There was something unusual about the just-concluded bye-elections in the province of Quebec for the Canadian Parliament. The dominant issue in the Quebec elections is generally the perennial question of Quebec’s sovereignty and its place in the Canadian confederation. This issue was nowhere debated in these elections. Instead, the centre-stage was taken by the decision by the Election Commission of Canada regarding the eligibility of a fully-veiled woman to caste her vote without showing her face for the purpose of identification. The Election Commission issued a directive saying that such women should be allowed to caste their vote without lifting their veil as long as they carried two pieces of identification with them to prove their authenticity. The Prime Minister seemed outraged and asked the Election Commissioner to change his directive and threatened to pass legislation in the Parliament if the Commission refused to do so. The Election Commissioner, to his credit, refused to buckle under the political pressure and stuck to his decision.

The Election Commission was quite correct in its decision – there is nothing in the Canadian law which requires a voter to show his or her face; members of the armed forces regularly send their ballots by mail without the need to show their faces. The Prime Minister also knows the law, so why did he pick up a fight with the Election Commission? It is because there has been an increasing sense of unease among Canadians in general and Quebecers in particular with respect to the accommodation required by them for meeting the needs of people of Non-Christian faiths. Other political parties have also sensed this unease and they all vied with one another to criticize the decision of the Election Commission.

It should be pointed out here that the issue in itself is of little importance. No religious group had approached the Election Commission to issue this directive. Nor have there been any reports of any Muslim woman refusing to show her face for the purpose of identification. Indeed, a Muslim woman who has recently started covering herself with full veil said in a radio interview that she would have no objection to lifting her veil for the purpose of identification, although she would prefer that she did it in the presence of another woman.

The issue has grabbed headlines because Quebec, Canada and other western societies are struggling with the problem of accommodating immigrant communities with different religious and cultural backgrounds than those of the majority communities in these countries. The issue also arose recently in Quebec over the exclusion from the soccer team of a girl wearing hijab, as it went against the rules of no headgear for players. Earlier, a similar confrontation arose when a school principal disallowed a Sikh boy from wearing a kirpan or a dagger in the school. The boy’s parents took the school to court on the basis of the Quebec Charter of Rights and won the case but it left a bitter taste among the parents of other students who did not like the violation of the zero-tolerance-for-weapons policy of the school.

Quebec is by no means unique in this respect. The issue first arose in Britain nearly two decades ago when a fatwa was issued for the killing of Salman Rushdie for alleged blasphemy against the Prophet of Islam in his book, The Satanic Verses. The question of reasonable accommodation with cultural minorities has erupted with increasing frequency and friction in almost all countries with multicultural minorities. It erupted in France on the issue of wearing turbans or hijabs in schools, on wearing veil in the British public schools and on the issue of blasphemy versus the freedom of expression in countries such as Netherlands and Denmark.

Recent immigrants to western countries assume that they have come to very tolerant societies, and they are right. But they forget that these societies were not always a shining example of tolerance. Indeed, they were full of contempt for other races and cultures until recently in history when they received a jolt from the experience of Germany during its rule by the Nazi party. The Nazis came up with the project of a pure Aryan race and decided to eliminate from their society anyone with a Jewish or mixed-race ancestry. The horrible results of that project, resulting in a World War and the holocaust in Germany and Poland, inculcated in these societies revulsion for racism and intolerance in general. The new spirit of tolerance towards other cultures came to a full-bloom during the sixties, along with the civil rights movement in the United States, feminism, free sex, marijuana and a general acceptance of all kinds of marginal communities, such as gays and lesbians.

Canada was not immune to such trends. Like other western countries, Canada, too, was not a shining example of multiracial tolerance. Japanese Canadians were interned in a Camp during the Second World War for no other reason except their ethnic origins. Chinese labourers wanting to come to Canada during the early part of the twentieth century had to pay a head tax of $50, which was a prohibitive amount during that period. British Columbians refused to let the Indian –mostly Sikh- passengers disembark from the Kama-Gata-Maaru ship and the ship was forced to turn back, which resulted in the death of many passengers. Canada changed its immigration policy in the sixties, which made it possible for people of Non-European stock, especially the highly qualified people, to seek immigration to this country. As a result, the numbers of immigrants from countries like India, Pakistan and China rose dramatically in the ensuing period. This trend accelerated in the seventies and the eighties because of the generous policies adopted by Canada towards relative-sponsored immigrants, refugees and refugee-claimants. As a result, Canada now has a very large population of ethnic minorities, especially in its major metropolitan areas like Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal and Calgary.

Multiculturalism in Canada has its own chequered history. The start of the influx of visible minorities in Canada during the sixties coincided with the raging debate for the rights of the francophones in this country. The Pearson government, in an attempt to meeting the increasing demands of French Canadians, appointed a commission which recommended o make Canada an officially bilingual and bicultural country. The demand for bilingualism was resisted in English Canada, especially by ethnic minorities, a term which was then used for mostly white Non-Britishers, such as Italians, Germans, Greeks, Ukrainians, Poles, etc. To appease them, the new Prime Minister, Pierre Elliot Trudeau, came up with the concept of Canada as a bilingual and multicultural country. Thus, the term originally was not meant in reference to visible minorities or non-Christian groups. But with the influx of immigrants from newly developed non-white countries, multicultural soon assumed the meaning of multiracial as well. The liberal mood prevailing in Canada at that time made the notion of multiculturalism quite appealing. However, it generally meant, to most mainstream Canadians, nothing more than a celebration of a variety of cuisines, music, dance and costumes to be worn on special occasion. The acceptance cut across Canada’s political and ideological boundaries and, it was indeed, a Conservative Prime Minister, Brian Mulroney, who ushered in a new Multiculturalism Act and established a full-fledged ministry of multiculturalism. New multicultural organizations mushroomed and government funding was provided for them, including funding for teaching ethnic languages both in public schools and by private community groups.

It was not long before the mainstream community’s tolerance for multiculturalism was put to a test. One of the first tests came in the form of a Sikh officer of the Royal Canadian Mounted Policy wanting to wear a turban instead of the traditional Mounty hat. The traditionalists both within and outside the Police force resisted this demand as they claimed that it went against the hoary traditions of the Mounted Police. The case went to the court, which upheld the right of the Sikh officer to wear a turban as part of his uniform. Multicultural groups went on winning one victory after another, such as wearing a hijab at the workplace or of having a special room designated for prayers in educational institutions and offices. The victory of multiculturalism seemed to reach its peak a few years ago in Ontario when the provincial government supported a plan to allow Sharia tribunals to be set up to resolve civic disputes between consenting Muslims on the basis of the Muslim Personal Law.

However, each victory also brought with it the increasing unease of the majority community with the demands made by minorities for accommodating their interests.
More and more, people started to think that they were being asked to make too many compromises while the minorities were not doing their share of accommodation. According to a recent survey by Professor Robert Putnam of Harvard University, people living in ethnically diverse towns and cities are less tolerant and trusting of each other. Professor Putnam found that “in the presence of diversity, we hunker down. We act like turtles. The effect of diversity is worse than had been imagined. And it’s not just that we don’t trust people who are not like us. In diverse communities, we don’t trust people who do look like us.”

The turning point seems to have come with the developments in Europe, especially in places like Netherlands and Denmark. The very people who were the champions of multiculturalism and tolerance towards other groups, the Liberal Left, now turned against such accommodation. But for the international turbulence generated by the Prophet’s cartoons in Denmark, the Sharia courts in Ontario would have been an established fact by now.
There is a feeling now that accommodation with the minority groups beyond a certain point by the mainstream groups would mean giving up their own cherished values. From Australia to Canada, a consensus seems to be emerging that the host societies should accommodate cultural and religious minorities only to the extent that they do not end up compromising their own core values. However, this consensus is meaningless unless these societies define what their core values are. It would be unrealistic to expect new immigrants to conform to certain values unless they are clearly defined. The western societies do have some vague notions of these values, such as gender equality and freedom of expression. However, they have to be clearly enunciated and consistently adhered to. For example, does freedom of expression include irreverence for others’ religious beliefs and icons? How can one be free to question deeply-held religious convictions but not the historical veracity of the magnitude of holocaust? How can the funding for faith-based schools be provided to the students of one faith but not of the other faiths?

The Western societies are at a cross-road. For their own sake as well as the sake of the newer communities that have made these societies their home, they should engage in a debate in a frank and sincere manner to determine the limits of multiculturalism in their societies. Then, and only then, can they ask newcomers to stay within those limits.