The brief life of the burkini ban stoked plenty of social unrest. Freedom is subjective, but restricting clothing choices anywhere is deploringly petty
Some French people woke up from their post-modern, liberated thinking and banned the burkini or full body swimsuits, in 15 French cities last month. They felt that the burkini is a symbol of extremist thinking that has led to the attacks on their way of life. They remembered that when they took their August off to visit another country they respected the local culture by not going into acceptable extremes of their own culture there. And so they felt that it is only fair to expect reciprocity from others in their own country.
last month Mayor David lisnard of Cannes in France signed off on the ruling that “access to beaches and for swimming is banned to anyone who does not have bathing apparel which respects good customs and secularism,” meaning swimwear that do not cover the legs, arms, and head, or the midriff. “Beachwear which ostentatiously displays religious affiliation, when France and places of worship are currently the target of terrorist attacks, is liable to create risks of disrupting public order which it is necessary to prevent,” the ruling stated. On July 14, the nearby French city of Nice was indeed the target of an attack claimed by Islamic State of Iraq and the levant, which killed 85 people. Soon after, on July 26 a priest was killed in his church in northwestern France by two attackers who also had proclaimed their allegiance to Isil.
Following the ban, four armed male French police officers in Nice forcefully demanded that a woman wearing a headscarf, long sleeves, and pants remove layers of her clothing right there at a beach. They gave her a ticket for not wearing an outfit that respects good morals and secularism.
In Kyrgyzstan also last month, President Almazbek said that women can become radicalised to become terrorists if they put on Islamic dress. His statement was made in the context of his country, where 80 per cent of the population is Muslim. large Government-sponsored banners in the streets of the capital Bishkek have been put up to dissuade Kyrgyz women from wearing Islamic clothing, notably the hijab, niqab and burka. This was done ahead of a visit to the country by German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
In India too, last week Union Tourism Minister Mahesh Sharma suggested that foreign women tourists should not wear skirts and other short dresses at night in Agra. He said that this was for the safety of foreign women tourists, and maintained that this suggestion would be part of the advisory to tourists as Indian culture is different from western.
Whichever way I look at it I do not see how prescription of attire would ensure security of citizens. I feel that solutions like these either provide superficial relief or are highly symbolic, and hence are only slightly useful. For example, some section of the population may feel threatened and such measures by the Government could be a gesture to assure them that the state is protecting them. It would at best make them feel that political leaders understand their concerns. But the real causes and solutions to security threats are highly complex and more often than not have very little to do with attire. In fact they usually drill down to deeply societal as well as some individual factors.
We could imagine that France’s burkini ban as a knee jerk reaction to the refugee crisis and the string of terror attacks in Europe, which is a serious political problem that could lead to the break-up of European Union — the UK is already out! But this case is not true as France’s attitude towards diversity has prompted debate in earlier years as well.
During the years I was living in Paris, there was a similar situation. The Government banned wearing religious symbols and clothing — including crosses, kippah, and Islamic headscarves — from public schools in 2004. The following year there were a series of riots in the suburbs of Paris and other French cities as a result of largely Arab or Muslim immigrant unrest. More recently, with the rise of the far-right Front National and increased concerns about immigration, the pollsters Ipsos conducted a survey to assess racist tendencies in France. For asking questions related to race, Ipsos was condemned and threatened with being sued.
Partly, the reasons for the burkini ban draws from France’s approach to a separation of church and state that is much more vigorous than that of other European countries or the United States. France believes that religion should be completely separated from national identity. This concept, laïcité, which in the French Constitution formally declares France as a secular republic, was developed during the French Revolution to weaken the Catholic Church’s influence on the Government. Clearly it was easier to enforce this when France was more homogeneously Christian.
Moreover France and many other countries in the world are right to be concerned with growing security issues, but my point is that burkinis, headscarves, and skirts are not causing it. Stripping a woman off her clothes is as bad as forcing a woman to wear what she does not wish to. Further, restricting a community’s ability to integrate in to the local society — by, say, taking their family to the beach — also does not solve the challenge of cultural integration. Expecting reciprocity in adapting to local attire and the penalising consequences of not doing so, does not work either. For example, if we hold Saudi Arabia as a benchmark for it, then we could all be in serious trouble for just wearing the wrong clothes.
And so after much anger and protest, France’s top administrative court overturned the burkini ban on August 26. The brief life of the ban had already by then stoked plenty of social unrest in return for no benefit. Freedom is subjective, but restricting clothing choices anywhere is deploringly petty without solving at all the problem.
The writer is Chief Sustainability Officer for the group of companies, Jindal Steel and Power ltd. She is a Global leadership Alumna of the World Economic Forum miniya.chatterji@jindalsteel.com