While it is sat­is­fy­ing that the Delhi High Court has asked the CBSE not to in­fringe the rights of  Sikh stu­dents on a pe­ti­tion by DS­GMC, and al­low to them to ap­pear for NEET ex­ams with the Kara and Kir­pan, one won­ders what kind of fear psy­chosis has gripped CBSE to re­sort to un­con­sti­tu­tional prac­tices. 

On a pe­ti­tion of the Delhi Sikh Gur­d­wara Man­age­ment Com­mit­tee, the Delhi High Court al­lowed the pe­ti­tion per­mit­ting Sikhs stu­dents to wear the Kara and Kir­pan in­side the ex­am­i­na­tion halls in the up­com­ing Na­tional El­i­gi­bil­ity and En­trance Tests -NEET ex­ams. Jus­tice S. Ravin­dra Bhat and Jus­tice A.K. Chawla also di­rected the Cen­tral Board of Sec­ondary Ed­u­ca­tion (CBSE) which con­ducts the pan-In­dia ex­am­i­na­tion be­gin­ning 6 May, to ask those dressed in tra­di­tional at­tire to reach their cen­tres an hour early to com­plete the se­cu­rity oblig­a­tions.

Se­nior ad­vo­cate A. P. S. Ahluwalia had ar­gued that in the ab­sence of any law, there can­not be a ban on car­ry­ing a Kir­pan or wear­ing a Kara to the ex­am­i­na­tion hall. It was fur­ther ar­gued that de­vout Sikhs carry their em­blems of faith in all pub­lic places in­clud­ing air­lines and any blan­ket re­stric­tion would be a vi­o­la­tion of the con­sti­tu­tional rights of Sikhs.

““It seems the CBSE -who are the cus­to­di­ans of the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem in the coun­try are il­lit­er­ate about the rights of cit­i­zens.’”

Man­mo­han Singh
Gen­eral Sec­re­tary, Sri Guru Singh Sabha, Mum­bai

It is note­wor­thy that the bench of jus­tices S Ravin­dra Bhat and A K Chawla out­rightly re­jected the con­tention of the CBSE -the Cen­tral Board of Sec­ondary Ed­u­ca­tion that these items, along with all other metal­lic ob­jects, were barred from en­try on ac­count of use of un­fair means in the exam in the past, say­ing such a pro­hi­bi­tion can­not be put in place on the ba­sis of a “vague ap­pre­hen­sion”.

“There can­not be a vague ap­pre­hen­sion that peo­ple who come for the test will do it (cheat). Is there even one in­stance of mis­use of these ob­jects? If you go by your rule, there are a lot of im­plants..,” the court said and added “uni­for­mity of the pol­icy should not lead to ab­sur­dity,” ob­served the bench.

While the or­der ask­ing Sikh stu­dents to re­port an hour early sounds ac­cept­able, it opens yet an­other pos­si­bil­ity of mis­chief by the su­per­in­ten­dents and other ex­am­i­na­tion staff.  Su­lakhan Singh (name changed at re­quest), a stu­dent from Delhi, who would be ap­pear­ing for the exam said, “I want to thank the Delhi High Court as I was be­ing an Am­rit­d­hari Sikh, I was ner­vous what would hap­pen at the ex­am­i­na­tion.

“Sikh stu­dents have been ap­pear­ing for all kinds of ex­ams for the last seven decades with­out a sin­gle in­ci­dent of any kind of mis­use of the any of the items of re­li­gious at­tire.”

The judges cat­e­gor­i­cally re­marked in their judge­ment , “In the pre­sent case, con­ced­edly there is no law which per se bans the en­try of karas or kir­pans or such like ob­jects or ar­ti­cles of faith. Every prac­tis­ing Sikh is en­joined to wear the kara and carry the “kir­pan”. Our Con­sti­tu­tion has gone to the length of clar­i­fy­ing that those ar­ti­cles of faith are deemed to be a pro­fes­sion of the Sikh re­li­gion. At the same time, the reg­u­lat­ing body’s re­mit ex­tends to de­cide what ac­cord­ing to its best judg­ment can be or can­not be per­mit­ted in­side the ex­am­i­na­tion hall. A fact not dis­puted is that karas and kir­pans are com­mon­place even in highly re­stricted ar­eas such as air­craft, dur­ing flights, dur­ing travel and in a num­ber of other pub­lic places. Ob­vi­ously, even in those places too the is­sue of pub­lic or­der or the pos­si­ble threat of sec­ondary use of such ar­ti­cles would be there; at the same time, the au­thor­i­ties have to en­sure the pro­vi­sion of the Con­sti­tu­tion is the rule rather than oth­er­wise. In the ab­sence of any ob­jec­tive facts in­dica­tive, or sug­ges­tive of, real threat of use of un­fair means by those wear­ing karas and kir­pans, the blan­ket ban on metal­lic ob­jects would not be jus­ti­fied. “Pub­lic or­der” is not a me­chan­i­cal in­can­ta­tion, to jus­tify every re­stric­tion, but refers to prox­im­ity to a real threat, which has to be cor­re­spond­ingly dealt with a pro­por­tion­ate re­sponse by the State. (Ref. Ram Manohar Lo­hia v. State of Bi­har AIR 1966 740). There­fore, clearly, CB­SE’s lack of ac­com­mo­da­tion for Sikh can­di­dates is un­jus­ti­fied.”

Let us pon­der over this. 70 years of in­de­pen­dent In­dia. Umpteem sac­ri­fices by Sikh sol­diers on the bor­ders and within the coun­try. A Sikh Prime Min­is­ter. Many chief Min­is­ters. Many Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment have worn all the 5 Ks to the In­dian Par­lia­ment. Sikhs de­clared as a mi­nor­ity com­mu­nity un­der cen­tral laws. Ar­ti­cle 25 of the Con­sti­tu­tion of In­dia clearly al­low­ing Sikhs to wear and carry Kir­pans. Sikh stu­dents have been ap­pear­ing for all kinds of ex­ams for the last seven decades with­out a sin­gle in­ci­dent of any kind of mis­use of the any of these items of re­li­gious at­tire. Ob­ser­vant Sikhs wear the 5 Ks (Kesh -un­shorn hair, Kanga -the wooden comb in the tied-up hair, Kara -the bracelet, the Kach­hera -the es­pe­cially de­signed un­der­shorts and the Kir­pan -the sword) as a com­mit­ment they make at the time of the Sikh bap­tism –Am­rit Chakkana cer­e­mony.

And yet!!

Since the last 3 years or maybe, the Cen­tral Board of Sec­ondary Ed­u­ca­tion, man­dated to con­duct In­dia-level ex­ams, has not been able to “al­low” Sikh stu­dents to wear the vis­i­ble sym­bols of Kara and Kir­pan be­cause un­der its per­cep­tion, these “metal­lic ob­jects” can be dan­ger­ous and also con­ducive to copy­ing. This comes from a body which is tasked with prepar­ing the syl­labus for stu­dents and teach­ing tol­er­ance amongst all stu­dents in the coun­try. Speak­ing to WSN, Man­mo­han Singh of Singh Sabha Mum­bai, while ex­press­ing sat­is­fac­tion at the or­der, said, “It seems the CBSE -who are the cus­to­di­ans of the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem in the coun­try are il­lit­er­ate about the rights of cit­i­zens.”

Sri Guru Singh Sabha Mum­bai, a year ago, wrote to the Union Min­is­ter for Hu­man Re­sources Prakash Javadekar to see rea­son when the In­dian In­sti­tute of Tech­nol­ogy dis­al­lowed Sikh stu­dents with Kara and Kir­pan to ap­pear for en­trance ex­ams. Man­mo­han Singh, the gen­eral sec­re­tary of the body had said, “Wear­ing the Kara and the Kir­pan is not a con­ces­sion to Sikh stu­dents but a mat­ter of right -en­joined in the Sikh re­li­gion, at­tained by the Sikhs af­ter supreme sac­ri­fice and ex­pressly sanc­tioned by the Con­sti­tu­tion of In­dia.” 

Last year, upon re­ceiv­ing sim­i­lar com­plaints from var­i­ous quar­ters, the Shi­ro­mani Gur­d­wara Par­band­hak Com­mit­tee (SGPC) had urged the Cen­tral Board of Sec­ondary Ed­u­ca­tion (CBSE) to en­sure that Sikh can­di­dates be al­lowed to wear the ‘kara’ and the ‘kir­pan’ in Am­rit­sar. How­ever the high handed ed­u­cated di­rec­tors of the CBSE would not judge and they sim­ply by­passed the is­sue re­fer­ring only to their own no­ti­fi­ca­tion re­gard­ing de­bar­ring metal­lic ob­jects. No ef­fort was made to look into the con­sti­tu­tional rights of the stu­dents and as de­nounced by the Delhi High Court to go be­yond ab­sur­dity.

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It may be noted that the ab­solutely il­le­gal and un­law­ful or­der of the Cen­tral Board of Sec­ondary Ed­u­ca­tion has had ef­fect on some schools who on one pre­text or the other raise ob­jec­tions to the Sikh stu­dents wear­ing the Kara and Kir­pan as has been re­ported in some schools of Mum­bai. The CBSE re­stric­tions are for belts, bracelets, rings, ear­rings, neck­lace and the like. Can you see the fear psy­chosis? Does the CBSE and the HRD min­istry get sadis­tic plea­sure in an­noy­ing the Sikhs and other mi­nori­ties?