The French (Dis)Connection

France was the first country (soon followed by the cockpit of the world – Belgium) to legislate what people could and could not wear in all government enterprises with schools being the prime target. I remember how livid I was when I first heard about it. I was further informed about the ground realities by an episode of BBC’s Panorama featuring how schools were enforcing the same. Contrary to popular belief, Muslim girls (least those featured) wore the hijab and wanted to continue doing the same on their own volition and if that meant, leaving school, so be it.

I was deeply disturbed at what seemed to me an outright violation of one’s freedom of being. It was very hard for me to fathom what went inside the mind of the framers of this piece of **** of a law until one day while attending a lecture on RAL (Robot Application Language) in college, my eyes fell upon what my teacher (a Sikh) was wearing around her neck. It was a black thread with the picture of a present day guru (don’t know who). I vividly remember how all of a sudden I felt a bit uncomfortable. Desperate to find an answer, I reasoned that perhaps I didn’t really want to know about or become aware of her private beliefs in a class setup. It was only then that I found some sense in the law barring people from wearing religious symbols in public (government) houses.

So no wonder that now that Jacques Chirac is in India, members of the Akali Dal are protesting and sloganning, “Go Back Chirac” probably taking a cue from the Anti Simon Commission protests that took place in 1928 with the slogan “Simon Go Back”.

Just now seeing a school group comprising of a few girls wearing the traditional Muslim scarf was heart-warming indeed. I draw some closure from a deep conviction that least in India such a legislation will never be passed.