Brian Rudman: Intolerant social club stuck in racist past

Karnail Singh. Photo / Greg Bowker

If the Sikh community can't persuade the Human Rights Commission to drag the Manurewa Cosmopolitan Club into the 21st century, perhaps it's a case for the Commerce Commission.

If ever there was a case of false advertising, it is an outfit that calls itself "cosmopolitan" but has a "hat" ban, which happens to include Sikh turbans and Muslim head scarves.

Open any dictionary and you'll find such discrimination is the antithesis of their brand name. Some random definitions:

* A sophisticated person who has travelled in many countries,

* Composed of people from or at home in many parts of the world; especially not provincial in attitudes or interests,

* Not bound by local or national habits or prejudices; at home in all countries or places; characterised by worldly sophistication; fashionable, urbane, etc.

On Sunday, 300 so-called worldly-wise members of the Manurewa Cossie Club attended its annual meeting, and despite the bad publicity after the barring of Karnail Singh from their premises last November because of his turban, they voted, 75 per cent in favour, to maintain the ban on "hats".

One anonymous attendee told the Herald that many of those attending feared that if we "let in people who wear turbans then the next thing you know is that we will also have to let people wear hoodies and balaclavas into the premises".

It's hard to believe that any self-respecting hoodie-wearer would risk being spotted entering such a non-trendy place anyway. As for Santa, I guess he'll have to drop the kids' presents off at the door this Christmas.

The Human Rights Act does provide exemptions for private organisations such as Boys Scouts, gentlemen's clubs and, for that matter, cosmopolitan clubs, to discriminate over who they choose as fellow members. But it is doubtful whether this exemption extends to who can and cannot attend a function when the premises are hired out for public functions, which was the case with Mr Singh.

He was humiliated by being barred from entering a party organised to honour his work as an Age Concern volunteer visitor to the elderly, a town ambassador and community gardener.

A year or so before this, a foreign exchange student had been barred from the club's dining area because she was wearing a Muslim head scarf. After the turban incident, the Human Rights Commission conducted mediation sessions; the outcome was that the club agreed to raise the issue at its next annual meeting, which was Sunday.

Members were unrepentant, not, it seems, for reasons of high principle, just a fear of strangers wearing turbans, hoodies or head scarves.

In places as diverse as Turkey and France, the turban, the head scarf and the all-enveloping burqa are totems in the on-going battle between the secular and the religious in public life. And both sides use this headware for political point-scoring.

In July last year, the European Court of Human Rights upheld a French Government ban on wearing turbans in schools, part of a ban on ostentatious religious symbols and signs in all public places such as schools, hospitals and town halls.

In New Zealand, by luck and good management, we've been mercifully spared these stand-offs by adopting a more pragmatic approach. This "live and let live" attitude has not just happened by itself. It was achieved by years of hard work and education.

The New Zealand I was born into was a much less welcoming place for non-British "aliens". Even southern Europeans were suspect. As for "Asiatics", a few had been let in from China and India to mine gold and drain swamps over the years, but they were not seen as fellow Kiwis.

Is it just coincidence that the racist White New Zealand League was founded in 1925 at the Ayrshire tearooms in Pukekohe, just a few kilometres south of Manurewa? The farmer-backed league called on the government to ban the sale of land to Asiatics, including "cowardly Hindoos", who were accused of enticing "their" Maori labourers away.

For many years, Indians, Chinese and Maori were barred from the balcony of the Pukekohe picture theatre. As recently as 1952, the Franklin branch of Federated Farmers demanded Indians be sent home and their land confiscated.

It's nice to think such attitudes survive only in the pages of the history books. Then up pops the Manurewa Cossie Club's anti-hat rule. From the intransigence shown by more than 200 Manurewans at last Sunday's meeting, this affair now seems destined for the Human Rights Review Tribunal.

The tribunal can fine those guilty of breaching human rights to a maximum of $5000, plus costs. Perhaps a punitive stick is what it will take to bash these cosmopolitans into the 21st century.

After all, it took NZ Rugby 50 years to be "persuaded" to say sorry for leaving Maori players out of the last All Black tour of South Africa.

But how much better for everyone if the Manurewan cosmopolitans lived up to their name, and admitted they were wrong.