Open secularism and the RCMP turban debate

Introduction

This article examines newspaper articles and opinion editorials on the Canadian debate in the late 1980s and early 1990s over the legal case to allow Sikhs to wear turbans and other five Ks as part of their police uniform. In this article, I argue that the decision to allow Baltej Singh Dhillon, the first Sikh to join the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police), to wear his turban as part of his uniform, is a demonstration of the strengths of open secularism and the need to evaluate religious minorities not on the basis of their religious symbols and signs of identity, but rather on their commitment to their work. Those who opposed the legislative decision often argued that there is a core Canadian national identity to which immigrants must adhere. When this group lost their initial court case, their appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada attempted to argue for closed secularism: namely, that the display of religious emblems is against the Canadian Constitution and Bill of Rights. The Supreme Court of Canada ultimately dismissed these arguments and Baltej Singh Dhillon became the first RCMP officer in the country to wear his turban as part of his uniform.

In this article I examine a data set of 189 newspaper articles and editorials on this topic. I also interviewed Baltej Singh Dhillon in Vancouver in 2019 and examine the impact the debates over this case had on him. I then examine Diary of a national debate: Mounties in turbans (1993), a book produced by those who objected to the decision to allow Sikhs to join the RCMP. The volume displays a considerable amount of prejudice and assumptions about visible minorities. This article also illustrates an assumed national identity that some Canadians had in the 1980s and 1990s, which assumed that immigrants must adapt to an assumed Canadian national identity rather than the need for Canadians to understand the needs and abilities of minority communities.

Historical context for the Baltej Singh Dhillon case

In March 1989, the RCMP Commissioner, Brian Inkster, amended the uniform requirements for the RCMP to allow amritdhari (baptized) Sikhs to serve. Inkster was initially against the uniform change, but once informed that if the case went to court it would win based on freedom of religion in the Canadian Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms, in a newspaper article that appeared in June 1989:

The RCMP would probably be dragged into court if it continued banning Sikh officers from wearing turbans, RCMP Commissioner Norman Inkster said Tuesday. Inkster was spelling out why he is advising Solicitor General Pierre Blain to permit the uniform change for Sikhs. He said he obtained legal opinions that banning turbans was contrary to the Charter of Rights and the Canadian Human Rights Act (Doyal, 1989: A10).

This policy change required government approval, but the solicitor general at the time, Pierre Blais, did not move on the file. In one article, Blais’ slow response to this case is explained as follows:

The RCMP wants to allow Sikh members of the force to wear turbans as part of their uniforms, but Solicitor-General Pierre Blais wants to hear more opinions before deciding on the policy change. … Several Western Progressive Conservative MPs have opposed the proposed change. A spokesman for Blais said yesterday that he wants to hear more from them before making a decision (Doyal, 1989: A11).

The case for the change in the RCMP uniform (and the allowance for turbans) generated a significant national debate with a group of Calgary sisters, Kay Mansbridge, Dot Miles and Gen Kantelbrg, who organized a group called Defenders of RCMP Tradition. Together they wrote a number of opinion editorials and circulated a petition that gathered over 200,000 signatures of Canadians who also opposed the proposed change to the uniform requirements. In March 1990, then-Prime Minister Brian Mulroney announced that he supported baptized Sikhs to wear their turbans while serving with the RCMP. In parliament he stated:

I can tell you, I certainly wouldn’t be offended by the idea of The Royal Canadian Mounted Police seeking an accommodation which would allow deeply held religious views to be accommodated. . .Surely, nobody in Canada would think less of the RCMP if there was a small modification to the costume of the members of people who would choose and who come from another community. (Singh, 2018: 379; 1989: A10)

The Solicitor General also confirmed the change, allowing Baltej Singh Dhillon to join the RCMP and become the first Sikh RCMP officer to wear a turban. With others, the Calgary group attempted to legally challenge this change in policy and the case went to the Canadian Court of Appeal, in February 1991, where the request to change the ruling was denied.

Much of the criticism of this decision and the movement against it was based upon ignorance of the Sikh tradition and assumptions about national heritage and identity in Canada, assumptions that often-viewed racial immigrants as either suspect individuals or as not being ‘real’ Canadians. Such biases will be explored later in this essay. There is, however, an assumed national identity in much of the basis of Canada’s legal and other symbols. The national anthem, for instance, mentions the word God, inferring Christianity.

Those opposed to the turban ruling

What many of these opinion articles fail to acknowledge, however, is that everyone in Canada, with the exception of the Indigenous peoples, is an immigrant to Canada, and the impact of an assumed national identity that also assumes a religion as core to its foundations has had a significant impact on Indigenous communities in Canada and for racialized immigrants to Canada.

Such views are found in articles and editorials published in relation to the RCMP turban debate, particularly those published after the government decided to allow the use of the turban and the Supreme Court articulated that allowing Sikhs to wear their turbans as part of their RCMP uniform was part of the right to religious freedom. Once these decisions were made, the number of opinion pieces that argue that religious accommodation in Canadian institutions is a threat to Canadian values or norms increases substantially. Here is a representative example of such rhetoric:

To think of something that is distinctly Canadian is difficult. . .But the one thing which has remained uniquely Canadian is the RCMP. . .Unfortunately, that symbol, the ‘Red Serge’ has fallen into the ‘pot.’ To ask an RCMP officer to wear the uniform assigned to him/her regardless of religious beliefs is not discrimination. It would be discrimination if minorities were not permitted to join the RCMP. Is it discriminatory to ask someone to wear a uniform that has symbolized our country? Would the Sikh army allow Canadians to join their forces, and be permitted to wear the garb they identify with? (Pelot, 1990).

Many of the opinion articles that express anger over the Supreme Court ruling assume that there is a core national identity that is somehow reflected by the RCMP uniform. They also often display ignorance of the Sikh tradition. In response to the above quotation, there is no Sikh army. This notion of a Sikh army may be based in media framing of Sikhs in the 1980s as terrorists, a form of media framing that I have critiqued elsewhere (Mann, 2017; Mann, 2019). A key theme in many of these opinion pieces is that Canada should not accommodate immigrants, such as in the following opinion piece: ‘When an immigrant comes to Canada, he should become a Canadian and participate in the Canadian community not “ghettoizing” as I see some of them do’ (Pelot, 1990). This theme that states that immigrants should become ‘Canadian’ is a repeated one in many of these articles that express anger against the government’s and Supreme Court’s decision, even though allowing for accommodation on religious grounds is clearly articulated in Section 2a of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. A related issue in opinion pieces like this one is that if immigrants are made to not feel welcome in Canada then they have little choice but to form their own communities. Also found in such opinion pieces is the assumption that there is a single way of being ‘Canadian.’ This view of multiculturalism as a threat to Canada, as opposed to a benefit to Canada, is reflected in a number of racist pins that were produced in Western provinces. The first pin depicted a Sikh RCMP officer wearing a turban with a red line through it.

The defenders of RCMP tradition push their case to the Supreme Court of Canada

Once the federal government instituted this change to the RCMP uniform, the Defenders of RCMP Tradition attempted to fight back, often by claiming that the decision was unconstitutional because of secularism and the separation of church and state. While they do not use the term ‘closed secularism’, their argument that someone employed by the Canadian government cannot be permitted to display their religious dress as part of their work is a clear example of closed secularism, a normative view that tries to block any public display of religious identity. A series of articles published years after the decision was made that take these positions, like this one:

Three retired Southern Alberta Mounties are going to court next month to challenge a four-year-old decision allowing Sikh RCMP officers to wear turbans. The Lethbridge RCMP Veterans’ Court Challenge Committee will argue the practice is unconstitutional because it fosters an unhealthy mix of church and state. They say allowing Sikh officers to wear their religious headgear diminishes the ‘integrity of the Law.’ and the ‘ability of the RCMP and its members to perform their duties impartially (Tanner, 1993: A7).

Another example comes from Bernard Pelot, a former RCMP officer who edited Diary of a national debate: Mounties in turbans, which contains a wide array of articles critiquing the decision to allow the turban for members of the RCMP. Pelot and the sisters involved in the defenders of RCMP tradition group attempted to use their definition of secularism as a means to challenge the decision made by the Prime Minister, and the Solicitor General. Pelot explains:

He had hoped this decision would determine the separation between church and state and clear up the waters muddied by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. ‘It’s a constitutional case that impacts everyone in Canada, said Pelot (Pelot, 1989).

This closed secularism argument continues, as the group tries to push its case to the Supreme Court, claiming that allowing the turban has:

‘undermined the non-religious nature of the force’. The group also collected 210,000 names on a petition. John Grant, one of the former officers who mounted the challenge, said an appeal is now being considered. ‘I’m sort of gratified, because we can take it to a higher court now and settle it for once and for all,’ he said. ‘I’m damned well certain in my mind that there’s no room for religious accoutrements on a supposedly impartial police force … ‘Who the hell is kidding who here? If we don’t soon smarten up in this country, we’re not going to have a country (Dempster, 1994).

The normative position we see in these opinion articles assumes that a public display of religious identity by a government employee is against the closed secularism view of the need to separate Church and state, but only in the case of minorities, or non-Christian groups. None of the opinion articles suggest cancelling Christmas or Easter. This opinion piece reflects a common view found in many of the articles related to this topic. First, a repeated claim by many writers is that the neutrality and impartiality of the RCMP will be threatened if religious symbols are allowed. The theme of closed secularism continues in a number of other articles. Like many of the opinion pieces related to this case, there is an assumed national identity that is presented as being under threat here and there seems to be little desire on the part of this writer to know anything about the Sikh religion or why wearing a turban matters to Sikhs. A repeated theme in these often-biased accounts is that turban wearing Sikhs cannot be trusted to be impartial, though no evidence is ever supplied to support this claim, which appears to be largely based in notions of closed secularism, a view that any public display of religious identity by an officer will lead to biases on the part of the officer (see Bouchard and Taylor, 2008). A claim that is made in the following article that outlines elements of the legal case those against the turban presented to the Federal Court:

Sikh RCMP officers should not be allowed to wear a turban with their uniform because it is a symbol that violates their own freedom of religion as well as that of others, says the lawyer for a group of former Mounties. ‘The principle of a religiously neutral law enforcement agency. . . is a public right enjoyed just as much by every Sikh in Canada as by members of every other religious group or by those who profess no religion,’ Mark Edwards argued in Federal Court of Canada Thursday. Edwards argued a strong secular state fosters freedom of religion and multiculturalism (Pelot, 1994: A7).

What Edwards argues for here is that the public display of a religious symbol will generate a bias against other religious groups. He provides no evidence to support this idea, but he is, I would argue, advocating for closed secularism by stating that any public display of religion by a government employee generates a risk of a biased police officer. Although he does not supply data that would validate this claim, he assumes that Sikhs and Hindus would not get along, rather than understanding that police officers follow the law regardless of their religious affiliation.

That there is no evidence that allowing religious symbols in the police force would lead to bias and a failure of police neutrality was also supported by Federal Court Judge Barbara Reed. Reed first heard the case and it was her decision not to overrule the change in the RCMP uniform to accommodate Sikhs. Reed agrees that police forces must act without bias from political or religious influences. But she said the evidence that turbans threatened RCMP impartiality is ‘theoretical and speculative’ (Crockatt, 1994). Reed’s views here have great value because much of the opposition to turbans in the RCMP are based in assumptions about Sikhs and secularism and national identity rather than facts. Grant’s response to Judge Reed’s comments helps to illustrate this point:

It’s reverse religious discrimination. . . When they come over here why do they have to change it and make it the same way it is in their homeland? Anybody that looks at it any differently in my opinion should get the hell out of Canada because they’re not good Canadians (Crockatt, 1994).

What Grant appears to be arguing here is that people who come to Canada need to become ‘Canadian’ and for him that appears to mean giving up their religious or cultural identity. Again, a repeated theme in such a closed secularism argument is that there is only one way of being Canadian, an understanding that ignores the Charter and freedom of religion. His claim that to allow an RCMP officer to wear his turban is a form of reverse discrimination suggests, I argue, that he assumes that this change in uniform policy discriminates against people like him, perhaps on the assumption that an RCMP officer wearing a turban would be hostile to him. Again, however, there is no evidence to support Grant’s statements. He rests on the notion that there is a singular way of being Canadian and he refuses to allow that to change even within a multicultural nation. In the end, the discrimination is from Grant and his supporters. What Grant appears to claim is that anyone coming to Canada needs to become Canadian. He does not define that term, but he appears to advocate for closed secularism because any public display of a minority religious tradition is viewed as a threat to Canadian identity. What Grant and his supporters fail to understand is that the nature of Canadian society has changed significantly since the beginning of the RCMP and the need to understand Canada as a multicultural and multi-religious society.

Once the attempted appeal by the group trying to fight the change to the RCMP dress code was rejected by the Supreme Court, the incidents of racism increased. In one article, we are told the following based on an interview with someone from Calgary who had produced a pin ‘that [shows] an African man, a Sikh in a turban and a man in a Chinese coolie hat standing around a white man. It carries the caption: Who is the minority in Canada?’ (Monchuk, 1990). The person who made the pins is also quoted as saying ‘When less than two percent of Canadians get special privileges, it shows that this country is going down the drain’ (Monchuk, 1990). While many of the people who spoke against the RCMP turban ruling claim not to be racist, this example demonstrates that racism may well have been at the core of the reasoning of some of the people who opposed this legal ruling. It may also suggest that those opposed to open secularism and who advocate for closed secularism may support the latter based on racial biases.

Another significant shift in the newspaper articles on this topic is that for the first time in Canadian media accounts of Sikhs, the voices of Sikhs are heard. In previous articles I have noted that the media framing of Sikhs is often negative and typically refuses to interview Sikhs or to explain what the Sikh tradition is and why wearing the five Ks is a central element of the tradition (Mann, 2017; Mann, 2019). The Federation of Sikh Societies of Canada and the World Sikh Organization both reached out to members of parliament and the media to ensure that members of parliament understood the requirement of the five Ks for a baptized Sikh, a Sikh who has performed the amrit ceremony in a Gurdwara. The federation of Sikh Societies of Canada held a number of government meetings and ‘lobbied hard with the Government and other political parties’ (Federation of Silk Societies of Canada, 1990: 1). The most significant media shift in this case, however, was when the media reaching out to Baltej Singh Dhillon, the first Sikh RCMP officer to be allowed to wear his turban. The most impactful article is called ‘Lessons from a turban panic’ which appeared in The National Post in 2013. The article was an interview with Baltej and it provided information about his life and his journey to Canada. He was born in Malaysia, and came to Canada when his father died when he was 16 years old. His older brother lived in Surrey British Columbia after an arranged marriage and he was able to sponsor the remaining family to join him in Canada. The account of Baltej’s father’s death is very moving. We learn of the difficulties of adjusting to life in Canada and the anti-Sikh racism and discrimination they faced focused on their religious apparel:

The first day [in school in Surrey], a fellow student slapped him on the back and welcomed him to the school. He felt good until another student came up to him later in the day and told him there was something stuck on his back. It was a message that read ‘Go home, Hindu’ (The National Post, 2013).

Baltej’s transition to life in Canada was difficult. His circumstances – of leaving Malaysia, the death of his father, and trying to adjust to school life in Canada, where on his first day he was discriminated against by someone who did not know the difference between a Sikh and a Hindu – were difficult. Baltej graduated from High School ‘with average grades’ (The National Post, 2013). Baltej went to Kwantlen College to study criminology hoping to become a criminal lawyer. He was told to do some volunteer work to improve his chances of getting into law school. He volunteered with the RCMP Block Watch program (The National Post, 2013).

The narrative of Baltej’s life then discusses his marriage and shifts to his transition into the RCMP:

Back at the RCMP office in Surrey, he continued to ponder the gap between the Sikh community and the force. He raised the matter with Nixon, who retorted, ‘Why don’t you join?’ He had planted a seed. He loved the uniform and the regimentation . . . He also liked the idea of being in a position to assist people in their time of need. That fit in with his Sikh faith. He went to the recruiting office and met all the requirements. Then the recruiting officer raised the delicate issue of the turban. RCMP policy did not allow it. Was Dhillon prepared to remove it? He was not. His application was held in abeyance while the RCMP brass dealt with the thorny issue (The National Post, 2013).

The debates over the turban issue and the reaction of groups in the fight back from groups in Alberta all had an impact on Baltej, but ultimately he ‘saw it as an opportunity to educate Canadians and to introduce Sikh culture into the country. “You can’t buy this kind of advertising,” The process remained difficult for Baltej, however, the Defenders of RCMP Tradition set up road signs and produced pins ‘saying, No to turbans’ (The National Post, 2013). The acts of discrimination continued:

Over beer in the bar, people would talk about how immigrants should be like Canadians when they moved here. Dhillon raised the question. ‘What is a Canadian?’ arguing he was one, too, and he had the citizenship papers to prove it (The National Post, 2013).

Baltej was assigned to Quesnel, the mayor questioned why he was sent there, even though the community had a large Sikh population. When he arrived at the detachment, there was a meeting about how the unit would handle its new member:

On his first day, the staff-sergeant told him he didn’t agree with what Dhillon had done or with his headgear but that he would support him as long as he did his job. Dhillon did, the staff-sergeant kept to his word and the two got along. But life on the street was ugly. When Dhillon entered a bar, he was booed. At one point, there was a rumour circulating through the community that a bar would offer a $5, 000 reward to anyone who could snatch off his turban (The National Post, 2013).

My interview with Baltej Singh Dhillon

In May 2019, I interviewed Baltej in Vancouver. Many of my questions to him related to acts of discrimination against him and how he overcame these acts and how the media reporting and court cases impacted him over time. Part of Baltej’s descriptions emphasized that when he first came to Canada there was a sense of an assumed national identity that was tied to race and religion. Baltej explained:

Waking up to moments in Canada where you come to realize you are a foreigner, everyone is a foreigner except for Indigenous peoples. Early settlers have staged ownership of the land and space and everyone who came after became second class citizens and there were laws around voting, and this shaped the way forward and I fell into the lap of that. The incredible contributions by Sikhs who fought in World War one and two. Much of this has been left out of Canada’s history. The memory of a nation, and if the memory is lost or short changed or incomplete. This memory of a nation needs support. Are parts of our Nation’s memory that need to be completed. A lack of understanding about those who have contributed correcting education, museums and our nation’s memory all play a role in how we understand the uniform itself is not part of Canada. The Stetson hat company is doing well in the United States, but no one does their research and people don’t know. Being raised in Malaysia, seeing someone in a turban was normal and Malaysians remember this and the contributions of Sikhs to the nation. Many of these claims are based in ignorance as opposed to fact and what is the make-up and history of the country. I don’t want to be treated less than others, why aren’t colored people who served in the wars remembered? Has my promotional process been affected by this? Certainly, it is not a level playing field. When I applied to the RCMP I knew I will [be] the first, but not knowing that fourteen had been denied before me. The uproar was a shock and then the debate the nation fell into was a shock, a surprise. So Peter Montegue said, ‘Baltej you are not a member of the RCMP. I would support you one hundred percent, but I cannot tell you to or not to from an RCMP perspective, but I can guarantee it will not affect your application in anyway so please do what you are comfortable doing.’ Based on that I did reach out to the media saying where do you want me? So I did radio shows TV shows I was even on a game show. (Baltej, 2019, personal communication)

Here Baltej responded to a question I asked about who reached out to the media. One of the shifts one sees in Baltej’s case is that his voice is heard. The media shared how turbaned Sikhs served in World War I and II and contributed to the ability of the Allied Forces to defeat the Germans. This addition to the common narrative also led to significant support from the local Jewish community in Vancouver: ‘the President of the Jewish community in Vancouver reminded me of those contributions (WWI and WWII) of Sikhs. The Jewish community made a page long editorial in the Vancouver Sun to explain to Canadians the contribution Sikhs made to both Britain, Canada and other communities during the world wars.’

Baltej came across others who were less well informed:

I often say it is ok to have some ignorance in your life, but it is not ok to stay ignorant so if you come to a place where you are struggling with whether you do or do not know, then I often say that should very quickly put a bead of sweat on your forehead and run down your back to create some urgency around knowing so that you don’t inadvertently offend anybody (Baltej, 2019, personal communication).

Baltej’s point here has great value: that much of the arguments for closed secularism are based on ignorance of the other as opposed to a knowledge of facts about those who are different from you. Open secularism can be more powerful if it is based in actual knowledge of minority groups and why their religious emblems mean something to them and a history of their contributions to Canadian society.

Baltej’s experience and his own argument that to overcome discrimination we need to engage with other communities and gain actual knowledge about them – with that said, Baltej did experience some discrimination during his initial time with the RCMP. He noted, for instance, that his staff sergeant: ‘who on day one told me that he. . .didn’t want anything to do with the turban, he disagreed with it, disagreed with what I did and doesn’t like it, all that stuff, but then said as long as you are doing your job it is fine. After two year of working with him he said I was like a son to him’ (Baltej, 2019, personal communication). Central to the idea here for open secularism is that what matters is that a police officer or any other public employee does their job, not what they look like. While Baltej’s boss was initially against him, once Baltej demonstrated his commitment to his job and performed it well his boss’s attitude changed to acknowledge that Baltej was worthy of his position and his right to wear his turban. Baltej also told me that he has had a number of discussions with other people who were initially against him being allowed to wear his turban, but once they came to know him, they shifted their opinion. Here again I would argue that closed secularism is often based on ignorance and misinformation, whereas open secularism should be based on accurate knowledge and an evaluation of a public employee’s work ethic and commitment to their job. ¹

Baltej also spoke about racial issues related to accommodation and tolerance. He stated:

I also want to make sure we move away from words like accommodation, these are my entitlements. . . we also are walking on egg shells when we begin to talk about racial issues largely because we are still using words that are antiquated and don’t place me on an equal setting when we use words like accommodation and tolerance we place one group over another. You tolerate us like a migraine, a pimple, or hangnail, toleration, I don’t need to be tolerated I want to be accepted. So that sense of around toleration means you owe us something now (Baltej, 2019, personal communication).

Baltej’s thoughts here are significant. Baltej’s thoughts here are a reasonable critique of the idea of accommodation, which is often a central element of liberal secularism, but hidden behind those words are power relationships that can only be overcome through recognizing that many minorities perform their workplace duties and that true understanding needs to be based on interaction and knowledge of those who are different than you.

Conclusion

What the case of Baltej Singh Dhillon demonstrates, I have argued, is that arguments in support of closed secularism are often based on ignorance and an assumption of national history and identity that ignore the roles played by religious and visible minorities in Canada. In the case of Baltej, it was his commitment to his work that resulted in an initially unfavourable boss to shift his view to seeing Baltej as being like a son to him. Much of the debates in newspapers and opinion pieces on this case also make a claim for a form of Canadian identity which seems to assume a Western European background and that any public display of religious identity is, somehow, a threat to that identity. Again, this is closed secularism because it blocks any public display of religious identity from the public sphere. Open secularism, on the other hand, accepts public displays of religion and, I would argue, creates the necessary political space to assess individuals on their actions, not on their appearance.