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Divisive judgment causes turban turbulence
It is a simple truth of human conflict that some battles will not – cannot – be won.
Baljinder Singh Badesha |
Baljinder Singh Badesha, a motorcyle enthusiast and a 39-year-old father of four, challenged Monday a lower court ruling dismissing his religious rights while upholding a ban on driving motorbikes on Ontario highways without a helmet.
In the original verdict, immediately beamed around the globe, Ontario Court Judge James Blacklock briefly weighed Badesha’s deep-rooted beliefs – beliefs enshrined in Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms and shared by some 63,000 South Asians in Brampton alone – before ruling quite unequivocally that “no accommodation appears possible.”
No helmet, no highway riding for Badesha or his fellow Sikhs, who wear the turban in accordance with the Kesh, or uncut hair, one of the five tenets of their world religion.
Mr. Blacklock must have known – should have known – what a powderkeg he was setting a match to with his turban verdict. Indeed, the international Sikh community certainly understood the ramifications of the ruling.
The community has successfully fought similar prohibitions, laws and rulings in Britain, Hong Kong, India, Manitoba and British Columbia, where it was decided principles of faith supercede highway codes.
Badesha, newly emboldened by his Sikh brethren and their considerable political and economic clout, appears ready and able to roll this battle all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada.
Frankly, the debate should never have left the roadside, let alone been allowed to squander so many weeks and months of valuable court time.
In Judge Blacklock’s corner, a flimsy piece of provincial legislation – the Ontario Highway Traffic Act – and the obvious and wholly tangential argument that helmets are safer than turbans.
In the ring with Baljinder Badesha, the powerful Ontario Human Rights Commission waving the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, The World Sikh Organization of Canada promising to protect religious freedoms from “destructive and social political forces,” and local and national Sikh gurudwaras and organizations, including B.C.’s Sikh Motorcycle Club, vowing to support Badesha to the last legal breath.
But the most remarkable newcomer to the fight for the right to ride with a turban is the Amritsar-based Shiromani Gurdwara Pradbandhak Committee (the SGPC), the Sikh religious parliament, commonly refered to in the West as the Sikh Vatican.
The SGPC has committed its support to Badesha’s cause, which is similar to the Pope dropping a note to a secular schoolmarm asking her to stop expelling young Heather McLaren for wearing her crucifix to school.
What chance now of this case being left to hang by the rulings of parochial judges like Mr. Blacklock.
The Sikh community – mocked in Ontario court when Crown prosecutors stuck a turban on a stick and subjected it to 300 km/h winds in an attempt to prove unraveling turbans pose a safety risk to their owners and other drivers – will win this battle on a point of religious principle.
Judgements to the contrary are simply divisive, or worse.
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