A demonstration organized by the Party of French Muslims in Paris to protest the government’s plans to ban Muslim headscarves and other religious symbols from schools. (Photo: AFP)

PARIS (Reuters): France’s small Sikh community grew confident on Jan. 21 its boys could continue to wear turbans to state schools after talks with officials to explain their headgear was not a religious symbol taboo under a looming ban. Community leaders reported encouraging talks with senior officials in the Foreign, Interior and Education ministries aimed at explaining why the turbans should not be banned like Muslim veils, Jewish skullcaps and large Christian crosses.

The Sikhs, of whom about 5,000 live in the Paris area, say turbans are a practical covering for the hair they never cut rather than an expression of faith like an Islamic headscarf, the main target of the ban the country wants to impose.

In another development, a senior parliamentary leader ruled out the possibility raised by Education Minister Luc Ferry on Jan. 20 that the law to bar religious symbols from state schools would also apply to beards and bandanas meant as signs of faith. “I think they realize they are in very muddy waters,’’ said Jasdev Singh Rai, a London-based human rights activist appointed by the Golden Temple --- Sikhism’s holiest shrine in Amritsar -- to help French Sikhs fight the ban.

“We are pigeonholed into categories we don’t fit in,’’ he said. “There is almost an Orientalism here --- the West defines who we are and we have to live by it.’’ Rai said senior French officials he has met accepted that Sikh boys could wear the “patka,’’ the simple headscarf they use under a turban, but this was not enough for them. “It’s like saying you can go to school in a bikini --- you can, but it’s not very dignified,’’ he remarked.

France has debated itself into a twist over the ban, which President Jacques Chirac proposed last month to stem rising Islamist influence among some of the five million Muslims here.

Islamic, Christian and Jewish leaders opposed the ban and thousands of Muslims across France marched in protest against it on Jan. 17.