The French are accustomed to rancorous debates about the threat to women’s rights posed by religious orthodoxies – especially Islam, with its restrictive tradition of hijabs, burkas and abayas to cover the female body.
Only last week, France’s far-right leader Marine Le Pen, who is far ahead in the polls, declared that she will make illegal Islamic headscarves worn in public. The far left, which panders to the Muslim vote, shot back with a promise to repeal the ban on abayas in French schools.
This week, few in France were expecting a scandal over religion and women’s rights that has nothing to do with Islam. But the arrival of a 92-year-old guru of an ultra-conservative Hindu sect took enforced invisibility of women to a whole new level – in fact, to the top level of the Eiffel Tower with its magnificent views of the City of Light.
Mahant Swami Maharaj, spiritual leader of the sect known as Baps (Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha) was visiting Paris to inaugurate a new Hindu temple just east of Paris, near Disneyland. Women and men are segregated in these Hindu temples, and priests can have no interactions with women. The aged guru, evidently a keen tourist, wished to visit the Eiffel Tower on his visit to the French capital. His Hindu delegation therefore issued instructions for all female Eiffel Tower staff to be out of sight.
