The use of a small Kir­pan by a child in a school in Syd­ney, who has since been ar­rested and charged, has re­sulted in the New South Wales Pre­mier and his ed­u­ca­tion min­is­ter ban­ning the wear­ing of Kir­pans in schools. Sikhs bod­ies from the Shi­ro­mani Gur­d­wara Par­band­hak Com­mit­tee in Am­rit­sar and the World Sikh Or­gan­i­sa­tion in Canada have ex­pressed con­cern at the ban and call­ing it a knee-jerk and mis­guided re­ac­tion, WSO has urged Pre­mier Gladys Bere­jik­lian to re­scind the ban and not per­pet­u­ate neg­a­tive stereo­types for stu­dents wear­ing ar­ti­cles of faith. WSN re­ports.

UNDOUBT­EDLY, THE USE OF KIR­PAN IN ANY SCHOOL can be up­set­ting to school au­thor­i­ties and par­ents of fel­low stu­dents. How­ever, let’s face that such in­ci­dents are not even one in a mil­lion. In recorded con­tem­po­rary and an­cient his­tory, the use of Kir­pan to avenge or per­pet­u­ate fear is un­heard of.

In an ur­gent mis­sive to NSW Pre­mier Gladys Bere­jik­lian and Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Sarah Mitchell, the World Sikh Or­gan­i­sa­tion has pro­vided in­for­ma­tion and ex­perts’ ma­te­r­ial that they have used in Canada and else­where to the Aus­tralian au­thor­i­ties and sought im­me­di­ate re­scind­ing of the ban, call­ing it dis­crim­i­na­tion against the Sikh com­mu­nity.

“While the in­ci­dent that led to the an­nounce­ment of this ban was highly un­for­tu­nate, the de­ci­sion to ban the kir­pan ap­pears to be a knee-jerk re­ac­tion that is not based on an ac­cu­rate un­der­stand­ing or facts about this ar­ti­cle of faith.”

The WSO has of­fered the Cana­dian ex­pe­ri­ence with re­spect to the ac­com­mo­da­tion of the kir­pan as a suc­cess­ful model that can be used to de­velop a kir­pan pol­icy in NSW that bal­ances stu­dents’ free­dom to prac­tice their faith and any safety con­cerns.

The WSO let­ter to Pre­mier Bere­jik­lian noted the state­ment of NSW Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Sarah Mitchell that “the kir­pan would be banned in schools pend­ing a pol­icy re­view.”

“Given the sig­nif­i­cant Sikh pop­u­la­tion in NSW, we are con­cerned about the neg­a­tive im­pact this will have on the com­mu­nity there.”

Ex­tolling on the sig­nif­i­cance of the Kir­pan to a bap­tised Sikh, WSO Pres­i­dent Tejin­der Singh Sidhu has writ­ten that “the kir­pan is a small sword that rep­re­sents the duty to stand up against in­jus­tice. The word kir­pan means grace and re­spect and the kir­pan is worn by ini­ti­ated (Am­rit­d­hari) Sikhs, both men and women, at all times. The kir­pan is one of five ar­ti­cles of faith, of­ten called the 5Ks. Sikhs wear them as a re­minder of their com­mit­ment to the tenets of their faith in­clud­ing jus­tice, char­ity, moral­ity, hu­mil­ity, and equal­ity.”

“Kir­pans must be made of iron or steel and most range in size from 15 to 22 cm (6-9 inches in­clud­ing han­dle). Some have el­e­gant, or­nate hilts and sheaths. They must be wrapped in fab­ric held se­curely in place with a fab­ric belt (called a gaa­tra). The gaa­tra is worn across the torso, keep­ing the kir­pan next to the body.”

“The kir­pan is worn as a spir­i­tual ar­ti­cle of faith and should not be seen as a ‘weapon’.”

Talk­ing about the rare use of the Kir­pan, the let­ter states, “What pre­vents Sikhs us­ing an ar­ti­cle of faith for vi­o­lence is that very faith, cou­pled with the same so­cial cus­toms that we all ob­serve. Of all the blades used in daily life, kir­pans are the least haz­ardous be­cause they are sa­cred: they come with a phi­los­o­phy that is an in­te­gral part of how Sikhs prac­tise their faith. It’s not just a tal­is­man or a piece of jew­ellery. Re­mov­ing the kir­pan is a se­ri­ous mat­ter for Sikhs. It is done rarely and only un­der ex­treme cir­cum­stances – Sikhs even wear the kir­pan while sleep­ing and bathing. Part­ing with this ar­ti­cle of faith, even briefly, re­quires prayer.”

“What pre­vents Sikhs us­ing an ar­ti­cle of faith for vi­o­lence is that very faith, cou­pled with the same so­cial cus­toms that we all ob­serve..”

WSO as an ad­vo­cacy group has been dili­gently pur­su­ing the cases re­lat­ing to Kir­pan at var­i­ous fo­rums since the last decades in Canada and have thus of­fered ex­per­tise to en­sure ac­com­mo­da­tion of the Kir­pan in schools, in­sti­tu­tions and other pub­lic places.

The let­ter says, “The ac­com­mo­da­tion of the kir­pan in schools is an is­sue that has re­ceived in­tense le­gal scrutiny here in Canada and was the sub­ject of sig­nif­i­cant ju­rispru­dence. The mat­ter was even­tu­ally heard by the Supreme Court of Canada in the Mul­tani case (Singh-Mul­tani c. Mar­guerite-Bour­geoys (Com­mis­sion sco­laire), 2006 SCC 6, 2006). In a unan­i­mous de­ci­sion, the Court ruled that the wear­ing of the kir­pan must be ac­com­mo­dated in schools and that any as­ser­tion that the kir­pan is a weapon is “con­tra­dicted by the ev­i­dence re­gard­ing the sym­bolic na­ture of the kir­pan, it is also dis­re­spect­ful to be­liev­ers in the Sikh re­li­gion and does not take into ac­count Cana­dian val­ues based on mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism.”

“The kir­pan is per­mit­ted in schools across Canada. Stu­dents may wear kir­pans of a length of up to 7.5 inches un­der­neath their cloth­ing, se­cured in the sheath and fur­ther re­strained in a gaa­tra belt. This ac­com­mo­da­tion al­lows Sikh stu­dents to freely prac­tice their faith while also lim­it­ing any safety is­sues that may arise. This ac­com­mo­da­tion has been suc­cess­fully ap­plied for many years with­out in­ci­dent.”

It needs to be thor­oughly ex­plored as to what ex­tent was the child be­ing bul­lied and an un­der­stand­ing of the back­ground of his un­for­tu­nate ac­tion. The ban rhetoric will lead to ig­no­rance, dis­crim­i­na­tion and xeno­pho­bia, against a highly vis­i­ble mi­nor­ity, warned WSO Pres­i­dent Sidhu. WSO has of­fered ad­vice and con­sul­ta­tion based on the Cana­dian prece­dent.

Aus­tralia has seen the vis­i­ble Sikh com­mu­nity rise in num­bers over the decades. Gov­ern­ments and ad­min­is­tra­tions have to un­der­stand the nu­ance of the peo­ple who have made their coun­try their homes and have be­come cit­i­zens. Any such dis­crim­i­na­tion would be tram­pling of the re­li­gious rights and hu­man rights of dis­tinct com­mu­ni­ties.