Prime Minister of India's effort, no help on Turban issue, France gets ban



NEW DELHI, September 05, 2004
The Indian Express

Even as National Security Advisor J.N. Dixit said he got a ‘‘positive response’’ from his French counterpart on the contentious issue of the Sikh children being prohibited from wearing turbans in public schools in France, officials in the National Minority Commission informed that the ban has already come into effect from September 1.

It was Prime Minister Manmohan Singh who said during his visit to Amritsar that he had rushed Dixit to Paris and that he expected the issue to be ‘‘resolved soon’’. Dixit told The Indian Express that along with other issues, he had taken up the subject of the ban on children wearing turbans in school with Maurice Gourdault-Montagne, the diplomatic advisor to President Jacques Chirac.

‘‘I found him (the diplomatic advisor) to be very responsible during the discussions. He said he had taken note of the Indian request and that they would be responsive to the sensitivities of the Sikhs,’’ Dixit recalled. He said that the Prime Minister had asked him to raise the issue of the ban in France during his August 21-25 visit after a delegation of NRI Sikhs had met Manmohan Singh and asked for his urgent intervention.

Despite such assurances from Singh and now from Dixit, Chairman of the National Minorities Commission Tarlochan Singh said they had no word of a turnaround from the French Government. ‘‘Sikhs all over the world have been agitating over the issue and I have received information from Sikhs in Paris that the ban has been imposed from September 1. We are now trying to verify whether Sikh children have been attending school or not,’’ he said.

Ever since the French Government introduced the legislation in February banning children from wearing ‘‘obvious religious symbols’’ to school, Sikhs all over the world have been agitating over the ban. The decision of the Prime Minister to rush Dixit as his special emissary to Paris to find an answer to the tangle was seen as a last-ditch effort of the Indian Government.

Dixit, of course, clarified that the issue was only one of the subjects he raised with Maurice Gourdault-Montagne. He said cooperation with France on defence, space and nuclear engineering were also taken up by him during the meeting.