No one, it seems, thought about the Sikhs and their turbans.
As part of a struggle to separate religion from the state, France is poised to pass a law banning religious symbols like Muslim veils, Jewish skullcaps and large Christian crosses from public schools.
But a report by an official commission of experts and a speech by President Jacques Chirac last month recommending passage of a legal ban said nothing about the head coverings worn by Sikhs.
France is home to only several thousand Sikhs, compared with about 600,000 Jews and 5 million Muslims. Historically, the Sikh population is quiet, law-abiding, apolitical and almost invisible -- living, working and worshiping mainly in a few isolated pockets of suburban Paris. Now they have found their voice, demanding that they be exempted from the anticipated prohibition.
Sitting barefooted and cross-legged in a large worship room in the Gurdwara Singh Sabha temple in the working-class Paris suburb of Bobigny, two dozen Sikhs sounded a chorus of protest.
"I'm 100 percent French, I speak French, I was born here," said Dhramvir Singh, a 17-year-old student who wears a dark blue turban knotted in front to school every day. "But it's impossible for me to take off my turban. If they force me, I'll have to drop out, and never be able to do anything except a job that no one else wants."
The Sikhs' situation underscores the perils that confront a state when it ventures into the complicated world of religious practice. The impetus for the law stems largely from the increase in the number of Muslim girls turning up at public schools in head scarves, or even in long, black veils that hide their chins, foreheads and the shape of their bodies.
Most Jewish students who wear skullcaps attend private Jewish schools; there has never been a problem with Catholic students' wearing crosses that Chirac described in his speech as "obviously of an excessive dimension," members of the government's commission said.
In a recent letter to Chirac asking for an exemption for Sikhs, Chain Singh, a leader of the Bobigny temple, said if Sikhs could not wear their turbans to school, "This will not only be a failure of our freedom to practice our religion here in France but also of the attitude of the French toward the Sikh community."
An official at the Ministry of National Education, which is responsible for negotiating the law with Parliament, declined comment, except to say: "What? There are Sikhs in France?" A senior official at the Ministry of the Interior responsible for religious matters said: "I know nothing about the Sikh problem. Are there many Sikhs in France?"
The French ideal of a secular republican state in which all people are equal is so strong that the census does not count people according to race, religion or ethnic origins. Affirmative-action laws do not exist.
The Bobigny temple has begun collecting signatures on a petition that calls on all "citizens of France, religious or not, believing or not" to help protest a law that it contends would be "inhuman." Even though a vast majority of Sikh students are French citizens, the Sikhs have also sent a letter of protest to the Indian embassy in Paris, asking the Indian government to intercede.
The Sikh letter to Chirac injects a new twist into the debate, arguing that the turban should be allowed because it is a cultural, not a religious, symbol.
"Different from a Muslim veil or a Jewish yarmulke, a turban has no religious symbolism," the letter said. One of the tenets of the Sikh religion requires Sikh men never to cut their hair, but says nothing per se about wearing turbans.
The distinction between cultural and religious dress cuts both ways, though. On the one hand, the French government could argue that if the garment is purely cultural, there is no reason why Sikhs must wear it, just as schools traditionally ban students from wearing baseball caps and other head coverings.
Some politicians are calling for the ban to apply to political symbols in schools as well, like the Palestinian kaffiyeh and T-shirts emblazoned with the face of Che Guevara. A debate also rages on whether the law should ban religious symbols that are "ostensible," "ostentatious" or just plain "visible."
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese