Two French schools have withdrawn their decision not to allow Sikh students to tie up their unshorn hair in top knots and cover it with handkerchiefs. The schools — Lycee Leon Blum in Creteil and Lycee Romain Rolland in Goussainville — had asked two Sikh students Amarjit and Harpal in the beginning of this month to undo or cut their unshorn hair tied up as jooda. However, the schools withdrew their order following a flurry of active advocacy, according to NGO United Sikhs’ legal director Mejinderpal Kaur. She told TOI on Sunday that Harpal’s parents contacted them after the supervisor of Lycee Romain Rolland refused to admit him if he did not follow the rules.
“We wrote letters to the head teacher of the school, the education inspector of Goussainville (district level), the mediator and Rector of Versailles (department level) and sought meetings. Earlier in the week, we had written to Amarjit’s school and the education department when we found that he was asked to cut his hair,” said Kaur.
She said that ever since a ban was imposed in 2004 on wearing a turban to school, French Sikh students had been tying their hair as jooda, while they wore a patka or turban outside the school. Kaur said laws have been passed in the garb of secularity and religious headwear banned in schools. In 2004, France passed a law that prohibited all religious signs in state schools. Since the French ban, Belgian schools had also expelled Sikh boys, who refused to remove their head cover.
She said that United Sikhs’ lawyers had challenged the French ban before the UN Human Rights Committee and the Belgian ban before the Belgian Conseil D’etat (Supreme Court).
