Speaking from experience
Could there be anyone more interested, and more disappointed, in the current kerfuffle about an 11-year-old Ontario girl banned from playing soccer in a tournament in Québec because she wears the hijab than Pardeep Singh Nagra?
As he watched a professional soccer game on the tube Saturday, in which the goalie from Chelsea wore a rugby-like helmet with a padded chin strap, Nagra couldn’t help but laugh at the idea that a hijab could be a danger to other players.
When he was growing up in Malton, where he now lives once again, the former diversity officer at University of Toronto Mississauga (UTM) played lots and lots of soccer, which was his favourite game.
He wore his hair in a topknot with a small handkerchief around it, or in a bandana or in a tight turban because his Sikh religion required the head covering. He and plenty of friends did that for years and nobody said a word. “It’s happening every day on playing fields all over Peel and there’s no problem,” says the 37-year-old who has a unique perspective on this case from a number of points of view.
As manager of the employment equity office at the Toronto District School Board, Nagra knows the ins and outs of human rights legislation and the innovative ways some people find to avoid embracing others’ religious or cultural customs.
After an injury dimmed his dreams of a soccer career, Nagra took up boxing and ended up in a celebrated confrontation with officials in that sport over the fact that he wore a beard in the ring.
Over five years, the Morning Star Secondary School graduate took on the soccer establishments who, of course, didn’t want to talk about the tenets of the Sikh religion and the ring. First he challenged the beard ban, which was also an alleged safety issue, in Ontario. He won a Human Rights decision. Then it took another court challenge against the federal association to get the national rules changed.
“Still as we speak, they don’t accept it,” says the former Peel Regional Police force auxiliary member. “They were very arrogant during the whole thing.”
Nagra is astounded that the International Football Association Board upheld the ruling of the Québec referee on the weekend. It just doesn’t jibe with reality, he said.
Many women professional soccer players and some men wear headbands and kerchiefs. One male professional player wears glasses on the field. The goal posts, and another player’s head are a lot more potentially damaging than any head covering, says the married father of one.
He is hoping that Asmahan Mansour and her parents will pursue the hijab issue because he knows they will win in the end.
But, let there be no mistake, there will be a cost. Nagra’s own personal battle to overturn the ban on facial hair for boxers cost him a lot of time, a lot of personal grief and a lot of money for lawyers.
And he has a very good question for all of us who like to be smug about how different and accommodating Canada is to minorities. If that is true, why did it take a Supreme Court challenge to allow the first turban to be worn by a police officer and a Human Rights Commission ruling to allow a Sikh boy to wear a sheathed kirpan in a Peel public school in 1990?
If Canada is the tolerant place we like to think, shouldn’t those changes have been made voluntarily, not through application of judicial force?
“When you say Canada accedes to minorities, when you say that people are being accommodated... it keeps people in a marginal position,” says the Malton resident. “It means that the dominant culture will tell you what the limits are.”
And isn’t it interesting that when Asmahan played back in Ontario this weekend no one made a peep. In fact, the same thing goes on, as it should, every day in every other province across Canada except Québec.
You would think that our Québecois friends next door are the last ones who should have to be reminded that tolerance, like so many other worthwhile qualities, begins at home.