turban

Hijab Ban: Why the Sikhs as a Minority Must Stand Up for Everyone’s Religious Freedom

One of the strongest tenets of the Sikh faith is for the community to stand with the oppressed.

New Delhi: If there is any community from among the religious minorities of India not being brazenly assaulted at present by the radicalised and unruly squads of Hindutva forces, it is the Sikhs.

Muslims and Christians have been suffering incidents such as the vandalism of churches, the harassment and exclusion of women who wear the hijab and the lynching of Muslim men. But the Sikhs, so far, do not appear to have been targeted.

Even so, the Sikhs, as well as other minorities that remain safe for now, not to mention the majority community, must cut across all their religious and cultural identities to unite and democratically resist the communal forces infesting the country.

Hindu rashtra vs UCC

In September 2004, when France announced and subsequently passed legislation banning Sikh turbans, Christian crosses, Muslim hijabs and burqas and the religious symbols of the Jews in all government-run educational institutions, there were loud protests by the global Sikh community. Sikh bodies in India, including the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) which manages Sikh religious shrines and certain other institutions, even submitted a memorandum to the then prime minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, asking him to take up the matter with the then-president of France, Jacques Chirac.

Now, when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led Union government remains criminally silent over the issue of Muslim women being physically confronted by cadres of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) for wearing the hijab, a headscarf that is a cultural and religious symbol of the Muslim community much like the turban worn by Sikh men and many baptised Sikh women, the same Sikh lobbies are quiet.

It is important to be clear on the comparison between the situation in France in 2004 and the situation in India now. France made its statutory move in 2004 as part of its secular ideals. The present situation in India, in which reprehensible forces harass Muslim women in hijabs, intensified after a notification by the Karnataka government that banned ‘religious symbols’, specifically the hijab, in schools and other educational institutions.

The stated goal of the RSS is to convert our country into a ‘Hindu rashtra’. At the same time, the organisation speaks of a uniform civil code (UCC). When France banned religious symbols in its government-run educational institutions, the ban included the crosses worn by Christians, the majority religious group in the country. However, in India, the ruling BJP has not so far come up with a single statement on uniformity in educational institutions in keeping with the secular character of the country. In fact, many states with a BJP government promote the practice of Hindu rituals at educational institutions, such as recitations of the Gayatri mantra. On at least one occasion, there was a yagya on the premises of a government school. A private school in Delhi conducts yagyas every Monday.

This lack of secular uniformity is visible in almost all our public and administrative institutions. A glaring example is the police stations in the national capital territory of Delhi, which fly Hindu flags and have Hanuman temples on the premises; some uniformed cops wear tilaks on their foreheads. Imagine the emotions of members of minority communities, specifically Muslims and Christians at this time, when they approach the police for help and justice. There is no hiding the lack of secularity in the Delhi police force: the way they dealt with the complaints of the victims of the February 2020 riots in the northeast of Delhi is a major case in point.

The onus of what is right and what is wrong in the maintenance of the country’s secular character in government-run or even private educational institutions is on the respective state governments, because education is a state subject according to the constitution of India. This means the Karnataka government is responsible for clarifying its notification on religious symbols which is being used as an excuse by lumpen elements to attack Muslim girls at the gates of schools and colleges.

Muslim women in hijab participate in a candle light march during a protest rally over the ‘hijab’ ban in Karnataka, in Kolkata, February 11, 2022. Photo: PTI Photo/Swapan Mahapatra

The standards of the faith

Sikhs have also been targeted for their headgear since the Karnataka government issued the notification banning religious symbols in educational institutions. In separate incidents in Karnataka, a Sikh girl and a Sikh boy were singled out for their turbans. After the news of these two incidents went viral, quick damage control measures were taken. The authorities of Mount Carmel College where the Sikh girl studies stated that the girl is now allowed to wear her turban on the premises. The college authorities said in a statement that the Sikh girl was given permission because they understood “her circumstances”.

On February 24, the SGPC wrote a letter to Basavaraj Bommai, the chief minister of Karnataka. The letter focuses solely on the religious symbols of the Sikh community. The second last paragraph of this letter states: “The Karnataka high court interim order dated February 10, 2022, barring religious symbols in colleges is being misinterpreted as the order did not bar ‘Sikh turban’ and neither does the government order say anything about the turbans (sic)”.

The SGPC played selfishly in this letter, whether knowingly or unknowingly. The organisation avoided the many issues raised by the Karnataka government’s notification, including the problem as a whole and the approach of the state government in terms of uniformity and right to religion. The letter said:

“We would like to bring to your notice that in your state Karnataka, a Sikh girl who wears ‘dastar’ (turban) has been asked by her educational institution Mount Carmel College, Bengaluru, to remove turban to attend the college, which is unacceptable as turban is integral part of the Sikhs practicing their faith. The issue related to turban came up following the ongoing court proceedings over allowing ‘hijab’ in educational institutions in Karnataka. Some girls who wore ‘hijab’ studying in the above-said college demanded that no girls should be allowed to wear their religious symbols and therefore, Sikh girl also should not be allowed to wear the turban (sic).”

Muslims, as equal citizens of India, have every right to call for a level playing field. Girls forced to remove their headscarves in their classrooms will obviously feel a bias against themselves if they see girls from other faiths, a Sikh in this case, not being challenged for their religious symbols.

Much before the Sikh controversy on the hijab ban issue, the Kendriya Singh Sabha, a group of Sikh intellectuals and activists in Chandigarh, had expressed its reservations over Karnataka’s hijab ban notification.

“On February 14 itself, much before the two incidents involving Sikh children, we had issued a statement that the Karnataka notification banning the hijab is the equivalent of an attack on the Sikh religious identity. We should have openly sided with our Muslim daughters as any assault on a minority community is a common cause of concern for the Sikhs as well,” said Jaspal Singh Sidhu, a member of the executive committee of the Kendriya Singh Sabha.

“Sikhs will be able to safeguard their religious identity in the given regime if and only if they resist any move to curb the identities of the other religious minorities,” Sidhu stressed.

He added that the SGPC’s letter to the chief minister of Karnataka was an act of “double standards”.

“On the one hand, we Sikhs talk of religious freedom and on the other hand, the SGPC has shown double standards by not opposing the Karnataka government’s move to ban the hijab,” Sidhu explained.

Two incidents in the history of the Sikh faith show the importance to Sikhs of standing up for humanity. The first incident concerns Guru Tegh Bahadur Singh. On November 11, 1675, Guru Tegh Bahadur, a principled and fearless warrior, stopped the forceful religious conversion of the Kashmiri pundits and was beheaded and thus martyred for the cause of religious freedom.

The other incident concerns the Nawab of Malerkotla, Sher Mohammad Khan. The nawab objected to the orders of Wazir Khan, the ruler of Sirhind, to execute the two younger sons of Guru Gobind Singh.

Also Read: In Malerkotla, One Can Find the Vestiges of India’s Forgotten History of Tolerance

These two episodes in Sikh history are iconic. The daily ardars (Sikh prayers), from which the community derives its standards, include phrases that ask that the community might be ‘the honour of the humble, the might of the meek’.

By not keeping up with this ideal of Sikhism and by failing to stand up for the oppressed, the SGPC has lost its moral ground.

“The approach of the SGPC is myopic,” said my friend Amandeep Singh Sandhu, an independent journalist based in Bengaluru. “We must realise how [Prime Minister Narendra] Modi and [Union home minister] Amit Shah have been trying to win over the Sikh clergy. There are only about 5,000 families of Sikhs here [Bengaluru], but they keep their faith completely insulated from the Karnataka culture and they can come up aggressively against any attempt by a ‘sanghi’ (RSS member) to harass a Sikh girl for her attire, unlike the Muslims who don’t want to react aggressively for obvious reasons.”

Quoting a Times of India report with the headline ‘Bengaluru college asks Sikh girl to remove turban’, I had tweeted, “This happens when we don’t raise flag for (the) others’ cause. The Sikhs too eventually face the heat now (sic).“

Many Religious Symbols Exist but Only Hijab Targeted for ‘Hostile Discrimination’, HC Told

Stating that a dress code is not mandatory for the pre-university colleges, Ravivarma Kumar said, “prescribing uniform in the government pre-university college is illegal”.

New Delhi: Contending that Indians flaunt diverse religious symbols, from the pendant to the hijab to the bindi and turban, lawyers appearing for the Muslim girl students who are opposing the hijab ban in Karnataka asked why the government was “picking” on the headscarf alone and making “this hostile discrimination.”

Prescribing uniforms in pre-university colleges is illegal, the lawyer said, adding, the College Development Committee (CDC) headed by the MLA concerned has no powers to decide on the issue.

Citing a survey, petitioner girls’ counsel Ravivarma Kumar said people of the country sport various religious symbols such as pendant, crucifixion, hijab, burqa, bangles, bindi on the forehead and the turban.

“I am only showing the vast diversity of religious symbols in all sections of the society. Why is the government picking on hijab alone and making this hostile discrimination? Aren’t bangles religious symbols?” Kumar told the full bench of the high court comprising Chief Justice Ritu Raj Awasthi, Justice J.M. Khazi and Justice Krishna S. Dixit.

Questioning why no other religious symbol was considered in the government order and only the hijab, the senior counsel wondered whether that was done because of his petitioners’ faith.

“My submission is that if people wearing turban can be in the Army, why not a person sporting a religious symbol be allowed to attend classes… judicial note is to be taken that Muslim girls are least represented in classrooms. If they are shut out on this pretext it will be very draconian,” Kumar argued.

“This discrimination against Muslim girls is purely on the basis of religion and hence a hostile discrimination, which violates Article 15 of the Indian constitution. We are not heard but straightaway punished,” he argued.

Kumar told the court that the purpose of education is to promote plurality and not homogeneity.

“Classrooms should be a place for recognition and reflection of the diversity in society,” he contended.

According to LiveLaw, Kumar relied on Supreme Court judgments in NALSA vs Union of India (on transgender rights), Navtej Singh Johar vs Union of India (which struck down Section 377 IPC), Rosamma AV vs University Of Calicut. The latter, he said, emphasised that “unity in diversity” should be the motto.

Regarding the ban on hijabs, he said that according to rule 11 of the 1995 rules – government provisions related to the Education Department – the educational institutions should give notice to the students and parents about changing the uniform at least a year in advance.

Stating that a dress code is not mandatory for the pre-university colleges, Kumar said, “prescribing uniform in the government pre-university college is illegal. Even the guidelines issued by the PU Education department in 2021-22 did not speak about uniform.”

“It is an emphatic statement by the department that principals cannot prescribe a uniform. Neither the pre-university board and the rules nor the Karnataka Education Act prescribe any uniform or prohibition of hijab. Such being the case, under what authority are we kept out of the class,” he asked on behalf of the girls.

According to LiveLaw, the bench asked if the guidelines of the Education Department has any force of law. Kumar responded that he was not seeking to enforce the guideline but only trying to show that there was no uniform prescribed for PU college students.

Justice Dixit asked if merely because something is not prohibited in the rules explicitly, does it mean that it is permitted. According to LiveLaw, he asked

“If that view is taken, somebody may say there is no license required to carry arms in the classroom as there is no prohibition. I am logically analysing what your proposition can take us to…There is no prohibition to carry kirpan if it is not prescribed. However, the power to prescribe under Rule 9 is there. That needs to be independently argued.”

The government order said the students should wear a uniform prescribed by the CDC headed by MLAs concerned, which meant that it has delegated its administrative powers to the legislators.

The CDCs, according to Kumar, were constituted by way of a circular in 2014 and not any government order.

He further told the bench that the CDCs were constituted for utilising grants as well as maintaining education standards. This CDC was not for students welfare but only for academic standards, he contended.

Questioning the formation of CDCs, Kumar argued the MLAs in the CDCs have been given administrative powers.

“The MLA cannot be entrusted with administrative powers. He is only the representative of people to hold the government accountable.”

“Giving administrative powers to the MLAs will be a death knell to our democracy. The MLAs should be fearless on the floor of the House. They cannot be made subordinate to the Government,” he added.

Stating that the legislators represent a political party and a political ideology, Kumar sought to know how can students’ welfare be entrusted to a political party and a political ideology.

“The formation of such a committee itself is a death blow to our democracy and the doctrine of the separation of power. Don’t allow the committee to handle the welfare of students and check them out of the classrooms,” the senior counsel said.

The court adjourned hearing of the case to Thursday.

(With PTI inputs)

A Century-Old Punjabi Song of Defiance Resurfaces in the Farmers Protests

‘Pagri sambhal jatta’ invokes the fighting spirit of the Punjabi farmer and also asserts the dignity of the small tiller.

At the Hari Singh Nalwa chowk in Raikot, district Ludhiana, thousands of protesters gathered on September 25. A small tent sheltered a portion of the gathering, while the rest stood under the burning sun. People from nearby villages parked their tractor-trolleys in a kilometre-long line along the four roads that culminate at the chowk where the tent is set-up.

“Do you remember Chacha Ajit Singh who gave us the legacy of Pagri Sambhal Jatta Lehar?” Manjit Singh Dhaner, senior vice president of the Bharti Kisan Union, wearing a green turban, asked the protesters. They responded by raising the green flags – which represents young crops – of various jathebandis.

The song he referenced, ‘Pagri Sambhal Jatta, Pagri Sambhal Oye’ (take care of the turban, o peasant, take care of it) has a long history, rooted in defiance and an assertion of rights. It was written by Banke Dyal, and sung for the first time at the 1907 rally organised in Lyallpur by Ajit Singh, Kishan Singh, Ghasita Ram and Sufi Amba Prasad. Kishan Singh was Shaheed Bhagat Singh’s father and Ajit Singh was his uncle. They, along with Sufi Amba Prasad and Ghasita Ram, had founded an underground organization called Mehboobane Watan in 1906, and their aim was to re-orchestrate 1857 on its 50th anniversary in 1907.

Also read: Bharat Bandh Against Farm Bills: All You Need to Know

They led the peasants, who were on the boil because of the Colonisation Act and Bari Doab Act, against the British Raj. The movement came to be known as Pagri Sambhal Jatta Lehar and it was the Pagri that became a symbol to consolidate the peasants beyond the divisive lines of religion and caste.

Pagri or pagg, as is commonly called in Punjab, represents the dignity of the common person. During the medieval period, only the nobility was allowed to wear a turban. But during the Sikh revolution in the 17th century, Guru Gobind Singh made it into a symbol of defiance, as he ordained that every Sikh should wear the turban, thus subverting its exclusivity, and giving common people a way to claim and assert their own self-esteem.

Pagg has a place; it adorns the head, and in Punjab, it signifies an identity that is deeply entrenched in dissent. After establishing Khalsa Panth, Guru Gobind Singh’s family was decimated; he lost his four sons; but he didn’t accept it as God’s will, which is a theological practice that runs hand in hand with the political tenets of Sikhism.

Farmer protest at the Hari Singh Nalwa chowk in Raikot, Ludhiana on September 25. Photo: Author Provided

Oppression and injustice are not accepted as God’s will. Guru Gobind Singh asked Baba Banda Singh Bahadur to carry forward the fight for justice. In 1710, after capturing the area between the Yamuna to Satluj, Banda Bahadur abolished the zamindari system and gave land rights to the tillers.

In other words, felling of the turban on the ground signifies the acceptance of tyranny of political injustice. In 1907, Pagri Sambhal Jatta was a call to not let the Pagg fall, literally and metaphorically.

“Manndee naa galla saad’ee, ih bhairee sarakaar vo
Asee kyon manniye veero, esdee kaar vo
Hoike kat’t’they veero, maaro lalakar vo
Taree do hathar vajanee, chhainian nal vo
Pagri Sambhal Jat’t’a

(The damned government does not pay heed to our demands
Why should be accept its acts
Let’s get together and challenge its might
With both hands, the clap will be resounding

Take care of the turban, o peasant)”

Also read: Farm Bills Will Create a Vacuum That May Result in Utter Chaos: P. Sainath

In the 1900s, with agricultural incomes deteriorating, Punjabis had started to migrate abroad. “The Pagri Sambhal Jatta movement fired up the Punjabi diaspora who formed the Ghadar Lehar in the US in 1913, and returned to India to overthrow the British rule. Baba Jwala Singh Thathian was a Ghadar movement worker, who drew inspiration from the Lehar, and founded the Kisan Sabha in Lahore in March 1937,” says Chiranji Lal Kangniwaal, a historian of peoples movement.

Post-independence, the anti-betterment levy struggle galvanised the masses of Punjab in 1958. Kisan Sabha leaders brought the Pagri Sambhal Jatta Lehar into focus again. The song and its symbolism became a state-level heritage. However, it was the Hindi movie Shaheed, released in 1965, that brought back the national attention to the historic lyrics.

The filming of the song depicts Ajit Singh rising up for the rights of a peasant who willingly offers his turban to be placed on a zamindar’s feet. Four decades later, in 2002, the song went mainstream again because of the movie The Legend of Bhagat Singh, but this time the lyrics have been appropriated and the turbaned Punjabi farmer is caricatured to the stereotypical ‘balle balle’ rhythm.

Farmer protest at the Hari Singh Nalwa chowk in Raikot, Ludhiana on September 25. Photo: Author Provided

In the last few decades, especially in post-militancy Punjab, the word ‘Jatt’ had drawn a rigid line among Punjabis. There are jatts and there are rest.

Historically, jatts were muzare, the tenant farmers and khudkashtiye, the land tillers. It was an equivalent term used for the peasant or kisan.

In recent times, however, prosperity among some big farmers has created the notion that only high caste Sikhs are jatts—it has also been conflated with wealth. The colloquial use of the word ‘jatt’ and its parallel portrayal in mainstream Punjabi songs has amplified the perception and created a wedge between a marginal farmer and the big one, and between the farmers of different castes and religions, a trend being called ‘jattwaad’, or ‘jatt-ism’.

The ground reality kept pace with these shifts. Between 1990-2011, the number of marginal and smallholdings, owning less than 2 hectares, fell from 0.50 million to 0.36 million, while the semi-medium, medium and big farm landholdings (2-4Ha, 4-10 Ha and above 10 Ha respectively) grew from 0.62 million to 0.69 million. This was against the national trend where the marginal and small land holdings grew from 83.5 to 117.6 million during the same time period. The agrarian crisis of Punjab, became a burden on only the marginal and small farmer.

Also read: Farm Reforms: Is This the 1991 Moment for India’s Agri-Business Sector?

They unionised themselves and owned the resistance and hence the lyrics pagri sambhal jatta in its original sense.

Jamhoori Kisan Sabha is one of the 31 kisan jathebandis in Punjab. Their logo displays the picture of Ajit Singh, and Pagri Sambhal Jatta is printed along on the insides of the round edge. Their press secretary Pargat Singh Jamarai sheds more light on the invocation of this historic symbol of farmer agitation. “It is not only the farm bills that should be rolled back, it is the entire political system and economic model that needs a seismic shift. Back in the day, the Pagri Sambhal Jatta movement had a bigger vision – to overthrow Raj. Similarly, the contemporary movement aims to bring a political shift because it is not only the farmer whose dignity is at stake, democracy itself is in peril” he said.

In the Raikot protest, the farm union leaders also addressed the bigger challenge confronting the nation – the imprisonment of scholars, students and activists – in their speeches. The farmers are making a point that they know when their own and the rights of others are being infringed.

Farmer protest at the Hari Singh Nalwa chowk in Raikot, Ludhiana on September 25. Photo: Author Provided

The current farmer protests under the leadership of 31 farmer organisations have broadened the participation in the agitation. The September 25 call for strike was a call for the students, the unemployed youth, ad-hoc teachers, unpaid medical practitioners as well. Self-organized youth blocked the highways at multiple places. The Shambu rally on the Punjab-Haryana border was one such protest. Punjabi singers, who had once been the proponents of jattwaad and had kept away from subjects like unemployment and the agrarian crisis, finally woke up from their slumber. Their jatt too was not going to survive the three bills. They looked up to the kisan unions for solid leadership. Union veterans have invited the singers to sing, and television channels and radio stations to play the song Pagri Sambhal Jatta again so that it can occupy a much-deserved space in the consciousness of the masses once again.

Being an overwhelmingly Sikh state, most Punjabis are not sold to the BJP-led Hindu Rashtra project, and neither to the Punjabi radical Sikh-led Khalistan project. The protest leaders and speakers have vociferously rejected the idea Khalistan, throughout the current agitation. To effectively protect the movement from any divisive narrative, the unions also denied their platform to every political parties.

Punjabi youth have made it loudly clear that they want to be led by mature, pro-people and pro-democracy leaders. Not surprisingly then, it was the activists of Bharat Kisan Union Ugrahan from Punjab who were the first to participate in the Shaheen Bagh protests and to protest the revocation of Article 370.

To lose farming or to lose land is not just the loss of livelihood but also of the essential Punjabi identity that Guru Nanak adopted when he turned to farming. Why did Ajit Singh rise to channelise the farmers more than a hundred years ago, and leave us his legacy in the form of Pagri Sambhal Jatta? To not agitate is to not follow the core teachings of Guru Gobind Singh ji and to accept the three farm laws, and also the political state of affairs as God’s will.

The lines from the original Punjabi text by Banke Dial have been translated by Jasdeep Singh.

Original Punjabi text by Banke Dial from punjabi-kavita.com (incomplete).

Sangeet Toor is a cybersecurity analyst and writer based in Chandigarh. She writes on cinema and culture and is currently documenting the history of land rights and peasant struggles in Punjab.

Sikhs Have to Wear Helmets on Motorbikes, Rules German Court

Wearing a helmet does not infringe on Sikhs’ freedom of worship, a top German court has ruled. It argued that the measure protects the motorcyclist as well as other drivers and must therefore be enforced.

Motorcyclists must wear a helmet and cannot be exempted from the rule on religious grounds, one of Germany’s top five courts has ruled.

The federal administrative court in Leipzig rejected a Sikh man’s appeal, who had argued that the helmet would not fit over his turban.

“People wearing a turban on religious grounds are not for that reason alone exempt from the obligation to wear a helmet,” the presiding judge, Renate Philipp, said, adding that the claimant has to accept this restriction to his freedom of religion, as it serves to uphold the rights of others, too.

A so-called dastaar has traditionally been mandatory for all male Sikhs although women can also choose to wear one. It represents honour, self-respect, courage, spirituality, and piety.

Motorcycle not essential

Thursday’s ruling backed a verdict from a lower court in the southern city of Constance, which had found that driving a motorcycle was not essential for the claimant, as he also had access to a car and a delivery van.

The Leipzig court argued that the obligation to wear a helmet not only protects the driver but also keeps other drivers from being traumatised if they cause heavy injury to someone driving without a helmet.

The court also said a driver wearing a helmet would be better placed to help others in case of an accident.

In the UK as well as several provinces in Canada, Sikhs are exempt from wearing helmets on motorcycles or hard hats on building sites.

This article was originally published on DW.

Scheduled Caste Leader’s Head Skin Peeled for ‘Wearing Turban’ in Madhya Pradesh

Police registered a case against three persons Tuesday and are investigating the matter.

Shivpuri, Madhya Pradesh: The skin of the head of a scheduled caste leader of the Bahujan Samaj Party was peeled off allegedly by some villagers in Madhya Pradesh’s Shivpuri district, police said Tuesday. Another leader of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) claimed that the victim, Sardar Singh Jatav, 45, was targeted for “wearing a turban”.

Police registered a case against three persons Tuesday and are investigating the matter.

The trio allegedly called Jatav to the residence of one of the accused, Surendra Gurjar, in Mahoba village, around 50 kilometres from here, on September 3 under some pretext and abused him there and then peeled off the skin of his head using a knife, a police official said.

“Jatav alleged in his statement that Gurjar and two others removed the skin of his head with a knife,” said Narwar police station in-charge Badam Singh Yadav.

No arrests have been made so far and efforts are on to trace the accused, he said. A case of attempt to murder was registered against the accused trio under relevant sections of the IPC and the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, he said.

Jatav, who was seriously injured in the attack, is undergoing treatment at a hospital in Gwalior, Yadav said.

Shivpuri district BSP president Dayashankar Gautam claimed Monday that Jatav was attacked for “wearing a turban”. He claimed the accused tied Jatav up after he reached Gurjar’s residence and beat him up.

They took objection to Jatav wearing the turban, Gautam said, adding that he used to wear a blue-coloured headgear. Gautam claimed that the accused allowed Jatav to go after a while. He alleged that police initially refused to accept Jatav’s complaint against the Gurjars.

A delegation of the BSP Monday submitted a memorandum to the Shivpuri superintendent of police.