In secular Paris, saree is scary
RASHMEE ROSHAN LALL
BOBIGNY/PARIS: France’s first gurdwara, complete with three proudly-bulbous domes, soars high above the horizon in Bobigny, the satellite town north of Paris.
In the French capital, on the Rue Fauborg St Denis, half-a-hundred Sri Lankan and Pondicherry Tamil-owned shops with names like 'Saree Palace', 'Chola Voyages', 'Rio Sapna', 'Ayngaran DVDs' and 'Sakthi Jewellery' ply a thriving trade, secure in their USP as the 'Indiens quartier'.
But the gurdwara stands proud only on paper. And the mile-long Indian quarter is France's only visible, if impermanent and grossly commercial proof that it is home to a small but stable assortment of South Asian communities with disparate faiths and differing spiritual and social aspirations.
Says Rajaram, an IT entrepreneur who left Chennai for Paris 20 years ago, "I have been battling to get official recognition for Hinduism as a religion, but to no avail."
Adds Shingara Singh, a member of the Bobigny Gurdwara Management Committee, which currently runs a makeshift temple for the country's estimated 10,000 Sikhs and is raising money to build its grand architectural declaration of faith in France: "There is a Ramdas mandir near Paris, but there is no temple for the Hindus, no mosque for Pakistanis and South Asian Muslims. There is a definite void in the lives of our communities". If France's refusal officially to enfold minority religions seems dogmatic, it is meant to be. Nearly 400 years ago, Voltaire, the most eloquent and tireless advocate of the anti-dogmatic movement, the Enlightenment, famously declared, "If God did not exist it would be necessary for us to invent Him."
Since then, secularism, colour-blindness and ethnic-neutrality is the closest thing France has had to a state religion. The trouble, say non-white Frenchman, is that the principles of secularism do not appear to be set in stone for everyone and they seem well able to accommodate white Christian exceptions.
This includes allowing the eastern provinces of Alsace and Lorraine-which were German when the state officially stopped funding the church in 1905.
BOBIGNY/PARIS: France’s first gurdwara, complete with three proudly-bulbous domes, soars high above the horizon in Bobigny, the satellite town north of Paris.
In the French capital, on the Rue Fauborg St Denis, half-a-hundred Sri Lankan and Pondicherry Tamil-owned shops with names like 'Saree Palace', 'Chola Voyages', 'Rio Sapna', 'Ayngaran DVDs' and 'Sakthi Jewellery' ply a thriving trade, secure in their USP as the 'Indiens quartier'.
But the gurdwara stands proud only on paper. And the mile-long Indian quarter is France's only visible, if impermanent and grossly commercial proof that it is home to a small but stable assortment of South Asian communities with disparate faiths and differing spiritual and social aspirations.
Says Rajaram, an IT entrepreneur who left Chennai for Paris 20 years ago, "I have been battling to get official recognition for Hinduism as a religion, but to no avail."
Adds Shingara Singh, a member of the Bobigny Gurdwara Management Committee, which currently runs a makeshift temple for the country's estimated 10,000 Sikhs and is raising money to build its grand architectural declaration of faith in France: "There is a Ramdas mandir near Paris, but there is no temple for the Hindus, no mosque for Pakistanis and South Asian Muslims. There is a definite void in the lives of our communities". If France's refusal officially to enfold minority religions seems dogmatic, it is meant to be. Nearly 400 years ago, Voltaire, the most eloquent and tireless advocate of the anti-dogmatic movement, the Enlightenment, famously declared, "If God did not exist it would be necessary for us to invent Him."
Since then, secularism, colour-blindness and ethnic-neutrality is the closest thing France has had to a state religion. The trouble, say non-white Frenchman, is that the principles of secularism do not appear to be set in stone for everyone and they seem well able to accommodate white Christian exceptions.
This includes allowing the eastern provinces of Alsace and Lorraine-which were German when the state officially stopped funding the church in 1905.
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