<p>The February 2022 Karnataka hijab ban for junior college students—still in place today—triggered a permacrisis of secularism and face authoritarianism. Courts struggled with the hijab ban. First, the Karnataka High Court applied the “essential religious practice” doctrine to reach its own conclusion that the hijab is not religious. On appeal, Indian Supreme Court Justice Hemant Gupta upheld the ban by relying on the constituent assembly debates of the late 1940s to question the place of Muslims in today’s India. Finally, Supreme Court Justice Sudhanshu Dhulia, who voted to overturn the ban, presented the hijab wearer as a girl from a conservative family for whom the hijab was a “ticket to education”—which essentialized the hijab and its wearer. That said, Justice Dhulia questioned the logic behind school dress codes (albeit in less detail), a questioning that offers the best hope for managing the permacrisis going forward.</p>