← Previous Post: | Next Post: →

 

Sikhs with Swords

University Diaries follows with interest the now-global university controversy involving burqas and guns and other things students might wear and carry in classrooms.

Right now, there’s serious trouble in Mangalore. The men there are so “lecherous,” explains a woman thrown out of class when she insisted on wearing the burqa, that it’s only wise to wrap yourself in a full-body blanket in what her interviewer notes is a city with “stifling heat.”

No question but that a damp sheet with a vitamin deficiency is a turn-off, so UD won’t quibble there. The question — since this behavior is either a pathology (“[I]t’s hard to explain why someone might willingly cloak themselves in a black covering in an area dominated by hot deserts and put themselves at high risk for a variety of serious illnesses caused by vitamin D deficiency.”) or a crime against women — is whether Mangalore’s universities are within their rights to forbid it. So far they are maintaining their policy, but there’s growing civil unrest about it. Protesters insist that women must continue to be made so off-putting that the panting men of Mangalore will decide to keep their wicks dry.

And then there’s the kirpan problem. Sikhs will wear this pretty big curved sword to class, and if their professors are wary, too bad for them.

UD wonders: Will the same students and professors militating against guns on campus in America also be willing to militate against the sword?

Margaret Soltan, August 24, 2009 6:32AM
Posted in: dispatches from the classroom

Trackback URL for this post:
https://www.margaretsoltan.com/wp-trackback.php?p=16657

2 Responses to “Sikhs with Swords”

  1. Arudra Burra Says:
    August 25th, 2009 at 9:22PM

    Hi UD,

    The sub-text of all this sounds more like political protest and an assertion of religious identity (in an area where the Hindu right wing has been on the ascendant recently), than anything else. The sexual harassment angle is one of the few neutral modes in which this kind of thing can be presented.

    Arudra

  2. Margaret Soltan Says:
    August 25th, 2009 at 10:03PM

    I take your point, Arudra, and it’s true that in the coverage I’ve read the religious tension angle is also always mentioned. In fact, I think the latest development is that the local government has said that women can wear the burqa in class, and the government’s motive is clearly a reduction in political/religious tensions.

Comment on this Entry

UD REVIEWED

Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam.
New York Times

George Washington University English professor Margaret Soltan writes a blog called University Diaries, in which she decries the Twilight Zone-ish state our holy land’s institutes of higher ed find themselves in these days.
The Electron Pencil

It’s [UD's] intellectual honesty that makes her blog required reading.
Professor Mondo

There's always something delightful and thought intriguing to be found at Margaret Soltan's no-holds-barred, firebrand tinged blog about university life.
AcademicPub

You can get your RDA of academic liars, cheats, and greedy frauds at University Diaries. All disciplines, plus athletics.
truffula, commenting at Historiann

Margaret Soltan at University Diaries blogs superbly and tirelessly about [university sports] corruption.
Dagblog

University Diaries. Hosted by Margaret Soltan, professor of English at George Washington University. Boy is she pissed — mostly about athletics and funding, the usual scandals — but also about distance learning and diploma mills. She likes poems too. And she sings.
Dissent: The Blog

[UD belittles] Mrs. Palin's degree in communications from the University of Idaho...
The Wall Street Journal

Professor Margaret Soltan, blogging at University Diaries... provide[s] an important voice that challenges the status quo.
Lee Skallerup Bessette, Inside Higher Education

[University Diaries offers] the kind of attention to detail in the use of language that makes reading worthwhile.
Sean Dorrance Kelly, Harvard University

Margaret Soltan's ire is a national treasure.
Roland Greene, Stanford University

The irrepressibly to-the-point Margaret Soltan...
Carlat Psychiatry Blog

Margaret Soltan, whose blog lords it over the rest of ours like a benevolent tyrant...
Perplexed with Narrow Passages

Margaret Soltan is no fan of college sports and her diatribes on the subject can be condescending and annoying. But she makes a good point here...
Outside the Beltway

From Margaret Soltan's excellent coverage of the Bernard Madoff scandal comes this tip...
Money Law

University Diaries offers a long-running, focused, and extremely effective critique of the university as we know it.
Anthony Grafton, American Historical Association

The inimitable Margaret Soltan is, as usual, worth reading. ...
Medical Humanities Blog

I awake this morning to find that the excellent Margaret Soltan has linked here and thereby singlehandedly given [this blog] its heaviest traffic...
Ducks and Drakes

As Margaret Soltan, one of the best academic bloggers, points out, pressure is mounting ...
The Bitch Girls

Many of us bloggers worry that we don’t post enough to keep people’s interest: Margaret Soltan posts every day, and I more or less thought she was the gold standard.
Tenured Radical

University Diaries by Margaret Soltan is one of the best windows onto US university life that I know.
Mary Beard, A Don's Life

[University Diaries offers] a broad sense of what's going on in education today, framed by a passionate and knowledgeable reporter.
More magazine, Canada

If deity were an elected office, I would quit my job to get her on the ballot.
Notes of a Neophyte

Archives

Categories