September 2, 2004 ☼ Foreign Affairs
This is an archived blog post from The Acorn.
Just as General Musharraf cannot speak on behalf of his Indian co-religionists, Manmohan Singh cannot speak on behalf of his French co-religionists. Whether France allows its Sikh citizens to wear turbans or not is entirely its own business.
It would have been another matter if France were an unrepresentative, authoritarian state hell-bent upon repressing its minorities and depriving them of their basic human rights. Then too, the justification for any intervention would be on basic humanitarian grounds - not on religious ones. Its one thing for the India’s Sikh community to lobby on behalf of its French counterparts, but its totally another thing for the Indian Prime Minister to do so.
If the Indian government wants to take secularism beyond lip-service, then it must practice separation of the religion and state both internally and externally.
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