Gurbaj Singh Multani in 2006, with his cool knife.

Nowadays, the xenophobes complain about Muslims. When I was young, they complained about Sikhs. I remember my Dad complaining about the local Sikh bus drivers wanting to wear turbans. That was in Edmonton in 1987.

For context, Canadian Sikh terrorists blew up Air India Flight 182 two years earlier, killing all 329 people aboard. Most of the victims were on their way to India from Toronto. The shocking event sullied Canadian attitudes towards Sikhs.

The event was part of a growing Sikh militancy. The previous year, Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi had been assassinated by her two of her own bodyguards, both Sikhs.

Gurbaj

In 2001, an 11-year-old boy in Montreal named Gurbaj Singh Multani was suspended from school for carrying a knife. It was a kirpan, worn by observant Sikh males as a religious obligation.

When Gurbaj returned to his school in 2002 following a court ruling in his favour, he was greeted by a crowd of 300 loud adult protestors. He had to attend classes with a police escort.

A poll showed that 94% of Francophone Quebeckers objected to the court ruling that allowed him to return to the school. The Quebec government sided against Gurbaj and appealed the ruling. (The ruling eventually attracted negative coverage from as far away as the UK and France.)

Gurbaj moved to a private school a few months later.

The Court Ruling

I’m going to take a moment to delve into the court ruling here, because I want you to understand how ridiculous the public reaction was, and how negligent the press was in its coverage of the ruling.

In 2002, the Superior Court of Quebec ruled that Gurbaj should be allowed back at school with his kirpan. As part of the Court’s decision, Gurbaj was required to wear the knife according to four conditions:

The knife had to be inside a wooden scabbard. The scabbard had to be within a cloth envelope. The cloth envelope had to be sewn shut. The sewn-shut cloth envelope had to be sewn into the inside his clothing.

The court reasoned that this would make the kirpan less accessible than other equally dangerous objects that were readily available in schools, such as scissors, and I think any reasonable person would have to agree.

Furthermore, teachers were allowed to inspect the kirpan to ensure that it remained sealed. Gurbaj’s known history of good behaviour was also central to the ruling, and he was required by the court to maintain a good behaviour record at the school.

The court made clear that these rulings did not apply to airplanes, which are different from schools in that objects like scissors are not allowed on airplanes, and also because airlines deal with unknown persons (who do not have known behaviour records).

(For what it’s worth, the Supreme Court of Canada upheld this ruling in 2006, though Gurbaj was no longer in school at that time. And for those who are wondering why Gurbaj didn’t wear a tiny symbolic knife, or a wooden or plastic knife like so many Sikhs do, Gurbaj’s family believed the kirpan had to be a useable knife. The question before the courts was whether or not this sincere belief could be reasonably accommodated. It is not the job of the Supreme Court to tell people how to interpret their religion.)

The Negligent Press

Despite all the attention, there seemed to be almost universal ignorance about what the Supreme Court actually ruled. From the numerous objections I heard and read at the time, the public seemed to be under in the impression that the knife would be much more accessible than it was.

I’ve listed four conditions from the ruling above. I sometimes saw one of these conditions mentioned in a news story, but rarely more than one, and never all of them. (I learned about them from reading the court ruling myself.)

Considering the interest around the case, you’d think the press could have spared some column inches to explain the court ruling better. Where were the infographics illustrating how the kirpan would stored? People were interested in knowing.

Furthermore, despite the ruling explicitly stating that it didn’t apply to airplanes, there were ubiquitous mentions of airplanes in media discussions of the story. With both 9/11 and Air India Flight 182 in people’s memories, any mention of airplanes was guaranteed an emotional response.

The media could have defused the tension around the case through better reporting. But the media wasn’t interested in defending the Sikh community. The media was interested in having a debate about the “limits of religious freedom” (a recurring obsession for liberals) and for that, they needed the kirpan to sound more dangerous than it was.

Another Boy

Two years later, a different Sikh boy from a nearby neighbourhood was in the headlines on a more serious charge. Two schoolmates alleged that he attacked them with his kirpan.

“Menaced with a kirpan”, one headline read. “Kirpan used to threaten someone in a schoolyard”, read another.

That wasn’t true. What happened is this: On Sept 11, 2008 (the seventh anniversary of 9/11), two school bullies assaulted a 13-year-old Sikh boy, and his turban came undone and his hairpin fell out. The two bullies mistook his hairpin for a kirpan and reported that the boy had attacked them with his kirpan.

If there had been greater understanding of Gurbaj’s case and the way kirpans were required to be stored, maybe the press would have realized how implausible this story was. Maybe the boy wouldn’t have been bullied in the first place.

Instead, this boy was bullied in the schoolyard, vilified in the press, and dragged through the courts. (The judge dismissed the case on the grounds that it was racist and fucking stupid. Not his exact words, but pretty close).

Present Day

And then an odd thing happened. I’m not sure why, but gradually people calmed down. Air India 182 faded from people’s memory.

If it took thirty years for people to calm down about Sikhs after the Air India bombing, maybe it’ll take 30 years for people to calm down about Muslims after 9/11. In which case, I look forward to a hijabi leading one of our federal political parties in 2031.

My dad complained about bus drivers wearing turbans. Now, in 2019, one of our federal political parties is led by a turban-wearing Sikh, and we have two federal cabinet ministers who are also turban-wearing Sikhs (including the defense minister!).