School District 17 (Kamloops) Bans Kirpans

March 13th, 2006 by admin

Source: The Clearwater Times, North Thompson
BC Newspaper Group
By MIKELLE SASKAMOOSE
Mar 13 2006

KAMLOOPS - Orthodox Sikh students in School District 73 are not permitted to carry a ceremonial kirpan dagger to school.

A kirpan is one of five articles of faith that baptized Sikhs are required to have on their person at all times.

The Supreme Court of Canada recently ruled unanimously that it infringes on Orthodox Sikh students’ religious rights to be forbidden from wearing the article due to a “no weapons” policy.
The ruling was in response to school policy in Quebec.

It is the same kind of policy, said SD73 chairman John Harwood, that prohibits students in the Kamloops-Thompson district from wearing a kirpan to school.

“We don’t allow weapons in the school system,” he said, adding it is not an issue that has come before the board during his six-year tenure.

But Kamloops Sikh Temple president Darshan Singh Bath said it might just be that nobody ever noticed that a student had been carrying a kirpan.

Bath said there are a number of baptized Sikh families who live in Kamloops, and whose children have gone through the local public school system.

“Maybe it’s just that things happened quietly,” Bath said, noting he is unaware of any problems arising in Kamloops with respect to Sikh religious practices.

If any issues do arise, Bath said, he trusts the school board will make every reasonable effort to be sensitive to a family’s request.

“I don’t anticipate any problems,” he said.

“But if there is an issue, our society is mature and the school district can always sit down and figure something out.”

According to Harwood, the board would listen to public concerns or requests, but any action would depend on circumstances.

“I think if it was a special occasion or a ceremonial, as much as other people want to wear them for their ceremonial or religious,” said Harwood.

“They’re not the only people in the world that carry knives as part of their heritage dress or religious dress, so one would have to consider all of those.”

Harwood said the school board would not willingly change its current policy, which states that a weapon is any object that can be used “with the intention of causing injury and/or death, or to threaten or intimidate any person.”

But Harwood said the board would have “an obligation to consider” a request if one was made.
According to the World Sikh Organization, a kirpan “represents spiritual power and is never to be used as a weapon.

“While the kirpan arose of a particular culture and had, at one time, the function of a sword, it long ago lost this aspect and has become completely spiritualized.”

Bath agrees.

“It’s not who carries what; it’s more likely the mental state of the person.”

The Supreme Court of Canada ruled 8-0 that a total ban infringes guarantees of religious freedom under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Justice Louise Cameron wrote that the “weapon” argument is “disrespectful to believers in the Sikh religion and does not take into account Canadian values based on mutliculturalism.”

The dispute began in 2001 when 12-year-old Gurbaj Singh Multani wore his kirpan to his Quebec elementary school and was ordered by the principal to remove it.

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