One Exemption at a Time

A Sikh turban cannot be removed on request. It covers the uncut hair that is itself an article of faith, it is tied fresh each day rather than put on, and treating it as headgear that comes off for a helmet, a hat, a uniform cap or a security check misunderstands what it is.

The result is that Sikhs in the diaspora have spent seventy years securing accommodations one at a time, in separate campaigns, in separate countries, under separate laws.

• Public transport, United Kingdom. The Wolverhampton bus dispute of the 1960s, over a transport department refusing to employ a turbaned Sikh conductor, ran for years and was resolved in 1969 after sustained campaigning.
• Motorcycle helmets, United Kingdom. The Motor-Cycle Crash Helmets (Religious Exemption) Act 1976 exempted turbaned Sikhs from the helmet requirement.
• Construction helmets, United Kingdom. A partial exemption from 1989 was widened by the Deregulation Act 2015 to cover nearly all workplaces.
• Schools, United Kingdom. In Mandla v Dowell Lee, decided by the House of Lords in 1983, a school's refusal to admit a boy in a turban was held unlawful. The decision turned on whether Sikhs are an ethnic group under the Race Relations Act 1976, and the Lords held they are, which means turban cases in Britain are racial discrimination cases, a route not available in most jurisdictions.
• Policing, Canada. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police permitted the turban with uniform in 1990. The decision was politically bitter, produced petitions and merchandise opposing it, and was upheld against legal challenge.
• Military, United States. Accommodation came through individual litigation and administrative exception before becoming general Army policy in 2017, and questions remain in the Marine Corps.

Two things follow from this list. The first is that none of these rights arrived as a principle; every one was fought for separately, and a win in one country establishes nothing in the next. The second is that the fights were about visibility. A turban is unmissable, which is why it triggered rules written for hats and also why Sikhs have been the most frequently misidentified victims of anti-Muslim violence since 2001, a burden they carry for wearing something that is not Muslim, and which their organisations have spent two decades explaining to people who should not have needed telling.