'LONDON: A Sikh man has been forced to take off his turban in order to enter a Paris government building, appalled British Sikhs have reported, as France prepares to introduce a controversial law banning the Sikh turban, Muslim hijab and Jewish yarmulke.'
timesofindia.indiatimes.com
Fifteen years ago we had here an intense debate on whether or not sikhs should be permitted to enter the mounties while retaining the turban .... result was it was permitted, and the first sikh became a mountie, turban and all, complete with the little ceremonial knife, in fact they had to design an official mountie turban ... last i heard there were five sikh mounties, might be more now .... Neo and CB are taking a bit of a sniffy norteamericana attitude to this, well actually there was strong opposition to the idea in some quarters, a large slice of mountie veterans among the most vociferous .... to their credit, quite a few army vets stood up and pointed out that sikh regiments had fought beside them with great valour in two world wars and a number of minor ones, and yes they did wear the turbines, and their kirpans were functional models ..... anyway, what ended up as an inclusive policy was by no means automatic or easily achieved ... here's an overview of the story - tribuneindia.com
There is in the US an 'English Only' movement to denigrate spanish by decreeing english to be the sole 'official' language, we've had nutjobs here in BC who wanted to ban french, you get these sorts all over, on each issue there may emerge a policy that is taken as representative of national psyche, rightly or wrongly, however you know it will not have been unanimously decided ..... i would encourage the french government to rethink their new policy, though .... as would the girl in the article above, wearing a headscarf in the tricolour-g- .... cheers |
