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On February 5, 2008, a UK judge Sir Michael Harrison in Court 18 at the Royal Court of Justice in London decided not to allow a Sikh girl, Sarika Watkins-Singh to wear her Kara, one of the five articles of faith to school before the case was heard in full at a hearing in several months time. Fortunately, however when the case was heard at the full trial by Mr Justice Silber, over 3 days from 17 June, 2008, he sided with the Sikh girl.
The deputy High Court judge decided at the first hearing that the 14-year-old Sikh girl cannot wear her kara to school pending a full legal battle over her cultural and religious rights. This is surprising as in 1983 the House of Lords, the supreme court in the UK decided that a school had violated the rights of a student, Gurinder Singh Mandla when he was not allowed to enter the school because of his turban which he used to cover his kesh (uncut hair), which is one of the 5ks or Articles of faith. (see the full judgement Mandla v Dowell Lee).
In what appears an unbelievable statement, the deputy judge ruled: "Whilst I accept there will be detriment to the claimant (Sarika) if she is not able to wear the Kara in the interim, it does not seem to me that is anything like as significant as the detriment to the school if she were allowed to wear it." This surprised a lot of Sikhs as it appears to encourage other organisations to freely discriminate and break the law as the "detriment to the claimant" may be less significant than to the opposite party. .....More
