Anil Kalhan

(Posted at Dorf on Law)

On Tuesday, the BBC Asian Network’s Sonia Deol conducted a remarkable interview with Leo Varadkar, an opposition member of the Irish parliament, on the recent decision by the Garda Síochána, the Irish national police, to ban a Sikh trainee from wearing his turban while on duty [audio available here until next week; fast forward approx 2 hrs for the interview]. Ireland, which for a long time had been a country of tremendous emigration, has experienced remarkable changes in its migration patterns in recent years, especially as economic growth has created a significant demand for migrant labor. In 1996, Ireland became a country of net immigration for the first time, the last European Union member state to do so. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the road has not been without its bumps — as in other countries, including the United States, increased immigration has led to both anxiety and confusion among some native-born Irish citizens over the pace and extent of change.

Nevertheless, faced with these dramatic demographic shifts and a perceived need to increase the size and diversity of the force, Irish police officials have moved proactively in recent years to broaden their recruitment efforts — even to the point of amending the service’s eligibility criteria to permit non-Irish citizens to join the force. In the context of these recruitment efforts, the turban ban seems somewhat surprising. Irish officials don’t appear to make any operational claim that wearing turbans would hinder officers’ ability to perform their duties. Rather, they have defended the decision by stating that the Garda Síochána “historically [has] been seen as providing an impartial police service, policing all sections of society equally,” and that “accommodating variations to our standard uniform and dress, including those with religious symbolism, may well affect that traditional stance and give an image of an Garda Siochana which . . . the public would not want.” [link] As Varadkar put it in his interview:

VARADKAR: [At] the foundation of the Irish police force, 80 years ago, when Ireland . . . was born out of a sectarian conflict between Catholics and Protestants, a decision was made at that time to require anyone who was going to be a police officer or a member of the army to leave their religion and political affiliations at home . . . .

Perhaps this isn’t an entirely unreasonable starting point for a public conversation about the issue, assuming that the commitment to secularism is sincere and not selective. However, as Deol pointed out, there probably weren’t more than a handful of Sikhs, at the very most, in Ireland at all 80 years ago, so it also seems perfectly reasonable to revisit the issue in light of the changing demographics that contemporary Irish society has encouraged. And of course, the impact of this rule on Sikhs is disproportionately severe. If Sikhs were prohibited from wearing turbans while on duty, it would not simply require them to “leave their religion at home,” but rather would force many Sikhs in effect to abandon altogether a central tenet of their faith if they wished to serve in the police, a fact that Varadkar seemed unable to acknowledge openly and directly:

DEOL: How do you get Sikhs into the Irish police force if you’re asking them to remove their turbans?

VARADKAR: The same way you get Catholics, Christians, Jews, and Muslims to do so, by asking them, when they go to work, to leave their religion at home. . . . There’s space for your faith, in your private time, but when you’re their to be a police officer, you’re expected to wear a uniform and follow a set of rules . . . . This isn’t an anti-Sikh thing, there’s no ban on the turban as such, it’s just that there’s a uniform, and there’s no reason to change it.

From there, Deol’s interview with Varadkar only became more revealing. Varadakar proceeded to invoke the slippery slope:

VARADKAR: [I]f we were to let people wear turbans, would we then have to do the same thing with hajeebs or other religious clothing? We don’t particularly want to go down that route.

DEOL: I think the word is “hijabs,” but don’t worry about it. . . .

And as it turns out, even multiculturalism “in the home” isn’t completely safe on Varadkar’s view of the world:

DEOL: What difference would it make — you have Sikh officers wearing turbans in England and Wales, and it doesn’t affect how they do their job, so what is the logic in it in Ireland now, today? How would it affect a police officer doing his job, which has got to be important as well? . . . .

VARADKAR: . . . They may not be seen as . . . an ordinary agent of the state. . . . That would be a risk. But, you know, I think that in England, maybe you’ve got a different model, . . . very much a kind of multicultural model, where you have people, even second and third generation, who are still living in England as if they were living in the country their grandparents came from. In Ireland, we’re going for a very different model of immigration and a very different model of society, where already 10 or 12 percent of our population are immigrants or come from immigrant backgrounds, similar to Britain, but . . . we’ve decided not to go down the British route.

DEOL: What do you mean by that?

VARADKAR: Well, for example, in Britain, it’s not unusual for people who may be second or third generation immigrants and still at home speak the language of their grandparents, or to be schooled separately, or really not to be properly and fully integrated into British or English society. . . . We’re doing something very different in Ireland. We’re following what we call the Republican model, which perhaps is similar to the United States, where we have a “melting pot” really. So when immigrant communities come to Ireland we want them to mix in, and mix in fully — and to adapt their cultural traditions to the native culture. . . .

Essentially what we’ve seen is [that] the model that has happened in Britain in particular [has been] an unsuccessful model of immigration, where people live in separate communities and separate spheres and have separate aspirations, and we don’t want that. We want to have one nation, and we want to stay as one nation. . . . That doesn’t mean that you have to convert religions by any means, but it does mean that where you have a secular police force, like we do, that you’re prepared to accept that.

Maybe Varadkar is afraid that if the Irish allow second and third generation Sikhs to speak with their grandparents at home in Hindi or Punjabi, and then let them wear turbans on duty as police officers, it only will be a matter of time before some Irish police officer will approach him and shout, “Tumhe pulis ne charon taraf se gher liya hi, Varadkar! Ab tum apne aap ko pulis ke hawale kardo! Bhaag ne ki koshish mat karna!” Before leading a public prayer and a procession to the nearest gurdwara at taxpayer expense.

Varadkar’s characterization of British multiculturalism seems a distortion; his understanding of the United States is certainly off the mark. Ireland is a latecomer to the debate over Sikhs wearing turbans in the police and military, which is hardly surprising since Sikhs still number less than 1,500 individuals in a total Irish population of approximately 4 million. But several countries in addition to India and Pakistan — including the United States, Britain, Canada, Singapore, and Malaysia — have already confronted the issue of accommodating Sikhs’ turbans in their police uniforms and, in varying degrees, have permitted turbans to be worn on duty without any operational difficulties. For example, in Canada, the Mounties changed their rules to accommodate Sikhs in 1990. Here in New York, the NYPD changed its practices in 2004, following a lawsuit by a Sikh officer that garnered amicus support from then-Attorney General Eliot Spitzer.

It seems ironic that resistance to making such modest accommodations for Sikhs’ religious practices would be happening in Ireland, given the intense hostility and discrimination that large numbers of Irish migrants historically experienced in the United States and Britain. The 19th century American experience with nativism against Irish Catholics is well-known. (Notably, an important aspect of the integration process for 19th century Irish immigrants involved their employment in urban police forces.) And it was not anywhere near that long ago that signs could be found in British establishments reading “no dogs, no blacks, no Irish.”

Oh, and did I neglect to mention this? Leo Varadkar — whose political party appears to agree that the Garda Síochána “must reflect the diversity of modern Ireland” and recruit individuals from “communities that are currently poorly represented or lack visibility within the Gardaí,” such as immigrants — is of Indian descent on his father’s side.

(Posted at Dorf on Law)

In 1997, to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the independence of India and Pakistan, the House of Representatives passed a bipartisan resolution “congratulat[ing] the people of India and Pakistan on the occasion” and “look[ing] forward to broadening and deepening United States cooperation with Pakistan and India in the years ahead for the benefit of the people of all three countries.” Undoubtedly not the most consequential legislative act taken in the 105th Congress, although let’s not forget that the 105th was the “Monica Congress,” whose “dismal legislative record,” according to congressional scholar Thomas Mann, “will barely register when its history is written.” So this resolution might actually be up there as one of its highlights.

Regardless, symbolism and good will gestures have their place, and the 1997 resolution was a laudable one. So I was curious to see what the current Congress had to offer ten years later, on the occasion of the sixtieth anniversary of Indian and Pakistani independence. The differences are at least mildly noteworthy. The only current resolution that I could find (which apparently has not been adopted) was introduced two weeks ago by House members Jim McDermott and Joe Wilson. The resolution, which McDermott and Wilson apparently introduced at the behest of the U.S. India Political Action Committee, a group which (I think) did not even exist in 1997, “applauds the Indian-American community” for its role in promoting bilateral relations between India and the United States, “extends best wishes to the people of India as they celebrate the 60th anniversary of India’s Independence,” and — interestingly, for a resolution of this sort — “recognizes India as a long-term strategic partner of the United States.” Unlike the 1997 resolution, this resolution makes no reference to Pakistan or Pakistani Americans at all.

One certainly should be careful not to read too much into something so insignificant. But this resolution seems just a tad bit petty in its exclusive focus on India. Whatever we might understandably expect from a group like USINPAC, which self-consciously advocates in favor of stronger “U.S.-India bilateral relations in defense, trade, and business,” I do expect more from members of Congress. Especially at a moment in which the Bush administration has stumbled in its policies toward Pakistan, losing Pakistani hearts and minds left and right by lending unconditional support to General Musharraf for so long — and at a moment in which none of the major presidential candidates has yet offered a compelling alternative approach in support of Pakistani democracy — it is unfortunate that members of Congress could not have approached even this small, symbolic gesture with more creativity and thought than this.

* * *

So it is left to the rest of us, rather than lawmakers and lobbyists, to try to make modest symbolism at least somewhat more meaningful. As Ramachandra Guha reminds us in his magisterial new book, India After Gandhi, not everyone in the subcontinent found cause for celebration at the moment of independence, which came with the largest mass migration of people in history and left hundreds of thousands dead in the wake of Partition. As Guha notes, in Pakistan poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz wrote that

This is not that long-looked for break of day
Not that clear dawn in quest of which those comrades
Set out, believing that in heaven’s wide void
Somewhere must be the stars’ last halting-place,
Somewhere the verge of night’s slow-washing tide,
Somewhere the anchorage for the ship of heartache.

In India, Gandhi avoided the independence celebrations altogether, lamenting the violence of Partition and questioning whether anyone should be celebrating “in the midst of this devastation.”

However, this evening, in New York, some Indians and Pakistanis will lay claim not only to the notion that the independence of India and Pakistan can indeed be celebrated, while simultaneously recognizing cause for mourning and reflection, but also to the idea that the moment can be a shared one that Indians and Pakistanis can celebrate together. While Gandhi observed the moment of independence with a twenty-four hour fast, the organizers of “Flavors Beyond Borders” have creatively chosen instead to embrace food, treating it

as a medium to spread the message of peace, brotherhood and harmony among the people of the two nations. People from across the border will feast on a hearty meal specially prepared by renowned chefs of the two nations and enjoy the musical performances by acclaimed singers.

As Gandhi famously said, “we must be the change we wish to see in the world,” even when in seemingly insignificant ways.

* * *

On July 4th, Mike commended to Dorf on Law readers the Declaration of Independence. In the same spirit, today I commend to all of you the speeches on the occasion of independence by both Nehru:

Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. . . . It is fitting that at this solemn moment we take the pledge of dedication to the service of India and her people and to the still larger cause of humanity. . . . That future is not one of ease or resting but of incessant striving so that we may fulfil the pledges we have so often taken and the one we shall take today. The service of India means the service of the millions who suffer. It means the ending of poverty and ignorance and disease and inequality of opportunity. The ambition of the greatest man of our generation has been to wipe every tear from every eye. That may be beyond us, but as long as there are tears and suffering, so long our work will not be over. [link to full text]

and Jinnah:

No power can hold another nation, and specially a nation of 400 million souls in subjection; nobody could have conquered you, and even if it had happened, nobody could have continued its hold on you for any length of time but for this. Therefore, we must learn a lesson from this. You are free; you are free to go to your temples. You are free to go to your mosques or to any other places of worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any region or caste or creed –that has nothing to do with the business of the State. . . . We are starting with this fundamental principle that we are all citizens and equal citizens of one State. . . . Now, I think we should keep that in front of us as our ideal and you will find that in course of time Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual but in the political sense as citizens of the state. [link to full text]