LONDON, SEPTEMBER 08, 2004
RASHMEE Z AHMED
TNN
In a scaling-up of the row between Frances tiny Sikh minority and its
controversial new law to ban the turban, hijab and yarmulke and protect
the secular state, the community is to sue President Chirac government.
The decision, announced from Paris by Kudrat Singh, director of global
campaign organisation United Sikhs, comes after 17 Sikh schoolchildren
were excluded from several French government-funded schools.
Singh said Frances tiny, estimated 10,000 Sikh community had faith
that the French judicial system would make France meet her obligations
to provide school children the right to practise their religion under
Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights and Article 18
of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights".
The Sikh decision to sue comes exactly a week on Wednesday from the
enforcement of the 10-month-old law banning conspicuous religious symbols
from government schools week ago, even as the world focussed on French
Muslim girls tamely entering school sans their headscarves or hijabs
, 14-year-old Jasvir Singh defied the new law in the Paris district
of Creteil.
French Sikhs are understood to be deeply angry and upset at the education
authorities reneging on an alleged deal to allow Sikh schoolchildren
to wear a discreet under-turban, showercap or hairnet.
The Sikhs have always believed Paris would honour some sort of exemption
for them, especially after foreign minister Dominique de Villepin promised
a compromise and even assured India of this on a visit to Delhi some
months ago.
On Tuesday, National Human Rights Commission chairman Tarlochan Singh
reportedly expressed New Delhis regret at its inability to help
The Sikhs have vowed to organise protests, but I am afraid it will
not have any impact. There are barely 10,000 Sikhs in France and only
a few hundred Sikh children are attending schools, he said.
Tarlochan Singh's comments contrast with the proud boast of the right-to-turban
campaign organisation that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had despatched
National Security adviser, JN Dixit to Paris to make representations
in support of French Sikhs.
Analysts say the Sikhs appear to be putting themselves out on a limb,
even though Frances much-larger religious minorities - 600,000 Jews
and five-million Muslims have tamely accepted the ban on hijabs and
skull caps.
Sikh leaders have declared the 17 excluded children will be withdrawn
from government schools and enrolled at private ones, which are exempt
from the ban.
The Sikh legal process is seen to challenge a deeply and fiercely-loved
French tradition more than 200 years of separation of state and religion.
Late on Tuesday night, even as angry Sikh community members met in
the Paris suburb of Bobigny, where they are concentrated, parents of
five teenage Sikh boys in the same area expressed bewilderment that
the exemption deal was not on offer.
The Bobigny meeting was attended by prominent Sikh leader Chain Singh,
who originally petitioned former Indian prime minister Vajpayee