“The book says that the snake misleads
But Eve now knows it’s love
The emotion that sows the seeds
Of venom when push comes to shove!
The apple was hardly to blame
Was plucking it a sin?
And so, was Adam wrong to claim
That t’was she who pulled him in?”
From The Sitaphul Papers by Bachchoo
At first it was motorcycle helmets. When they were made compulsory for riders in the UK, the Sikhs protested and after a lot of agitation and representation which stopped short of civil disobedience, they were granted exemptions on religious grounds. The Sikh community of Britain drew on the same criteria to win exemptions from wearing the caps and helmets of the particular services into which they were recruited, including that of London Bobbies, the Army and guarding Buckingham palace.
The latter were allowed to wear uniform-coloured turbans instead of “bearskins”, the fuzzy hats that the palace guards traditionally wear. The concessions, if they can be seen as such, were not hard won. The British Sikh generation of the Sixties and Seventies had the backing of those in power who could still recollect the Sikh contribution to the armed forces in India and in the World War. The memory of their contribution was constantly quoted in the agitation for making an exception and respecting the turbans that they take as the requirement of the religion.
But times change. On a radio broadcast this week one heard of a party of Sikhs being refused entry into a London nightclub because they were wearing turbans. The bareheaded members of the party and the women were enthusiastically admitted and the only reason the management could give for banning the turbaned young Sikhs was that it didn’t conform to the style they wanted the club to have.The discussion on the radio was triggered by three young black women being refused entry into a nightclub.
They complained about racial discrimination and made their complaint public. The management of the club protested saying that they have to manage the number of people admitted to the club as overcrowding would pose a hazard to health and safety. The young women retaliated against this explanation by saying that they observed others being admitted after they had been refused. The confusion underlying their allegation is that two of the young women have been to the club before and have placed photographs of themselves having a good time with other black people in the club. The management discovered these photographs and claim that they prove that the same clientele and very many other black clubees are admitted each night.
The nightspots calling themselves clubs is a sort of legal convenience. Even though all of them are not “clubs” in the sense that the Delhi Gymkhana is, and are merely dance-and-drink joints, they assume the name and issue tickets for a night as “temporary memberships”. This enables them to select their clients and discriminate as to their dress and appearance. So, for instance, some clubs don’t allow entrants to wear jeans or trainers. The bouncers at the door, usually heavies with menacing appearances and manners, are the monitors of the clubs’ restrictions.
Gentlemen’s clubs and other sports clubs are allowed to restrict their memberships. The gentlemen’s clubs in most cities of the UK have closed memberships and prospective members have to prove a family or professional connection with the club and be proposed and seconded by existing members and sometimes have to pass through the prospect of a “blackballing” by other members. Most clubs have the right to ban people they don’t want from entry. Some very famous and very rich gentlemen’s clubs still exclude women from becoming members. The gender discrimination in this case has not been outlawed.
The same or other clubs would not be allowed to discriminate on grounds of race or of religion. It would be illegal for a club to ban Jews, for instance. So it is yet to be seen if the party of Sikhs who were refused “temporary membership” and entry can resort to the courts on the grounds of racial or religious discrimination. This third generation of British Sikhs may well resort to law to challenge the ban. The attempt to prevent entry has been explained away by “promoters” of the club, people who tout online for customers to the club and sign people up for membership or for a single night’s pass.
They say the discrimination is made purely on a financial spot-check judgment. There are only a limited number of people that the club can legally hold and they want only the big spenders to go in. One promoter boasted on radio that he only recruited clients who were likely to spend between £200 and £500 on entry fees and drinks at the bar. So discriminating against clientele is done on the basis of whether they look as though they will spend large sums of money on drink.
There is still in Britain, especially among the sort who are club management or the bouncing classes, people who confuse Sikhs with Muslims. A turban to them may denote someone who doesn’t drink and would therefore spend nothing like the £200 that they want him or her to donate to the bar. The “promoter’s” criteria probably explain why the turbaned Sikhs were refused entry.
This outrage is reminiscent of the Sixties and Seventies when it was legal to deny people a drink in a pub if they didn’t like the look of you. Discrimination in housing was also rife before it was criminalised. In my experience of the Sixties, some of the landlords of rooming houses, when one enquired about renting an advertised bed-sitter, would openly say that they didn’t want Asians living in the house. Others would say they personally had nothing against your presence, but the other tenants would object and that would be bad for business. They would even sometimes look sad and say sorry as they turned you away.
