Zero Tolerance? Sikh Swords, School Safety, and Secularism in Quebec

American Academy of Religion

Zero Tolerance? Sikh Swords, School Safety, and Secularism in QuébecAuthor(s): Valerie StokerSource: Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Vol. 75, No. 4 (Dec., 2007), pp. 814-839Published by: Oxford University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40005964Accessed: 13-05-2016 20:34 UTC

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at

http://about.jstor.org/terms

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted

digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about

JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

American Academy of Religion, Oxford University Press are collaborating with JSTOR todigitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of the American Academy of Religion

This content downloaded from 130.108.145.139 on Fri, 13 May 2016 20:34:33 UTCAll use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Zero Tolerance? Sikh Swords, School

Safely, and Secularism in Quebec Valerie Stoker

This article examines an officially resolved, yet still controversial, debate over the right of Sikh students in Quebec to carry kirpans (or ceremonial daggers) as markers of religious identity to public school. It documents the ways in which conflicting Canadian and Quebecois conceptions of secularism influenced how various non-Sikh participants in the debate responded to Sikh presentations of the kirpdn. Yet, it also demonstrates how Sikh activists selectively engaged the competing discourses on secularism in ways that furthered their interests. Although Sikhs were forced to defer to dominant sensibilities in articulating their religious traditions, their alignment of those traditions with mainstream values helped to preserve their distinctive identity. At the same time, Sikh activists forced non- Sikhs to reevaluate the purpose of secularism, an issue of fundamental concern to national and regional identity. Thus, by analyzing the interplay of arguments in this case, this article illuminates the various ways in which debates over minority religious expression shape formations of the secular.

On 18 NOVEMBER 2001, 12-year-old Sikh student Gurbaj Singh Multani was playing outside his Montreal school, when his kirpdn or

Valerie Stoker, Department of Religion, 3640 Col. Glenn Hwy, Dayton, OH 45435-0001, USA. E-mail: [email protected]. I would like to thank all who agreed to be interviewed for this piece; many were exceedingly generous with their time. I would also like to thank all who commented on this piece in its various written and oral forms, especially the JAAR s anonymous reviewers. The American Academy of Religion provided a helpful research grant and family members provided both editorial assistance and domestic support.

Journal of the American Academy of Religion, December 2007, Vol. 75, No. 4, pp. 814-839 doi: 10. 1093/jaarel/lfm064 © The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press, on behalf of the American Academy of Religion. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: [email protected] Advance Access publication on October 21, 2007


Stoker: Sikh Swords, School Safety, and Secularism 815

ceremonial dagger dislodged from its sheath and fell to the ground. Unaware that the kirpdn is an article of faith that all amritdhdri or "baptized" Sikhs must wear as a perpetual marker of religious identity, a concerned parent reported the incident to the school principal. The principal, in turn, invoked the school's zero-tolerance policy on weapons and sent Gurbaj home. Yet even as awareness of the kirpdn 's religious significance spread, opposition to Gurbaj 's wearing it mounted. Although the controversy over kirpdns in Quebec public schools was unanimously resolved by the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) in March 2006 in favor of Gurbaj, public outcry in Quebec per- sists over this issue.1

The SCCs holding in Multani affirms earlier provincial jurisprudence favoring Sikh students' right to wear the kirpdn to public school, subject to certain provisions on length and sheathing. Indeed, in May 2002, Judge Danielle Grenier of Quebec Superior Court issued a declaratory judgment that nullified a decision by the Marguerite Bourgeoys School Board to prohibit the kirpdn. She also authorized Gurbaj to return to school with his kirpdn subject to certain conditions that were intended to allay concerns about safety and that were agreed to by both the School Board and the Multani family: Gurbaj would have to wrap the kirpdn several times in cloth before sewing it shut inside a wooden2 sheath, and would have to subject it to periodic verifi- cation by school officials. This compromise on the kirpdns sheathing resembled kirpdn decisions in other countries with large Sikh populations such as Britain and the United States where courts have

generally found that the kirpdn is not a weapon but a religious artifact and, as such, should be exempted from weapons' bans.3

Yet while the Superior Court-brokered compromise imposed greater restrictions on the kirpdns sheathing than any other such arrangement

1 A poll taken the day of the SCCs decision found that six out of ten Quebeckers "are against the wearing of religious symbols in public schools" (Myles 2006). The fall 2006 Quebec parliamentary elections delivered a thirty- nine- seat gain to the Action Democratique du Quebec, which ran largely on a platform opposing the accommodation of religious minorities. A year after the decision, the small rural town of Herouxville, Quebec adopted a set of "community standards" which, in addition to prohibiting the stoning of women, also prohibits the carrying of "weapons" to school, "real or fake, symbolic or not." (qtd. in Aubin and Gatehouse 2007.)

Most kirpans are sheathed in metal. In India, Sikhism's birthplace, the right of Sikhs to carry kirpans is written into the

Constitution. For a pre-1996 overview of jurisprudence on the kirpan, see Bhachu (1996). Two American decisions in favor of kirpans Cheema v. Thompson 67 F. 3d 883 [1995] CA9-QL3279 (USCA 9th Circuit) and State of Ohio v. Singh (1996), 117 Ohio App. 3d 381 (C.A. of Ohio) were tried under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 which has since (1997) been held unconstitutional. Thus, kirpans in the United States might face new obstacles in future.


816 Journal of the American Academy of Religion

in Canada, it was considered untenable by many parents who argued that the court's precautions only acknowledged the object's inherent danger. Responding to pressure from such parents, the School Board repudiated the compromise and, together with Quebec's Attorney General, filed an appeal against the court's declaratory judgment. The Appellate Court's decision, issued in March 2004, effectively classed the kirpan as a weapon, subject to the school's zero-tolerance policy. It was this decision, inconsistent with other kirpan rulings in Canada, that the Multani family, the World Sikh Organization (WSO), and other interest groups successfully appealed before the SCC.

Arguments against the kirpan never abandoned the issue of safety and perpetually linked this issue to the kirpan 's "objective" status as a weapon, regardless of any precautions taken on its sheathing or any religious connotations it might have for a baptized Sikh. But, as the following analysis will show, this case was as much about conflicting conceptions of secularism and the related issues of citizenship, minority rights, and the proper management of religious and cultural diversity, as it was about the kirpan s threat to school safety. Moreover, arguments on these issues were complicated by deep-seated feelings about Quebec's political status within Canada and related historic tensions over bilingualism. One goal of this article, therefore, will be to demon- strate how these pre-existent, competing views on secularism influenced how various non-Sikh participants in the debate responded to Sikh arguments. But it will also show how Sikh argumentation influenced these competing conceptions in ways that are likely to have long-lasting implications for Canadian debates over religious pluralism.

As Asad (2003) has argued, defining secularism is a social project, shaped not only by a society's particular religious history but by ongoing changes in its religious demographics. This was certainly true in this case where vocal opponents of the kirpan, like the advocates of laicite in France, viewed secularism as rooted in modern enlightened rationality and therefore as unable to accommodate pre-modern religious beliefs. Such a view of secularism was explicitly linked to the distinctive history of Quebec's francophone majority and its recent efforts to sever long- standing administrative ties between its French-medium public schools and the Catholic Church. Many kirpan opponents advocated this non- accommodationist form of secularism as part of Quebec's emerging social progressivism which is meant, they argue, to mitigate the presumed conservatism of recent religious immigrants by integrating them into a common secular and francophone culture. In contrast, many non-Sikh advocates of the kirpan were anglophone critics of Quebec's linguistic nationalism who took this opportunity to criticize the province's putative


Stoker: Sikh Swords, School Safety, and Secularism 81 7

hostility toward minorities. Such advocates argued that objections to the kirpans harmfiilness not only misconstrued the kirpans significance within Sikhism, but also misunderstood the purpose of state secularism and the importance of multiculturalism to a healthy Canadian society. Quebec's public schools should embrace an accommodating form of secularism that would enable the free and open practice of a variety of religions, thereby aligning Quebec secularism with the rest of Canada and mitigating what they saw as Quebec's monocultural agenda.

Aware of these competing views on secularism, Sikh activists worked to present a version of the kirpdn that would be palatable to the two dominant audiences they were addressing, and thereby managed to play a large role in defining the terms of this debate and affecting its outcome. By presenting the kirpdn as an emblem of resistance to oppression and the struggle for equality, Sikhs at once distanced the kirpdn from any martial implications it may have once had and made it coalesce not only with Canadian multiculturalism but with Quebec's social progressivism. Maintaining that the kirpdn is not a weapon precisely because baptized Sikhs are forbidden by their own religious rules from using it as such, Sikh advocates privileged Sikh subjectivity in assessing the kirpdn. Furthermore, because Sikhs were able to offer legal evidence of the kirpans non-violent nature4 and to disseminate a version of the kirpans symbolism that coalesced with many modern democratic values, opponents were forced to articulate a more abstract argument against it. This argument required opponents to engage, however self-servingly, with Sikh religious history, and thereby inadver- tently exposed secularism's malleable and socially constructed nature.

Recent work on secularism, most notably Asad's, emphasizes the limits imposed on minority religious expression in many secular environments and the often oppositional relationship between religious minorities and the secular state (185ff).5 But this case reveals that when

4 According to court documents [e.g., CSMB c. Balvir Singh Multani, (500-09-012386-025) QCA, District of Montreal, RF 2002 paras 2, 3, and 40], there are no reported cases of kirpan- related violence from any school system worldwide.

Sullivan's work (2005) also implies that, despite a long-standing commitment to religious pluralism in the United States, the Protestant bias underlying U.S. law, coupled with the fact that religion itself cannot be defined in a legally consistent way, puts minority religious practices on shaky legal ground. Sullivan's main argument regarding the impossibility of religious freedom given the difficulty of defining what counts as legally protected religious behavior in U.S. law, is arguably inapplicable to the Canadian legal situation. The SCC has recently held in Syndicat Northcrest v. Anselem (2004, 29253, SCC 47) that personal religious conviction rather than official rules of orthodoxy will be the standard for asserting the right to free exercise. Because Gurbaj's desire to wear the kirpan was both a matter of personal conviction and mandated by certain rules of Sikh orthodoxy, his assertion of a right to freedom of religion was never in dispute; the potential



religious minorities highlight the confluence of religious and secular worldviews, assimilation of minority and dominant values can be a two-way street. As Nancy Fraser has argued, when "subaltern counter- publics ... invent and circulate counter-discourses" (1992: 210) that serve their interests, they preserve their distinctive identity precisely by disseminating it into the public sphere, "expand [ing] discursive space" in the process. Thus, although a given community's perspective may remain dominant - as critics of state-endorsed multiculturalism have

long argued6- religious minorities can use secularism's discourses not only to defend their rights but to force dominant communities to reas- sess a fundamental component of their value system. By offering up a discourse on the practice of kirpdn-wearing that invokes shared values such as equality, tolerance, and inclusivism, Sikhs in this case simultaneously aligned their traditions with dominant values and preserved their distinctive identity. Furthermore, in using those discourses to get non-Sikhs to consider a new understanding of the kirpdn, they contributed to prevailing notions of secularism, an issue of fundamental concern to national and regional identity.

This article traces the evolution of this debate from its earliest

articulation in the media, at school board and parent association meetings, and in the activist rhetoric of various religious and secular organizations to its more formal elaboration in the Quebec Court of Appeals and the SCC. As I will show, the respective discourses in the popular and legal arenas were often distinct - with the former allowing for more emotion and the latter requiring reference to evidence and precedent - but they were also mutually reinforcing. Furthermore, although the following discussion separates pro and con argumentation at different stages of the debate, it also shows how each side was influenced by the other's tactics. By exposing how arguments for and against the kirpdn evolved in dialogue with each other and across a shift in venue, this format seeks to illuminate how a religious minority was able to shape public and legal opinion, not merely about kirpdns but about secularism.

impact of his exercise of that right on the school environment was. However, even if Canadian law gives religious subjectivity its due, the Canadian public often interrogates minority religious practices.

Dusenbery's work (1997) on Sikhs in Canada shows that a state's commitment to group rights tends toward homogeneity in identity formation. Nayar's work (2004) on Vancouver Sikhs argues that state endorsement of multiculturalism marginalizes minority views precisely by reifying ethnic and other distinctions among its citizenry. Lai's study of the 1993 Cheema Kirpdn case in California argues that minority groups are forced to defer to dominant sensibilities when articulating their distinctive traditions.



EARLY STAGES OF THE DEBATE

Getting Others to Listen: Through Insistence or through Compromise?

When Gurbaj was sent home from school in November 2001, his family sought assistance from their local Gurdwara or Sikh temple in LaSalle. The Gurdwara Guru Nanak Darbar LaSalle, which is located in the same working-class Montreal neighborhood as Gurbaj's school, is the largest in Quebec in terms of both physical size and membership. Although the total number of Sikhs living in Quebec is relatively small,7 approximately half of all Montreal Sikhs live in or around LaSalle, making the community there fairly close-knit. Accordingly, members of the temple board helped locate legal representation for the Multani family and raised money to cover the fees. They also granted interviews to the local press, attended relevant meetings and court proceedings, and contacted other Sikh organizations in Canada in order to draw national and international attention to the debate.

Through this process, Sikh activists worked to disseminate an understanding of the kirpdn that was rooted in Sikh traditions but that also highlighted its compatibility with core Canadian values. For example, The Kirpan Website (2002), mounted by the Sikh Students Association at the University of Waterloo and which housed a petition in favor of the kirpdn addressed to the School Board, proclaimed Sikhism to be "a faith founded on the principle of inclusiveness. It is a faith that wishes to see all ideas given a fair chance, a religion whose founders laid down their very lives for the freedom of choice. It is in keeping with this liberal and democratic heritage that Sikhs are so proud to be Canadians." The kirpdn was depicted here and in other venues as critical to this message of equality and fairness as well as self- sacrifice in the name of those ideals.8

Clearly, Sikh activists' presentations were tailored to suit a Canadian audience but they also strove to privilege Sikh subjectivity in assessing

7 The 2001 Canadian census puts the number of Sikhs in Quebec at 8225 compared with 135,310 in British Columbia and 104,785 in Ontario. The same census puts the total Sikh population of Montreal at 3235 and in LaSalle and neighboring Lachine, there are 1705. The total Sikh population of Canada is 278,410 or 0.9% of the population.

The English press was generally receptive to Sikh presentations of the kirpdn s symbolic relevance. The Montreal daily, The Gazette, consistently highlighted Sikhism's commitment to equality. A 16 May 2002 (A7) article gave the following overview of Sikh history: "Sikhism evolved in India about 500 years ago as both an earthly and spiritual movement to fight off invaders, undo the prevailing caste system, give women equal rights to men, and promote belief in one god and a moral code of conduct."



the kirpan? Sikh accounts trace the kirpans significance to the seventeenth-century founding of a special Sikh community called the Khalsa by the tenth and final Guru or "spiritual teacher," Gobind Singh. According to these accounts, Gobind Singh was concerned that Sikhs were becoming reluctant to identify themselves publicly in the face of increasing Mughal persecution. He therefore articulated a new standard of religious orthodoxy that emphasized commitment and visi- bility. In 1699, Gobind Singh held a widely publicized and well- attended gathering of the faithful at which he asked for five community members to sacrifice their lives in the name of their religion. Five men successively volunteered and were taken into a tent from which the Guru emerged with a bloody sword. Accounts differ regarding what Gobind Singh had actually done with the sword but all agree that, after the fifth man had gone inside the tent, the Guru drew back the tent's side to reveal five unharmed men.10 Gobind Singh subsequently used the kirpan to stir a baptismal drink called amrit or "the nectar of immortality" which he gave to each of the five volunteers. These initiates, known as the five pidras or "beloved ones," became the first members of the Khalsa or "the pure."11 They are also known as the "bearers of amrif or "amritdhdri Sikhs" because they have undergone this special ritual of baptism. This baptismal ritual is still used today and, as Gurbaj's supporters repeatedly stressed, it emphasizes the principle of equality central to Sikhism. In the original ritual, all five pidras drank the amrit from the same vessel as did the Guru himself who, in turn, was initiated by his disciples into the Khalsa community. Furthermore, all five pidras adopted the surname "Singh" in order to eliminate any caste identification within the Khalsa.12 Finally, and most significantly for the purposes of Gurbaj's case, the baptismal rite con- ferred upon the Khalsa Sikh the wearing of five distinctive religious emblems, known collectively as the five Ks: (1) kes or uncut hair, (2) kanghd or a comb worn in the hair, (3) kard or a steel bangle worn round the wrist, (4) kirpan, and (5) kachh, a special undergarment.

9 Sikh subjectivity, of course, is not monolithic but cases such as Gurbaj's often evoke a unified response, something I discuss later.

According to Mann (2004: 39-40), Teja Singh's 1940s' account portrays the guru as having decapitated five goats instead of the five volunteers but other accounts dispute this (McLeod 1997: 52).

For a brief overview of the historic context and socio-political implications of the Khalsa's founding, see Mann (2004). For the development of Khalsa rituals and identity in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, see McLeod (1989) and Oberoi (2004). My overview above relies primarily on mainstream Sikh accounts of the Khalsa's founding and attendant rituals, particularly as articulated in Sikh activist rhetoric and in the testimonv of religious experts in this case.

12 Female initiates adopt the surname "Kaur."



According to the prevailing rules of Khalsa membership,13 a Sikh who has undergone the baptismal ceremony is never supposed to remove any of the five Ks because, through the ritual, they are permanently integrated into his/her identity. But although Khalsa Sikhs in North America have privileged this religious perspective in defending their right to wear the five Ks, their insistence on the necessity of fc/rpan-wearing is also a response to dominant communities' demands for modifications. Indeed, even if legally inappropriate, dominant communities often require religious minorities to present a given practice as non-negotiable in order to make it clear why it must be accommodated;14 this can actually conduce to increased orthodoxy among religious minorities precisely because it makes discrepancies in comportment a problem for activists. For example, while WSO spokesperson Anne Lowthian repeatedly emphasized the different levels of orthodoxy within the Sikh community in order to explain the willingness of some Sikh students to replace their kirpdns with plastic replicas,15 she also tended to identify correct Sikh comportment with Khalsa membership. Speaking in a press interview for the Montreal Gazette, Lowthian stated that the replica "is for those who wish to compromise, and they are welcome to do so. These five articles of faith make up the identity of an individual and if someone is willing to let that go, it is his choice" (19 April 2002, A6).

Identifying Khalsa Sikhism with true Sikhism has a complex history that has occasionally proven problematic for kirpdn advocates. Indeed, despite dominant communities1 own role in making minority religions present their traditions as inflexible, this very inflexibility is often ident- ified as a form of fundamentalism and, therefore, as incompatible with dominant values.16 Moreover, the fundamentalist label can have an ostracizing effect that can shape a given religious community's behavior.

13 These rules are articulated in the Rahit Maryada; see McLeod (2000) and Oberoi (1994) for histories of this text.

Sullivan's analysis of the Warner case concludes that "[m]odern law wants an essentialized religion." This is not so true of Canadian law (see note 5); however, the Canadian public may make such demands.

Gurbaj is not alone among Khalsa Sikhs in refusing to alter his kirpdn materially. However, some Sikh students elsewhere in Canada had agreed to replace their kirpdns with replicas and/or pendants (Montreal Gazette, 19 April 2002, A6).

16 Parekh discusses this dynamic in terms of the "religionization of culture" and presents western society's extreme sensitivity to religious belief as something minority communities "take advantage of by articulating their cultural practices in non- negotiable religious terms. While I disagree with Parekh's cynical assessment that religious minorities are working the system, he is correct that when "easily negotiable cultural demands take on a strident and uncompromising religious character ... liberal society throws up its own brand of secular militancy, and the consequent polarization of society takes its toll on the normal political process of deliberation and compromise" (2000: 198).



For example, scholars such as Lai (1994) and Das (1992) have documented increases in Khalsa membership whenever Sikhs have felt threatened and have interpreted this as attesting, in part, to the kirpdns militant symbolism. These scholars are certainly correct that militant connotations to the kirpdn resonated strongly in the Sikh diaspora in the mid-1980s, after Indira Gandhi's storming of the Golden Temple in Amritsar to rout out Sikh separatists ("Operation Bluestar") killed or injured hundreds of ordinary worshippers. Not only did financial patron- age from overseas gurdwaras of militant activism against the Indian state increase during this period, but there was a perceived rise in Khalsa membership among diaspora Sikhs, many of whom cited Operation Bluestar as their reason for undergoing baptism (Nayar 2004, 139). Furthermore, while baptized Sikhs have remained in the minority within the diaspora (approximately 15%), in recent years a new policing of orthodoxy has emerged that has engendered feuds over correct temple practice and individual Sikh comportment. These feuds have typically broken down along Khalsa and non- Khalsa lines and have occasionally involved physical altercations, including the brandishing of kirpdns}7

Yet although Lai notes that "[i]t is not unusual, though hardly reassur- ing, that Sikhism appears in the diaspora in an ossified and orthodox form," (79) it is also true that increased adherence to religious rules may actually reflect absorption and deployment of the dominant discourses regarding secularism. By making Sikh behavior appear more rule-bound and consistent, Sikhs might also make it seem more 'rational' and therefore trustworthy to a non- Sikh audience, particularly an audience that is suspicious of religion in general and that considers the kirpdns symbolism too subjective a standard by which to evaluate its threat to school safety. Indeed, given that Sikhs argued that the kirpdn should be allowed into Quebec schools because Sikh religious rules prohibit its violent use, they needed to present themselves as adhering strictly to such rules. Prior to Gurbaj's case, some Sikh students at his school had been in the habit of removing their karas or bangles during gym class, in compliance with a rule forbidding the wearing of jewelry during sports. Yet once the School Board decided to appeal the judgment on the compromise, these students began refusing to remove these bangles and instead merely sat on the side- lines in gym.1 While it is unclear whether or not these students had been

17 In 1997, kirpdns were unsheathed during a violent altercation in the largest Gurdwara in Vancouver over whether or not to use tables and chairs in the langar, or communal dining area. In Bedford, Ohio, police were summoned eleven times in 2004 to intervene in physical fights (not involving kirpdns) between Khalsa and clean-shaven Sikhs over who should serve on the temple board.

This trend is documented in the court records, e.g., CSMB, QCA, AF 2002, 1: 22-23, IV: 417.



baptized because many non-Khalsa Sikhs wear karas and removing them is not a violation of the rules of the faith, these students chose to appear increasingly orthodox both to show solidarity with Gurbaj and to make Sikh behavior seem less ad hoc. In this way, increased adherence to the strictest rules of religious comportment might actually be a form of compromise with the dominant community, albeit one that also promotes the religious minority's distinctive identity.

While such gestures of compromise can be misconstrued by dominant communities as forms of fundamentalism, other forms of compromise can open the door to too many requests for negotiation. Aware of this latter problem, Sikh activists debated whether or not to agree to the Superior Court's request for a compromise on the kirpan s sheathing which stipulated that the kirpan be wrapped several times in cloth before being sewn shut inside a wooden sheath. In general, those closest to Gurbaj wanted an expedient remedy that would enable him to resume his studies quickly whereas other advocates were concerned that a hasty decision might set a negative precedent for future kirpan cases. Those advocates who were concerned about precedent felt that the compromise unjustly made the kirpan appear both inherently dangerous and negotiable within Sikhism. For this reason, it was considered problematic by the WSO:

Our efforts have been primarily to prevent such independent actions and precedent- setting decisions that negatively affect the entire Khalsa, because differences allow appeals - they are like chinks in the armour. Another lawyer can now argue for some other change to the kirpan sheath without ever proving they have the right to request such a change in the first place (Anne Lowthian, email message to author, 9 December 2003).

The WSO's fears were justified by the Appellate Court's decision which went against the kirpan, based in large part on the belief that the kirpan remained dangerous, despite the precautions imposed by the Superior Court. In her decision, the appellate judge asked, "Is it not because they recognize a degree of risk connected with the object that [the Multanis] proposed various conditions to prevent, or at least obstruct, access to the kirpanV (CSMJB, QCA, Decision, 2004:19). 19

19 Judge Louise Lemelin's description of the Multanis' participation in stipulating the terms of the compromise is problematic. The Superior Court Judge told the parties to compromise and the Multanis' lawyer, Julius Grey, offered some suggestions. The idea for the compromise itself and the stipulation that the kirpan be sewn shut inside its sheath did not originate with the Multanis.



Thus, while members of the opposition portrayed the Multanis as religious fundamentalists for refusing to replace the kirpdn with a replica, it was arguably the Multanis' willingness to compromise with the School Board that proved more detrimental to their case. As we will see below, many Quebec opponents saw religious orthodoxy as both inherently incompatible with dominant values and as a necessary prere- quisite for accommodation.20 This supports Asad's argument that even when religious minorities tailor their self-presentation to suit dominant audiences, there are limits to how closely these audiences will listen (185 ff). Although the director of the LaSalle Gurdwara, Kiranpal Singh, supported the decision to negotiate with the School Board, he felt that the terms of the compromise reflected a failure of non-Sikhs to fully appreci- ate the kirpdn 's meaning: "We didn't in our hearts accept the wrapping. It shows they don't understand the spirit of the kirpdn' (Singh 2003).21

Harming the Common Good? Quebec's Religious Past and Progressive Present

In fact, Singh was only partly correct that the School Board did not understand the kirpdn s "spirit." The School Board's decision to appeal the Superior Court's judgment, which allowed Gurbaj to wear his kirpdn under the terms of the compromise, reflected a new awareness and yet repudiation of the kirpdn s symbolic relevance. While some opponents adhered to the argument that the kirpdn s religious significance for Khalsa Sikhs could not override its 'objective' status as a weapon,22 other opponents began to emphasize the kirpdn s perceived symbolic threat to the school's cultural environment. Objectors began selectively engaging with Sikh religious history in order to present the kirpdn s symbolism as representing religious intolerance, militancy, and fundamentalism. As such, they argued, the kirpdn was antithetical to the principles of rationality and secularism that Quebec is struggling to enshrine in its French-medium public schools as these schools sever long-standing administrative ties to the Catholic Church.

This symbolic argument was very important to the public debate over the kirpdn that took place at school board meetings and in editorial pages and ultimately influenced arguments in appellate court.

20 The state of being between a rock and a hard place when minority religious communities present themselves to the secular state is also noted by Sullivan who argues that the presiding Judge in Warner v. Boca Raton saw the testimony of religious authorities as "too religious" while that of secular scholars of religion was "not religious enough" (2005: 93).

All subsequent quotes are from this interview, unless otherwise noted. As one parent, reacting to the news of the Superior Court- sanctioned compromise, put it "for

us, a knife is a knife is a knife" {Montreal Gazette, 28/5/02, A4).



Writing in a newsletter for the Mouvement Laique Quebecois, or Quebec Lay Society, an active watchdog group that seeks to promote secularism in Quebec's governmental institutions, Eugene A. L. H. Mouvet argued that even replacing the kirpdn with a plastic replica or a medallion was an untenable option precisely because the kirpdn s symbolism was inherently offensive:

This kirpdn, if it is indeed a symbol, would be one of violence over the law, of the legitimate defense of an ideological position equaling death for the opponent - an entire program of civic education that goes against our civilization and that has the lingering stench of our barba- ric past. ... A plastic reproduction would be just as intolerable because it signifies violent intentions, just like the crooked cross, the ancient swastika, became the symbol of Hitler's abomination (Mouvet 2002: 4).

Rhetoric regarding the kirpdn s militant symbolism was inextricably linked to the argument that public schools ought to inculcate a common set of modern, secular values in their students. Many kirpdn opponents saw such values as incompatible with religious belief, rather than as grounds for accommodation. Echoing arguments in France, these opponents maintained that the school itself is a secular space, whose purity is compromised by public expressions of religious affiliation. Indeed, objectors argued that allowing the kirpdn into Quebec classrooms amounted to imposing the Sikh perspective on secular indi- viduals, compromising their right to freedom from religion. As one letter- writer put it, "We are bit by bit taking religion out of our schools; it's not right for us to impose another" (Mireille Boulet, letter to editor, Le devoir, 3 June 2002).

This definition of secularism as freedom from rather than freedom for religion is arguably rooted in Quebec's distinctive educational history, a history that was repeatedly invoked by kirpdn objectors. Many objectors emphasized the fact that it was not until July of 2000 that French-medium public schools were no longer under the jurisdiction of the Catholic School Board and that courses in religious instruction were either made more ecumenical or were replaced entirely by ethics classes. By invoking this history, many objectors hoped to highlight the fragility of Quebec's incipient secularism and to present the kirpdn as a threat to this newly established educational principle. Writing an editorial in the Montreal daily Le devoir, Paule des Rivieres argued for banning the kirpan on the grounds that it compromised this secularization effort:

[P]ublic schools are [...] engaged in a process of secularization. This does not mean that all displays of religious affiliation must be



banned in school; nevertheless, it certainly justifies examining the extent of accommodation that the school will grant its students. Managing religious diversity is no small challenge. Quebec wants a tolerant society, that is certain, and immigrants who choose Canada and Quebec know it. But between respect for religious liberty and the transmission of common values to all, shouldn't the public school contain its prejudice for diversity? We think so (Des Rivieres 2002a: A6).

Yet although the definition of secularism as freedom from religion is arguably rooted in Quebec's educational history, it is also being shaped by the demands of Sikhs and other religious minorities for accommodation. As des Rivieres's statements imply, a related historic concern of kirpan opponents is the increasing multi-ethnicity of Quebec's French schools and the need to establish a proper way of handling this relatively new diversity. These demographic changes in the French schools began in 1977 with the passage of Bill 101, requiring all immigrant children who attend Quebec public schools to do so in French. Prior to this legislation, immigrants to Quebec overwhelmingly opted for English-medium schools, contributing both to low levels of French proficiency among non-native Quebeckers but also to an arguably insular French public education system that catered almost exclu- sively to the Franco-Quebecois community.23

This system helped to retain the Catholic Church's influence over that community, an influence that simultaneously safeguarded Quebec's distinctive cultural and linguistic identity and, in many people's minds, contributed to its economic and social oppression.24 In response to perceived power abuses on the part of the Catholic Church, as well as broad social and economic changes that spawned Quebec's 1960s Quiet Revolution, emerging French elites sought to define a Quebec that would be French in language but secular in its public institutions. At the same time, a rapidly declining birthrate among Franco-Quebecois gave rise to vocal movements to enforce French-medium education

23 Dickinson and Young (1993: table 30, 326) indicate that in 1971-72, 98.1% of Francophones in Quebec attended French-medium schools whereas only 9.7% of Anglophones and 15% of other language speakers (presumably recent immigrants) did. In contrast, the figures for 1987-88 are that 15.3% of Anglophones and 66.5% of other language speakers attended French-medium schools. The fact that nearly 85% of English -speakers continued to attend English schools reflects Bill 101's grandfather clause.

Perin's (2001) recent work on the Catholic Church in nineteenth- century Quebec problematizes this perception of the Church's role while conceding that it is a very common perception both in the scholarly literature and in the public imagination.



among immigrants in order to safeguard French as the dominant language in Quebec.25

Given this history, the increasing diversity in Montreal's French public schools is not linked to a commitment to multiculturalism but to a project of assimilating immigrants into a francophone Quebec. While for many Franco-Quebecois, this assimilation should be a matter of language only, for others it also involves teaching immigrants a common set of cultural values that imply a new way of life. Allowing students to cling to traditions that are not only alien but 'antithetical' to the newly construed secular Quebecois value system erodes this basic function of the school and compromises Quebec's distinct identity. Therefore, immigrants who have come to North America and benefit from its progressive social values should expect to become secular themselves. As Quebec Lay Society member Eugene A. L. H. Mouvet put it, "It is because we have collectively established secular schools by arranging things here at home that we are in a position to democratically impose this [arrangement] upon those who come here looking to take shelter from our social pro- gress. And we will not tolerate a return to the past" (2002: 4).

Thus, while opponents of the kirpdn shaped their arguments in response to Sikh rhetoric, their reliance on an ethnocentric history of Quebec to explain their non-accommodationist version of secularism disregarded both Sikh efforts at compromise and the malleable nature of secularism. The opposition presumed that minority perspectives, no matter how assimilated, cannot be allowed to alter the dominant view, which they saw as weakened rather than bolstered by negotiation with minority members. This presumption regarding how best to defend dominant values fueled arguments presented in appellate court and ultimately foundered on its less successful comprehension of what constitu- tes 'objective' argumentation regarding secularism.

THE APPEALS PROCESS: WHOSE SUBJECTIVITY SHOULD PREVAIL?

Legal Arguments of Kirpan Advocates

The School Board's decision to appeal the Superior Court's judgment and the terms of the compromise on the kirpdns sheathing made

25 "The decline of the birth rate [in Quebec in the 1960s and 70s] to below the natural replacement rate of 2.1 children per woman gave credence to fears for the survival of the francophone population and fostered linguistic tensions, heightening the pressure to force the integration of immigrants into francophone society" (Dickinson and Young 1993: 307).



explicit their reluctance to acknowledge the Sikh perspective on the kirpdn as uniquely valid in assessing its status. Thus, advocates of the kirpdn had to emphasize the significance of epistemological pluralism to Canadian law. To that end, legal advocates of the kirpdn argued successively before the Quebec Court of Appeals and the SCC26 that the Canadian legal tradition of reasonable accommodation of religious rights privileges religious subjectivity by putting the burden of proof on those organizations that would restrict religious behavior. Thus, the right to freedom of religion articulated in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Quebec Charter prevented the School Board from prohibiting the kirpdn unless it were proven to create "undue hardship" for the school community by infringing on others' rights. According to these attorneys, there was no evidence of such hardship because not a single case of kirpdn-rel&ted violence has been reported from any school system worldwide. While proponents did have to concede that there had been three violent incidents involving kirpdns in Canada in the 1990s, they argued that these cases were distinctive. None involved schools and the bad activities of a few Sikhs

could not be used to infringe upon an entire community's religious rights. If anything, attorneys in favor of the kirpdn argued, this low number of cases only highlights the "incredible restraint" the Sikh community has in wearing the kirpdn.27

Kirpdn proponents consistently linked this "incredible restraint" to the fact that the kirpdn is not a weapon within Sikhism but rather a constant reminder of the tradition's basic spiritual values (CSMB, QCA, IF 2002, 1:6). Citing expert testimony from previous court cases, which, taken together, document an emerging legal definition of the kirpdn, lawyers for both the Multani family and the WSO (which acted as an intervenor in both the Quebec and Supreme Court appeals) maintained that baptized Sikhs are forbidden by their own religious laws from using the kirpdn offensively. This evidence has proven essential to allowing kirpdns in schools in other court cases in the United States and Canada.

Advocates also underscored the significance of the Sikh perspective by emphasizing the Canadian jurisprudential history of subjectively

26 Arguments presented by each side at the successive courts were very similar and often worded identically; my citations refer to both records except where slightly different arguments were made.

z/ CSMB, QCA, IF 2002, 1:19 "The Appellant is only able to make reference to a handful of cases in the entire century in which Sikhs have lived in Canada, to the wrongful use of the kirpan. None of these incidents involved schools. This, if anything, shows the incredible restraint of the members of the Sikh faith in using the kirpan, and further legitimizes their assertion that the kirpan is not designed nor worn for use as a weapon." See also Multani v. Commission scolaire Marguerite-Bourgeoys (30322), SCC, IF 2005: 13.



defining weaponry. The WSO argued that the legal definition of a weapon in Canada is largely subjective because it is based upon the bearer's intent. Their lead attorney, Palbinder Shergill, reminded the courts that in the case of R. v. Laidley, "the Court held that the use of the words cused or intended for use' [in the Criminal Code of Canada] invoke a subjective element requiring one to consider the intent of the wielder, before an object is deemed to be a weapon"(CSMB, QCA, IF 2002: 16-17). 28 Furthermore, while kirpdns have been banned from courtrooms and airplanes in Canada, these decisions specifically distinguish schools. While these decisions imply that kirpdns can pose a threat to public safety, the bans have been based on the limited capacity of officials in these contexts to determine the mindset of the kirpdns bearer. Thus, the WSO contended, these decisions only highlight the Canadian legal consensus that the traditional manner in which kirpdns are worn by Khalsa Sikhs is non-threatening.29

The final way in which advocates privileged the Sikh perspective in assessing the kirpdns putative harmfulness was to challenge the perception that the kirpdn - or any object - can be said to have an 'innate' status or function. The Multanis' attorney, Julius Grey, pointed out before both courts that the School Board itself did not adhere to an

objective definition of weaponry in the administration of its zero-tolerance policy. Grey maintained that objects such as baseball bats, scissors, and compasses that could easily serve as weapons were permitted on school premises precisely because the primary function of these objects was not violent.30 By denying Gurbaj the right to carry his kirpdn and ignoring the kirpdns subjective status as a non-weapon in Sikhism, Grey argued, the School Board was neither fulfilling its legal obligation to accommodate students' religious beliefs nor its moral obligation to promote multicultural awareness and epistemological pluralism. As Grey (2003) put it to me, "They tolerate compasses because they think geometry is important. They don't think Sikhs are important."

Yet while this line of pro-kirpdn argumentation implicitly criticized Quebec's linguistic nationalism and its related non-accommodationist version of secularism, legal advocates of the kirpdn also took their cue from local Sikh activists whose rhetorical strategies emphasized the

28 See also MultanU SCC, IF 2005: 10. 29 See CSMB, QCA, IF 2002: 14-15 and MultanU SCC, IF 2005: 12. The WSO also argued that

schools, in contrast to planes and courtrooms, are communities made up of parties well known to each other and who are engaged in non-adversarial relationships. Furthermore, children spend the bulk of their time in school so denying their right to wear the kirpan infringes much more greatly on their religious freedom than do restrictions on wearing kirpans aboard planes or in courtrooms.

™ CSMB, QCA, RF 2002: 2; MultanU SCC, AF 2005: 5.



kirpan s compatibility with Quebecois modernity. Indeed, while many anglophone commentators on the case were quick to criticize Quebec's mono-culturalism,31 members of Montreal's Amritdhari Sikh community were often reluctant even to acknowledge the role of linguistic nationalism in the debate.32 Instead, by repeatedly emphasizing the values of inclusivism and equality central to Sikhism and presenting the kirpdn as a symbol of the fight against social injustice, Sikh advocates hoped to distinguish Sikhism from other less tolerant - and less tolerated - faiths. These arguments influenced those presented at Quebec Appellate court, where Julius Grey maintained that "the Sikh religion was born in the late 15* century as a protest against the rigid caste system of Hinduism and the mistreatment of women under Islam"(CSMB, QCA, RF 2002: 15). Palbinder Shergill maintained that "Sikhism holds as its basic tenets, the equality of mankind, the equality of men and women, and the fundamental equality of all religions"(CSMJ3, QCA, IF 2002: 5).

By avoiding direct criticism of Quebec's mono-culturalism and by making Sikhism seem less hierarchical, irrational, and pre-modern than some other faiths, Montreal Sikhs attempted to challenge, in a concilia- tory manner, the mainline Quebecois view that secularism is rooted in enlightened rationality and therefore incompatible with public religious display. Calling attention to the coalescence of secular and religious value systems enabled kirpdn legal advocates to undermine opponents' arguments that religion and secularism are antithetical. At the same time, the ability of Sikh activists to showcase this coalescence demonstrates that multiculturalism need not impede integration.

Legal Arguments of Kirpan Opponents

The Kirpan is a Weapon in Sikhism and Canadian Law. The opposition's legal arguments against the kirpdn conceded that the kirpans symbolic status within Sikhism was central to determining whether or not to class the kirpdn as a weapon in Canadian law. But the opposition also maintained

31 Don MacPherson, editorialist for The Montreal Gazette, wrote in February 2002 that "[t]o English-speaking Canadians, assimilating immigrants is old hat. But it's something relatively new to French-speaking Quebeckers." His subsequent observation that "[w]hether a Sikh pupil should be allowed to wear a kirpan to school might be a new issue in Quebec, but it is not in the rest of the country" was echoed in editorials across Canada (e.g., The Globe and Mail 9 March 2004: A 16) and quoted in the SCC's decision in favor of Gurbaj (2006: 46). See Des Rivieres (2002b) for a response to MacPherson (2002b).

When asked about Quebec's supposed inhospitability to multiculturalism, Kiranpal Singh generously acknowledged the newness of Sikhism to Quebec and the reality of the learning curve: "The French don't know Sikhs enough. We need a learning process. [The Gurdwara has] had History and Geography teachers come here from schools in the area [to educate them about Sikhism]."



throughout the appeals process that Canadian Sikhs have presented the kirpans religious relevance in a dishonest manner. In marked contrast to the arguments presented at court by the WSO and the Multani family, the School Board cited dissenting views from earlier court cases which depicted the Khalsa as a paramilitary organization and described the five Ks as a Sikh soldier's uniform. Citing sources proffered by kirpdn opponents in Grant c. Canada (1995),33 the School Board claimed that the tenth Guru, Gobind Singh, "created a military and warrior order called the Khalsa, with the aim of defending the independence of Sikhs in the Panjab through arms"(qtd. in Multanu SCC, RF: 9). The five Ks were designed "[to give] this army a redoubtable aspect" and to make "the external appearance of the Sikhs invite persecution which the [Sikhs] would then have to resist with courage."(10) Moreover, the disproportionate presence of Sikhs in the British colonial army, a fact which itself reflects British stereotyping of the Sikhs as militant, was presented as evidence of Sikhism's inherently martial nature: "Gradually, the Sikhs acquired the reputation of being the best soldiers in India. They won the respect of the British for whom they have fought in Hong Kong, Singapore, France, the Middle-East, North Africa and Italy" (10). While the School Board thereby engaged with Sikh religious history, its reassessment of the kirpans status within Sikhism emphasized the kirpans martial origins in order to underscore its inherent danger. According to the School Board's arguments at court, the reason Khalsa Sikhs reject the idea of a replica is because the kirpdn has to remain functional. Since, in their estimation, the original function of the kirpdn is that of a weapon- a fact that was 'proven' by Sikhs' own descriptions of the kirpdn as a sword- the appellants argued that this was evidence of the kirpans inherently dangerous nature:

Even if the Sikhs pretend that the kirpdn is not a weapon but a 'spiritual instrument' which only has the appearance [of a weapon] it remains the case that a kirpdn evokes wars of the past which Sikhs have carried out in the name of their liberation. Thus, even today, a kirpdn must conserve the integrity of its origins, that of a functional sword, removable, fitted with a steel blade and which a Sikh can use as an ultimate recourse (CSMB, QCA, AF 2002: 21).34

33 The WSO complained in the Quebec Court of Appeals that many of these citations were inaccurate and, as a result, could not be located in the court record. Some of these inaccuracies were corrected for the SCC and so I cite primarily from that factum here.

The factum presented by the School Board to the SCC reads "Thus, whatever its symbolism, the kirpdn remains essentially a sword, a weapon conceived for the purpose of killing, intimidating, or threatening someone" (12).



Furthermore, while the School Board and the Attorney General argued for re-evaluating the kirpdns status within Sikhism - and thereby acknowledged the subjective definition of weaponry in Canadian jurisprudence - they also maintained that the kirpan should be considered inherently dangerous, regardless of any spiritual connotations it may have for a baptized Sikh. This argument was based on the School Board's assertion that Canadian courts have not consistently adhered to a subjective definition of weaponry. In contrast to the arguments of kirpan proponents, the School Board argued that the Felawka decision in which all firearms, from hunting rifles to assault weapons, were classed as inherently dangerous gave greater weight to the object's "finality" than the wielder's intent. Furthermore, the School Board argued that decisions banning the kirpan from courtrooms and airplanes were also based on objective assessments of the kirpdns innate status as a weapon. The School Board cited Judge Dewar's decision in the Hothi case, in which a Sikh defendant was denied the right to wear his kirpan in the courtroom while on trial:

It is clear, however, that whatever the purpose or connotation, and whatever hands may possess it, a kirpan is an instrument capable of use as a weapon, (qtd. in CSMB, QCA, RF 2002: 11). A weapon does not cease to be a weapon because it is a religious symbol subject to strictures of faith regarding use (qtd. in CSMB, QCA, RF 2002: 19; Multani, SCC, RF 2005: 20).

For the School Board, these decisions establish a precedent of utiliz- ing objective as opposed to subjective standards for the risk-assessment of certain objects. Such a standard of assessment, the School Board argued, was also implicit in the compromise on the kirpdns sheathing brokered in Quebec Superior Court. By requiring Gurbaj to wrap his kirpan in cloth and sew it shut inside a wooden as opposed to a metal sheath, this compromise presumed a certain danger inherent in the kirpan and put the kirpan on the same legal footing as an unloaded pistol.35 Thus, the School Board argued, sheathing a kirpan may impede access to it but does not completely eliminate risk.

Context is Everything. The School Board invoked those decisions in which kirpdns were banned from airplanes and courtrooms not only to argue

35 "[T]he courts have concluded that a pistol without bullets or gas, a rifle without charge and a weapon which is not in a functional state but which can be in such a state through a few brief preparations, are all weapons as defined in article 2 of the Criminal Code" (CSMB, QCA, AF 2002: 15).



for the kirpans innate status as a weapon but also to argue for a re- evaluation of the school context in Quebec. The School Board argued before both the Quebec Court of Appeals and the SCC that earlier decisions allowing kirpans into classrooms in Canada were dealing with different student populations during an earlier time period, when pro- blems of school violence were not comparable with the current situation in Montreal. Seventeen affidavits signed by various school officials from different districts on the island of Montreal were submitted as evidence

of a growing perception of increased violence in Montreal's public schools.

This emphasis on perception is significant because the School Board did not supply official statistics on school violence.36 It simply argued that the mere sense of insecurity harbored by many students and staff created an objectively heightened risk for violent outbreaks. School psychologist Denis Leclerc, who conducted a survey of students and staff in twenty schools in the Marguerite-Bourgeoys School district about safety, argued that "The perception that people have of a situation is often more objective than the facts themselves; it is the perception that will have an impact on (a school's) quality of life and therefore on its educational success"(CSM£, QCA, AF 2002: 99). Leclerc went on to present his findings that 58% of students and 57% of staff had a neutral or negative perception of security in the school system (CSMB, QCA, AF 2002: 99).

The School Board used Leclerc's findings, together with statements of other school officials, to argue that exempting kirpans from zero- tolerance policies encouraged non-Sikh students to bring weapons to school, heightening the potential for violence. As LaSalle school security guard Robert Brosseau submitted in his affidavit, the media coverage of this kirpan case "created a sense of palpable insecurity in the school" and motivated non-Sikh students to arm themselves "not to protect themselves from a Sikh, but in order to protect themselves from an attack per- petrated by another student who carries a knife because the Sikhs have theirs" (CSMB, QCA, AF 2002: 75). Thus, the question that the School Board urged the courts to consider was not whether the kirpan as tra- ditionally worn by a Khalsa Sikh was an actual threat to school safety,

36 The main evidence on this issue supplied by the School Board was a survey of students and teachers in the Marguerite-Bourgeoys School District conducted by school psychologists. Psychologist Denis Leclerc specifies in his affadavit that "9% of students claimed to have been attacked or threatened with a weapon by other students and 11% of students claimed to have been attacked or threatened by a street gang" (CSMB, QCA, AF 2002: 99; Multani, SCC, RF 2005: 18-19). No statistics maintained by the schools were supplied and Leclerc does not put these findings in any historic context to indicate whether these percentages reflect an increasing, decreasing, or stabilized problem.



but rather how the exemption of the kirpdn from zero-tolerance policies would be interpreted by other students. By emphasizing the perception of school violence over actual data on this issue, the opposition adhered to the notion that the kirpdns subjective status was critical to assessing its harmfulness. Yet at the same time, they privileged the subjective perspective of non-Sikh students. As Leclerc said, "Even if the kirpdn is not a weapon for those people belonging to the Sikh faith, the presence of such an object at school increases the perception of insecurity among other students for whom the kirpdn does represent a weapon" (CSMB, QCA, AF 2002: 101). Thus, while Sikhs should be willing and able to alter their religious convictions to accommodate others' fears, these fears themselves were presented as obdurate. As Leclerc's affidavit implies and as Brosseau's explicitly states, no amount of education on the reasons why kirpdns should be exempt from zero-tolerance policies would effectively persuade non-Sikh students to view them as religious artifacts: "The sense of insecurity is present [among students] despite the fact that we have attempted to explain the situation and the reasons why these people have the right to wear a kirpdn, since it is a religious symbol and not a weapon for them" (CSMB, QCA, AF 2002: 75).

Furthermore, lawyers for the School Board argued that asking non- believers in Sikhism to view the kirpdn as an article of faith rather than a weapon imposed Sikh religiosity on secular students:

For the [Multanis'] lawyers, prohibiting the kirpdn derives either from an overt or unconscious racism. This prohibition is taken as evidence of a flawed education that fails to convince others, who don't share this belief, that a kirpdn is not a weapon. But such a view infringes on the freedom of religion and conscience of those who do not adhere to the Sikh religion (CSMB, QCA, AF 2002: 21).

This line of argument echoed the popular debate over the kirpdns conflict with Quebec's non-accommodationist form of secularism. In doing so, it ran counter to Julius Grey's submission that schools have an obligation to teach multiculturalism in a manner that would bring non- Sikh students to a new understanding of the kirpdn. Instead, the opposition's argument presupposed a Reasonable' subjective view of the kirpdn as a weapon, which Sikhs, therefore, should have to accommodate.

REACHING CONCLUSIONS

The Quebec Appellate Court decided that the compromise on the kirpdns sheathing acknowledged the kirpdns inherent danger and



thereby supported parents' concerns that allowing Gurbaj to wear it posed an undue hardship to non-Sikh children. Moreover, while the Quebec court acknowledged that the School Board had failed to establish the kirpdn as a weapon in Canadian law, it agreed with the School Board's argument that it has a duty to protect its students, even if this requires infringing on someone's religious freedom. Finally, the court was sympathetic to the concerns about increased violence in Montreal's public schools and believed that schools have an obligation to take a "proactive approach" (CSMB, Decision, 2004: 21) to stemming this trend.

By recognizing the validity of concerns about increased violence in Montreal's schools, the appellate court privileged the fears of non-Sikh students and staff above the religious beliefs of Khalsa Sikhs, implying that those fears were more empirical than religious belief, even when assessed primarily in terms of perception rather than actual fact. Thus, the court's evaluation of the kirpdn as 'inherently dangerous' regardless of its religious significance within Sikhism shared certain assumptions with the opposition about the inferiority of religious to secular subjectivity.

In contrast, the SCC rejected the argument that the kirpdn posed a threat to school safety, especially when sheathed according to the Superior Court compromise, and concluded that prohibiting the kirpdn from school premises excessively infringed Gurbaj 's religious rights. The SCC rejected the School Board's contention that the kirpdn is innately dangerous and, instead, based its assessment of the kirpdn on the Khalsa Sikh presentation of its religious significance.37 The SCC also held that the standard of safety applicable in schools is reasonable, not absolute, safety, as is evident in the fact that the Marguerite Bourgeoys school system allows many objects that could be dangerous, such as scissors, compasses, and baseball bats, onto school premises. Finally, the Supreme Court found that there was insufficient evidence that allowing the kirpdn would produce a "ripple effect" that would increase violence in schools. Indeed, the Court maintained that such an assumption reflected the School Board's resistance to teaching multicultural tolerance to its students.38

Thus, the SCC's decision, much like that of the Quebec Court of Appeals, privileged a particular cultural sensibility as rightfully dominant. However, this sensibility prized tolerance and pluralism as core Canadian

37 "With respect, while the kirpdn undeniably has characteristics of a bladed weapon capable of wounding or killing a person, this submission disregards the fact that, for orthodox Sikhs, the kirpdn is above all a religious symbol" (Multani, SCC, Decision 2006: 36).

"An absolute prohibition [of the kirpdn] would stifle the promotion of values such as multiculturalism, diversity, and the development of an educational culture respectful of the rights of others. This Court has on numerous occasions reiterated the importance of these values" (Multaniy SCC, Decision 2006: 53).



values that school boards have an obligation to promote. Of course, such a viewpoint is fundamentally incompatible both with a definition of secularism as freedom from religion and with an educational ethic that emphasizes assimilation into a dominant cultural framework. In this way, the SCC's decision highlights the limits of Canadian pluralism by excluding some of the cultural preservationist strategies of Quebec's nationalists. Furthermore, as we have seen, the way in which these kirpdn debates unfold, even in contexts that are sympathetic to multiculturalism, demonstrates that Sikh communities must work within the existing legal and conceptual frameworks of the dominant community. This rhetorical exercise reinforces their status as minorities with limited opportunities for self-determination.

One could argue that such limitations on Sikh self-determination compromise even a victorious outcome. But when courts, school boards, and other state agencies listen to Amritdhari Sikhs, a fairly radical form of epistemological pluralism is achieved. A Sikh view - or at least one version of it - is not only granted a privileged place in assessing the kirpdn s status, it alters the dominant community's prior perception of the kirpdn as a dangerous weapon. While this alteration only occurs if and when the dominant community allows it - and precisely because Amritdhari Sikhs have met some of their demands - this allowance enables a far greater level of self- determination for Amritdhari Sikhs than would a denial. More important, however, by helping to reaffirm an accommodating form of secularism that exists to enable religious diversity, Sikhs shape dominant discourses and carve a place for themselves within the Canadian public sphere.

It was precisely the prospect of allowing such influence that was so dis- comfiting to many kirpdn opponents. Privileging a religious over a secular assessment of the kirpdn was felt to validate the centrifugal pull of cultural difference and to jeopardize the secular, rational, and francophone core. The irony is twofold: not only are dominant values strengthened by minority efforts at negotiating with them but a failure to acknowledge such efforts can result in isolationism, the very problem that many Quebecois secularists would like to combat. Indeed, after the Quebec Court of Appeals nullified the compromise, Gurbaj transferred to an English-medium private school.

REFERENCES

Asad, Talal 2003

Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.



Aubin, Benoit and Jonathan Gatehouse

2007

"Do immigrants need rules? The debate rages on." Maclean's, March 5.

Bhachu, Amarjet S. 1996

"A Shield for Swords." American Criminal Law

Review, 34/1: 197-224.

Census Canada

[Online] 2001 Available at http://wwwl2.statcan.ca/english/census 01. Accessed on 30 April 2006.

Commission scolaire

Marguerite-Bourgeoys (CSMB) c. Balvir Singh

Multani, (500-09 -012386- 025) Quebec Court of

Appeals (QCA), District of Montreal

2002

Appellant's Factum (AF), Commission scolaire Marguerite-Bourgeoys. Respondent's Factum (RF), Balvir Singh Multani in his capacity as tutor to his minor son Gurbaj Singh Multani. Intervenor's Factum (IF), World Sikh Organization.

Commission scolaire

Marguerite-Bourgeoys (CSMB) c. Balvir Singh

Multani (500-09 -012386- 025) Quebec Court of

Appeals (QCA), District of Montreal

2004

Decision.

Das, Veena 1992

"Time, Self, and Community: Features of the Sikh Militant Discourse." Contributions to

Indian Sociology (New Series), 26/2: 245-259.

Dickinson, John A. and Brian Young

1993

A Short History of Quebec. Toronto: Pittman Ltd.

Des Rivieres, Paule 2002a

"Le kirpdn." Le Devoir, 22 May.

2002b "Shame on You!" Le Devoir, 30 May.

Dusenbery, Verne A. 1997

"The Poetics and Politics of Recognition: Diasporan Sikhs in Pluralist Polities." American Ethnologist 24/4: 738-762.

Fraser, Nancy 1992

"Rethinking the Public Sphere". In Post- Modernism and the Re-Reading of Modernity,



197-231, ed. by Francis Barker, Peter Hulme and Margaret Iversen. Machester: Manchester University Press.

Grey, Julius 2003

Interview with author, Montreal, 4 July.

The Globe and Mail 2004

"Where's the Danger in a Student's Kirpan7." The Globe and Mail 9 March, A 16.

The Kirpan Website 2002

http://www.kirpan.ca

Lai, Vinay 1994

"Sikh Kirpans in California Schools: The Social Construction of Symbols, Legal Pluralism, and the Politics of Diversity." Amerasia Journal, 22/1: 57-90.

Mann, Gurinder Singh 2004

Sikhism. London: Prentice Hall.

MacPherson, Don 2002a

"Kirpan Compromise Possible." The Montreal Gazette, 21 February, 2002.

2002b "The PQ'S 'Zero Tolerance'." The Montreal Gazette, 29 May, 2002.

McLeod, W.H. 1989

Who is a Sikh? The Problem of Sikh Identity. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

1997 Sikhism. London: Penguin Books.

2000 Exploring Sikhism: Aspects of Sikh Identity, Culture, and Thought. Oxford University Press.

Mouvet, Eugene A. H. L. 2002

"Le poignard rituel." Laicite, 22/2: 4.

Multani, v. Commission scolaire Marguerite-

Bourgeoys (30322) 2006 SCC 6

2005

Respondent's Factum (RF), Commission scolaire Marguerite Bourgeoys. Respondent's Factum (RF), Procureur General du Quebec. Appellant's Factum (AF), Balvir Singh Multani in his capacity as tutor to his minor son, Gurbaj Singh Multani. Intervenor's Factum (IF), World Sikh Organization.



2006 Decision.

Myles, Brian 2006

"Oui au kirpan a l'ecole: La Cour supreme renverse un jugement de la Cour d'appel du Quebec." Le Devoir, 3 March.

Nayar, Kamala Elizabeth 2004

The Sikh Diaspora in Vancouver: Three Generations amid Tradition, Modernity, and Multiculturalism. Toronto, ONT: University of Toronto Press.

Qberoi, Harjot 1994

Construction of Religious Boundaries: Culture, Identity, and Diversity In the Sikh Tradition. University of Chicago Press.

Parekh, Bhikhu 2000

Rethinking Multiculturalism: Cultural Diversity and Political Theory. Harvard University Press.

Perin, Roberto 2001

"Elaborating a Public Culture: The Catholic Church in Nineteenth- Century Quebec". In Religion and Public Life in Canada, Ed. by Marguerite Van Die, 87-105. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Singh, Kiranpal 2003

Interview with Author, LaSalle, 21 July.

Sullivan, Winnifred Fallers 2005

The Impossibility of Religious Freedom. Princeton University Press.

Syndicat Northcrest v. Anselem (29253)

2004

SCC 47


Date post:	24-Feb-2023
Category:	Documents
Upload:	wright
View:	0 times
Download:	0 times

Zero Tolerance? Sikh Swords, School Safety, and Secularism in Quebec

Documents