And now for a bout between anti-cheating regulations and freedom of religious expression. In the controversy around the dress code imposed by the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) for students writing the All India Pre-Medical Test (AIPMT), the two imperatives have been pitted against each other.

Cheating in examinations, an old vice among Indian students, has acquired a new gravity after the Vyapam scam in Madhya Pradesh.

Investigations threw up evidence of widespread irregularities in exams conducted by the Madhya Pradesh Professional Examination Board, going back several years, implicating thousands, disqualifying at least 1,087 medical students.

As the tentacles of the scam reached the highest levels of government and the accused started to die, cheating suddenly became an offence to kill for and the credibility of public examinations hit a new low.

The AIPMT that is now the centre of attention is a retest, conducted after the Supreme Court found irregularities in the test held in May. This time, the CBSE was taking no chances. The dress code it laid down needed students to wear “light clothes” with short sleeves, and no large buttons, badges, earrings or bangles. Caps, scarves and belts were banned.

Inadvertently or otherwise, the CBSE guidelines ended up targeting the habits of religious minorities. In Lucknow, a Muslim girl chose not to write the test if it meant removing her abaya.

In Chandigarh, Sikh students were made to leave behind religious effects such as the kara and the kirpan. In Kerala, a nun was barred from sitting for the exam when she refused to take of her veil and cross.

As religious groups and political parties agitated against the apparent insult, the CBSE guidelines acquired the reputation of being yet another instrument to crack down on minorities.

A reasonable restriction?

Hearing the cases of two Muslim women, the Kerala High Court had ruled that they should be granted exemptions, since women could not be denied the freedom to wear religious attire.

But the Supreme Court shot down a plea against the dress code, saying “your faith won’t disappear if you appear for the exam without a scarf” and that it constituted a “reasonable restriction”.

The venerable justices would know best, of course, but reasonable restriction comes with a contested boundary, keeping beef bans in place yet putting inconvenient books and articles out of circulation.

The preservation of “public order” is one of the grounds on which the state is empowered to impose restrictions on freedom of speech and expression, and many feel the CBSE notification worked to that effect.

In foundational judgments dating back to the 1950s, the Supreme Court defined public order as a “state of tranquility” in a “political society”, wrought by “internal regulations”. Restrictions would come into play only if that tranquility were disrupted by “serious and aggravated public disorder”.

Did the veiled students who wanted to write their exams pose such a threat? Would even cheating in a public examination pose a threat that warranted restrictions on basic freedoms? Lawyer Sanjay Hegde, who presented the plea against the CBSE notification in the Supreme Court, thinks not.

The cheat sheet

That is a question many have been asking. Why, if students are ready to submit to frisking, is it necessary to have them remove their headscarves and karas? And how far is the CBSE prepared to go to check errant students?

The authorities need to ask themselves whether policing students’ bodies is the most effective way to curb cheating. The Vyapam scam revealed how officials of the Madhya Pradesh Professional Examination took money in exchange for pushing certain candidates through the system, how imposters wrote the tests while the organising authorities looked the other way. It revealed a system with entrenched and endemic forgery, bribery and fraud.

It is this systemic collusion that anti-cheating regulation needs to break. A more efficient framework of invigilation is what it needs to put in place. But that is a long and painful process.

Churning out a notification that bans certain kinds of clothing is a visible, quick fix solution that does not address the systemic weaknesses.

It has created, in the process, a false opposition between anti-cheating regulation and religious freedoms. Suddenly the debate on cheating has turned into a contention over minority rights.

In this country, it is an argument which has had a habit of metastasising into something quite ugly. This could have been avoided.

This article was originally published on Scroll.in and has been replicated with permission.