A Hindu temple grand opening in France has turned into a global controversy over whether followers of the Swaminarayan sect asked female employees not to be present during a delegation’s Sept. 6 visit to the Eiffel Tower in Paris.
The Hindu sect, the Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha (BAPS), has a substantial following in Canada, but constitutional law and workplace experts say this country’s human rights and anti-discrimination laws would prevent a similar incident from happening here.
BAPS, which originated in the Indian state of Gujarat, has a strong following in Canada and has been expanding. A Toronto temple was built in 2007 and the Calgary temple was built in 2021. A third one is under construction in Belleville, Ont.
If a similar request were made in Canada — to ask female staff members to step away from their positions — the guiding legal principle would be the “duty to accommodate” outlined in human rights codes, according to Pearl Eliadis, a human rights lawyer and associate professor at McGill University’s Max Bell School of Public Policy in Montreal.
Eliadis said Canada’s duty to accommodate, the legal principle that requires employers to make room for an employee’s religious or medical needs, likely does not apply to a case like this because the request would come from a visiting third party rather than an employee needing protection.
Shawn Binda, a Toronto-area Hindu community commentator who runs the Hindu Lifestyle platform, said BAPS should not have made the request in the first place, calling the backlash “absolutely preventable,” given the Eiffel Tower’s high public profile.
He placed greater fault on the landmark’s management for how it handled the request.
The company that operates the Eiffel Tower told the media a delegation of about 100 members of the BAPS sect, which included monks who practise celibacy, had asked to limit “interactions with women” during a visit to the monument last Sunday.
The female employees say they were moved from their work stations. The Eiffel Tower was closed the next day as employees went on strike. It reopened to visitors on Sept. 8.
The sect has disputed the Eiffel Tower management’s account. In a statement provided to New Canadian Media, BAPS stated that its visit was coordinated with the attraction’s management as “purely a matter of operational courtesy and logistics,” given the delegation’s size. “It was never, at any point, intended as a request rooted in gender.”
Paris authorities have initiated a formal investigation.
The incident put BAPS, which has temples across North America, the Gulf and now Europe, at the centre of an international controversy.
BAPS’s Toronto spokesperson Lenin Joshi said in a statement: “BAPS respects the dignity and equality of women and never intended to exclude any employee or make anyone feel disrespected.
“Brahmacharya, or celibacy, is an ancient spiritual discipline rooted in the Vedic and broader Hindu tradition and is observed by both male and female renunciants across many Hindu monastic orders,” Joshi said.
Eliadis, the human rights lawyer, cautioned against framing this incident as something that only happens in certain countries. She said France has its own longstanding religious institutions that limit women’s roles, including the Catholic Church’s own doctrine reserving priestly ordination to men.
Canada has similar exemptions carved out for religious and cultural institutions, provided they serve a genuine cultural or religious purpose rather than function as a blanket exclusion.
Asked what Eiffel Tower management could have done differently, Eliadis was blunt: “Say no.”
Vrinda Narain, a constitutional law professor at McGill University’s Faculty of Law, pointed to Canada’s Charter guarantee of gender equality as the more relevant standard.
“If it was not rooted in gender, on what basis did they make the request?” she said. “I don’t see any other basis.
“Rather than removing women from the public space, they should remove themselves.”
Shilpashree Jagannathan is a Hamilton-based freelance journalist and editor whose work has appeared in CBC News, New Canadian Media, The Margin, Business Insider, TRT World and Mint, and has been republished by The Walrus. She reports on immigration, labour, affordability, housing, elections, climate impacts and social justice, focusing on how policy and power shape the lives of households, workers, newcomers and local communities. Drawing on more than a decade in business journalism in India and a strong background in investigations, research and editorial work, she brings rigour and empathy to stories that trace the gap between policy and lived experience. She has also appeared on podcasts and radio programs to discuss her reporting and its broader public-policy implications.
