Sikhs plan private school in France

For Gurdial Singh and his wife Surjeet Kaur, a Sikh couple from France, life was wonderful in their adopted country till the French government decided to ban the wearing of turbans in schools in 2004.

The Sikh couple from Bobigny near Paris was then forced to withdraw their 14-year-old son Jasbir Singh from the Louis Mission school.

The couple and others from their community have since been fighting for lifting the ban, something that “does not go well with French ethos and values”. They are part of United Sikhs, an organisation mobilising public opinion on the issue.

A successful name in the construction business, Singh has drawn up plans to set up an educational campus that would be known as Shere Punjab Complexe (SPC) in Bobigny.

“It would be a huge campus with schools, colleges and a university, imparting both professional and general education without any ban on anybody’s religious dress or something that exhibits one’s religious affiliation,” Singh said.

As the French law prohibits “ostentatious revelation of one’s religious affiliation” in state-run schools, Singh was faced with a tough task to get his son admitted to another government school.

“We waited for a year in the hope that the government would reconsider the decision, but in vain. Finally we put our son in a private school,” Singh said.