OTTAWA: The battle to allow or prohibit Sikhs who join the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) from wearing turbans instead of a Stetson or the regular work cap is heating up across Canada.
A 23yearold Sikh student from the Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, who has successfully passed all tests to join as a recruit, has not been able to do so ‘because of the turban-tussle.
RCMP commissioner, Norman Inkster, recommended some eight months ago that Turbans should be allowed to be worn by the Sikh Officers of the force. But the solicitor general, Pierre Blais is still studying the situation.
Blais’s press secretary said that it ‘was a “very sensitive issue” in western parts of the country.
Barbara Sparrow, a Tory legislator from Calgary said that she had received more than 105,000 signatures on petitions from people who do not want to disturb the distinctness of the RCMP.
While there are over a quarter million Sikhs in Canada not all of them follow the Religious requirements, including wearing of a turban. According to RCMP there Were several nonorthodox Sikhs in the force who wear the regular cap.
For the ruling Tories, the issue has become a hot potato, which Could cost them a lot of votes in the Western provinces, where people are already fiercely alienated with federal policies, reports said.
Alberta’s Rural politicians are conducting an opinion vote to decide whether the RCMP officers belonging to the Sikh faith should be allowed to wear turbans and beards and carry the symbolic daggers.
But Sikh leaders counter saying that Sikhs wearing turbans have worked harmoniously on police forces in Asia and Britain.
“God save me from my friends I can protect myself from my enemies.”
Marshall de Villars.
Article extracted from this publication >> December 15, 1989
