court, in an order, said wearing the hijab (headscarf) could not be established as an “essential religious practice” of Islam

But Mr. Khera’s comments also seem address the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) attack on his party leader Rahul Gandhi over the latter’s comments on the Manusmriti during the Congress’s ‘Chhatron Ki Goonj’ (echo of students) programme in Pune on Saturday (August 22, 2026).

The BJP accused Mr. Gandhi of selectively targeting a Hindu religious text while talking about “smash the patriarchy”, and questioned why he had not made similar remarks about religious texts of other faiths.

Mr. Khera’s comments appeared to place the Congress’s response in the broader context of women’s autonomy, making a distinction between the question of religious interpretation and a woman’s right to decide what she wears.