[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 23 (Friday, February 7, 2003)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E172-E173]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




  SIKH LAWYER'S REFUSAL TO REMOVE TURBAN HELPS TO EXPAND CIVIL RIGHTS

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. EDOLPHUS TOWNS

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                        Friday, February 7, 2003

  Mr. TOWNS. Mr. Speaker, on January 28, the New York Times ran an 
article about New Jersey lawyer Ravinder Singh Bhalla. Mr. Bhalla won a 
significant victory for civil rights when he got the rules changed 
regarding searches at our prisons.
  Mr. Bhalla went to visit a client at the Metropolitan Detention 
Center in Brooklyn, where I am from. The guards would not let him in 
because he refused to remove his turban. Mr. Bhalla informed the guards 
that the turban is not a hat, but is a religious symbol required of all 
observant Sikhs. Mr. Bhalla is of the Sikhs faith. He cited his first 
amendment right to practice his religion and his fourth amendment 
protection against unreasonable searches, nothing that he had already 
passed through the metal detector. He also cited his client's sixth 
amendment right to see his lawyer, a right that could not be exercised 
unless Mr. Bhalla was allowed into the prison.
  Mr. Bhalla took his case to the Federal District Court in Newark. 
Then on January 17, the Federal Bureau of Prisons changed the policy, 
saying that turbans, prayer shawls, yarmulkes, and other religious 
items do not have to be searched. I commend the Bureau of Prisons for 
this enlightened decision, and I commend Mr. Bhalla for taking a stand 
on principle. By doing so, he has raised awareness of the rights of the 
Sikhs in this country and made all Americans more conscious of civil 
rights for all members of our diverse society.
  Sikhs have been subjected to attacks and violence in the wake of the 
horrible September 11 attacks. A Sikh gas station operator was murdered 
in his gas station in Arizona simply because he wore a turban. All in 
all, there have been over 300 attacks on Sikhs. These attacks stem 
mostly from ignorance coupled with Americans' legitimate anger at the 
events of September 11. Because Osama bin Laden wears a turban, some 
ignorant people assume that anyone who wears a turban is a terrorist 
and an enemy of this county. Nothing could be further from the truth, 
as Mr. Bhalla showed us. There are over 500,000 Sikhs in this country 
and they are proud Americans who contribute in all walks of life from 
law and medicine to farming. One Sikh American, Dalip Singh Saund, 
served two terms in the House in the late fifties and early sixties.
  African-Americans have been through the civil rights struggle; in 
some ways we are still fighting it. As Mr. Bhalla says, Sikhs are going 
through many of the same things. By taking a stand for his rights, Mr. 
Bhalla has expanded Americans' awareness of Sikhs and expanded our 
tolerance as a society, something that benefits us all.
  Mr. Speaker, I would like to place the New York Times article on Mr. 
Bhalla into the Record.

                [From the New York Times, Jan. 28, 2003]

  How One Man Took a Stand and Changed Federal Policy Toward the Sikh 
                               Community

                          (By Ronald Smothers)

       Newark, Jan. 27.--When guards at Brooklyn's Metropolitan 
     Detention Center demanded last September that a Newark lawyer 
     let them search his turban before being admitted to visit a 
     client, they may have not have known much about the 
     traditions of his Sikh faith.
       ``To a Sikh, removing his turban in public is the same as a 
     strip-search and as intrusive as asking a woman to remove her 
     blouse,'' said the lawyer, Ravinder Singh Bhalla.
       But Mr. Bhalla, 29, knew quite a bit about the traditions 
     of American law. Born in New Jersey of immigrant parents and 
     educated at the University of California, the London School 
     of Economics and Tulane University Law School, he knew his 
     rights and was not afraid to list them, one by one.
       There was his First Amendment right to practice his 
     religion, including the ritual public wearing of the head 
     covering, he told the guards. Then he expounded on his Fourth

[[Page E173]]

     Amendment right against unreasonable searches, since he had 
     already passed through the metal detector without setting off 
     alarms. Finally there was his client's Sixth Amendment right 
     to the lawyer of his choice--a right that could be exercised 
     only if Mr. Bhalla forfeited his own rights.
       Mr. Bhalla refused to remove his turban, and the guards 
     refused to let him in. But on Jan. 17, the federal Bureau of 
     Prisons issued a clarification of its search policy, after 
     Mr. Bhalla asserted all of these rights in Federal District 
     Court here, before the Office of the Inspector General of the 
     Department of Justice in Washington and, armed with letters 
     of support from a host of Sikh groups, directly to the Bureau 
     of Prisons hierarchy.
       Dan Dunn, a spokesman for the bureau, said that religious 
     garments like turbans, prayer shawls or yarmulkes need not be 
     considered part of the routine searches of personal effects 
     that prison guards must make of visitors. They could be 
     searched, he said, if there is a ``reasonable suspicion that 
     the person is about to engage in or is engaging in criminal 
     activity.''
       What Mr. Dunn described as a simple clarification of policy 
     is being hailed as a milestone by Mr. Bhalla and others. They 
     say that by treating searches of religious garments as 
     distinct from other personal-effects searches and subjecting 
     them to stricter requirements, the agency is recognizing 
     their intrusiveness.
       ``This marks a significant improvement in agency policy,'' 
     said Harpreet Singh, the director of the Sikh Coalition, an 
     amalgam of groups representing the nation's estimated 500,000 
     Sikhs. The group was founded just after Sept. 11, 2001, when 
     many Sikhs found themselves the objects of suspicion at 
     airports and elsewhere.
       Since the terror attacks, he said, his group has won 
     concessions from the federal Department of Transportation on 
     airport security searches of Sikhs, given the faith's 
     prohibitions against removing turbans, as well as the 
     requirement among the more devout that they carry a 
     ``kirpan,'' or dagger.
       Under the department's revised procedures, turbans will not 
     be searched unless there is a positive reading on a metal 
     detector. For their part, Sikh groups have agreed that it is 
     legitimate to require those carrying daggers to secure the 
     items in their checked luggage.
       ``But the broader significance of all of this is that we 
     are educating a broader range of people about Sikhs and our 
     rights,'' Mr. Singh said.
       Sikhism, a monotheistic religion, dates back to the 15th 
     century in the Punjab region of what is now India. Its 
     doctrine has evolved through a succession of prophets or 
     gurus, and in an atmosphere of persecution by the larger 
     numbers of Hindus and Muslims in South Asia. One of Sikhism's 
     main requirements is that adherents not cut their hair, which 
     is considered a visible testament to their connection with 
     their creator, especially in times of persecution.
       Mr. Bhalla said many people mistakenly believe that the 
     Sikh turban is a hatlike garment molded in one piece. It is 
     actually a long swath of cotton, 3 feet by more than 15 feet, 
     which takes Mr. Bhalla 15 minutes each morning to fold and 
     carefully wind onto his head.
       In taking on Mr. Bhalla at the gates of the Metropolitan 
     Detention Center, guards may have picked the wrong person, 
     said Gerald Krovatin, a New Jersey criminal lawyer in whose 
     firm Mr. Bhalla works. Mr. Krovatin said that last November 
     his colleague was one of the founding members of the national 
     Sikh Bar Association and the only one among the estimated 50 
     Sikh lawyers in the country who is a criminal litigator.
       Perhaps the seminal moment for Mr. Bhalla came in a federal 
     courtroom in Newark when he was just 13. He and his father 
     were attending a hearing for two Sikh community leaders whom 
     the United States attorney's office was trying to extradite 
     to India as suspected terrorists.
       Mr. Bhalla recalled that SWAT teams and snipers were 
     stationed outside the court, and plainclothes agents shadowed 
     his and his father's every step because the judge and the 
     prosecutor had reported receiving death threats. It turned 
     out that the prosecutor in the case was the one sending the 
     death threats, apparently in an effort to heighten the sense 
     of danger.
       Mr. Bhalla said the incident taught him how ``ridiculous'' 
     sterotyping and prejudice could be.
       ``Right now Sikhs are going through some of the same things 
     that African-Americans went through, and like them we are 
     learning the importance of having some political power and 
     knowing how the system works,'' he said. ``But we are just 
     starting.''

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