Sikh boys speak outside their school in Bobigny, a suburb north-east of Paris, after they were barred from attending classes in turbans. (AFP)

Paris, Sept. 7 (Reuters): France’s small Sikh community is in uproar after five of its boys were refused entry to state schools under a new law barring pupils from wearing conspicuous religious symbols in class.

Sikh community leaders were negotiating with school officials today, trying to convince them that the ban, aimed mostly at Muslim headscarves, did not rule out Sikh boys wearing a small cloth to cover their uncut hair.

Sikh leaders say the law does not apply to them because their turbans and patkas are practical hair coverings rather than religious symbols. Only their uncut hair was a religious symbol, they argued.

The Sikhs, who number about 5,000 living mostly in the Paris region, say national education authorities agreed to this last spring but some schools are strictly applying the ban to all.

Unlike other minorities, Sikhs were not consulted before the law was passed.

“The teachers wouldn’t let them into class,” community spokesman Chain Singh said. “They don’t understand.”

“This was resolved at the government level,” said Jasdev Singh Rai, director of the London-based Sikh Human Rights Group. “Maybe there wasn’t enough effort to educate the teachers.”

The controversial law, which banned conspicuous religious symbols but left each school to decide how strictly to apply this, went into effect last Thursday with apparent success. Far fewer Muslim girls turned up with headscarves than usually do.

About 80 Sikh boys were allowed into their schools wearing patkas. But five were left out, including two going into their final year at lycee and preparing for their baccalaureate exam.

“They were convinced their issue was resolved,” said Monique Crinon of One School for Everyone, a group campaigning against excluding pupils from school under the ban.

“But there is the issue of equality if they can wear something and others can’t.”

The Sikhs have mobilised Indian leaders for their cause. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said last week he expects the issue to be resolved soon.

His national security adviser Jyotindra Nath Dixit said he got “a positive response” when he brought the issue up with French officials in Paris in late August.

France’s efforts to explain that barring religious symbols from state schools would reinforce tolerance for all faiths have fallen on deaf ears abroad, where commentators and churchmen see the idea as a secularist push to suppress a religious freedom.

Islamic, Christian and Jewish leaders opposed the ban before it was passed but said afterwards they would respect it.

Sikhs wear turbans in armies and police forces or on motorcycles in Britain, Canada and the US. Germany also lets them ride motorcycles without helmets.