There are moments when politics, religion and irony come together so perfectly that a satirist is almost tempted to apologise for having nothing left to invent.
Consider the latest BAPS controversy in France.
A magnificent new BAPS temple has opened near Paris. Prime Minister Narendra Modi joined the inauguration virtually and described it as a new milestone in India-France cultural relations. BAPS itself has presented the temple as a symbol of harmony, spirituality and universal brotherhood.
And then came the Eiffel Tower.
A BAPS delegation led by its spiritual leader, Mahant Swami Maharaj, visited the tower.
The monks of the Swaminarayan tradition follow an extremely strict vow of celibacy. BAPS itself explains that this discipline can prohibit a sadhu from talking to, touching or associating with women.
That is their religious discipline. They are entitled to practise it.
But then something rather remarkable happened.
According to reports, female Eiffel Tower employees were asked to move away from their workstations or limit interaction with the visiting delegation. The women were, in effect, asked to become temporarily invisible so that the male holy men could preserve their religious discipline.
The Eiffel Tower employees did not find this spiritually enlightening.
They went on strike.
The tower was temporarily closed.
Paris authorities opened an investigation.
BAPS denied asking for anyone to be denied access and said the visit had been arranged to minimise disruption. It nevertheless apologised for any hurt or inconvenience caused.
And suddenly France discovered a very ancient question: When does someone else's religious freedom become somebody else's workplace discrimination? That is a perfectly legitimate question. But there is another question which is considerably more uncomfortable for India.
Why does the question of women's freedom become so important when the woman is Muslim, but suddenly become a matter of religious sensitivity when the woman is standing in front of a Hindu religious leader?
Because this is where the politics becomes almost comic.
The Modi government has repeatedly presented itself as the liberator of Muslim women.
In 2019, the government enacted the law criminalising instant triple talaq, explicitly presenting it as a measure of gender equality and justice. Prime Minister Modi has repeatedly described Muslim women as beneficiaries of this reform. In 2022, during the Karnataka hijab controversy, he spoke of attempts to obstruct the rights and development of Muslim women. BJP leaders also presented the hijab controversy in the context of women's empowerment.
The political message was unmistakable: Religion cannot be used to deny women their dignity. Excellent. That principle deserves applause. But principles have an annoying habit of demanding consistency.
Because if a woman wearing a hijab is portrayed as needing liberation from a religious or patriarchal structure, what happens when another religious structure says that women must not be encountered by celibate male monks?
Does gender equality come with an asterisk? Perhaps the government has a special dictionary. 'Freedom' means liberating Muslim women from practices regarded as oppressive. 'Tradition' means respecting Hindu practices that impose separation between men and women.
And 'hypocrisy'?
That word, naturally, is available only for the Opposition. The Eiffel Tower episode exposes the problem beautifully. The BAPS doctrine itself is not a secret.
BAPS explains that its sadhus follow eightfold celibacy. Its own literature says that a sadhu should avoid talking to women, touching them, intentionally looking at them or seeking their company. It also explicitly says that men and women sit separately during communal prayers, partly to respect the celibacy vows of the swamis. ([BAPS Swaminarayan Sanstha][3])
There is an important distinction here.
A monk deciding not to speak to women is one thing. A monk asking a woman who is doing her job in a public institution to disappear is another.
The first is religious freedom. The second raises questions about the rights of people who do not belong to that religion.
And that distinction is precisely why France reacted so strongly. The French argument was not that BAPS should stop believing what it believes.
The argument was simpler: Believe whatever you wish. But do not make French women invisible in order to accommodate your beliefs.
That is a perfectly understandable republican position. And it produces a delicious irony.
The same Indian political ecosystem that lectures the Muslim world about women's emancipation now finds itself associated with a religious controversy in which women workers at one of Europe's most famous landmarks were reportedly asked to step aside because certain men could not interact with them.
The irony becomes even more interesting when we look at caste.
BAPS presents itself as a humanitarian and spiritual organisation committed to service. Its temples are magnificent. Its volunteers perform enormous amounts of charitable work. Its global network is impressive.
All of that can be true. But so can something else.
BAPS has faced serious allegations concerning the treatment of Indian workers involved in temple construction in the United States.
In 2021, more than 200 workers were involved in a federal lawsuit concerning the Robbinsville, New Jersey temple. The lawsuit alleged forced labour, extremely long working hours, very low pay, restrictions on movement, passport confiscation and violations of labour and immigration laws. The workers were described as coming largely from marginalised communities, including Dalits. Federal agents also visited the temple site in a court-authorised law-enforcement operation.
The allegations subsequently expanded to BAPS-linked temple sites in several other US states.
The organisation denied wrongdoing and argued that the workers were religious volunteers and that the use of R-1 religious-worker visas for artisans had been authorised and scrutinised by government agencies. Some plaintiffs later withdrew from the case, and the allegations should therefore be described as allegations rather than established facts.
But the controversy did raise an uncomfortable question: If a religious organisation speaks constantly about seva — selfless service — what happens when people performing that service say they were exploited?
And what happens when many of those people belong to communities that have historically occupied the bottom of India's caste hierarchy?
That question cannot be answered simply by building a larger temple. In fact, the larger the temple becomes, the more important the question becomes. Because marble does not cancel caste. Gold does not cancel exploitation. And an enormous dome does not automatically produce social equality.
This is where the BAPS story becomes particularly interesting in the context of Narendra Modi.
BAPS is not formally part of the RSS or the BJP. That distinction matters. It is an independent religious organisation with its own leadership, institutional structure and enormous global following.
But the personal relationship between Narendra Modi and BAPS has been exceptionally close. Modi has spoken of his relationship with the late Pramukh Swami Maharaj in almost familial terms, describing it as resembling that of a father and son. BAPS itself has referred to Modi as the 'most beloved son' of Pramukh Swami. ([Press Information Bureau][6])
And when the magnificent BAPS Hindu Mandir opened in Abu Dhabi in 2024, Modi did not merely send greetings. He inaugurated it alongside Mahant Swami Maharaj.
The Indian government celebrated it as a symbol of India's spiritual and cultural outreach.
The BAPS organisation itself credited the leadership of Modi and the friendship between India and the UAE with helping make the temple possible. ([BAPS Swaminarayan Sanstha][7])
Again, there is nothing inherently improper about a prime minister supporting a temple abroad.
India has every right to promote its cultural heritage. The diaspora has every right to build places of worship. And a Hindu temple in Abu Dhabi is, in itself, a remarkable development.
But when religious institutions become important instruments of diplomatic and cultural projection, their controversies inevitably acquire a political dimension. If a temple is presented as the face of India's civilisational values abroad, then questions about those values will naturally follow it.
And this brings us back to the great slogan of the modern Indian political establishment:
Nari Shakti. Women's power. Women's dignity. Women's empowerment.
Very good.
But perhaps the slogan needs a small international footnote: 'Women's power — except when a visiting holy man has taken a vow not to see them.'
And perhaps another footnote: 'Gender equality — subject to religious availability.'
And a third: 'Religious freedom — absolutely. Unless it is someone else's religion.'
That would certainly simplify the brochure.
The deeper issue, however, is not BAPS. It is selective universalism. Every society is tempted by it. We condemn discrimination when it is practised by people we dislike. We defend tradition when it is practised by people we admire. We demand modernity from minorities while romanticising conservatism among majorities. We call one woman's covering oppression and another woman's exclusion tradition. We call one community's religious conservatism backwardness and another's ancient wisdom.
And then we wonder why citizens become cynical.
There is a simple principle that could rescue us from all this intellectual gymnastics: The rights of a woman should not depend upon the religion of the man standing in front of her.
If a Muslim husband cannot arbitrarily impose an unjust divorce upon his wife, that is a question of women's rights.
If a Hindu monk does not wish to interact with women, that is his religious freedom.
But if either religious preference requires an unrelated woman doing her job to surrender her workplace, her dignity or her equality, the state has a responsibility to protect her rights.
The same standard should apply everywhere.
To Muslims. To Hindus. To Christians. To Sikhs. To atheists. To everybody.
That is what equality actually means. Not equality for our friends and reform for our opponents. Not secularism when convenient and civilisational exceptionalism when convenient. Not feminism when confronting another community and tradition when confronting our own.
The Eiffel Tower, rather unexpectedly, has given India a rather useful mirror. And mirrors are dangerous things.
They do not care whether the person looking into them is a prime minister, a monk, a politician, a feminist, a religious reformer or a television anchor. They simply show what is there.
And perhaps the most revealing image from Paris is therefore not the magnificent temple. It is not the Eiffel Tower. It is not even the protesting workers.
It is the absurd spectacle of women being asked to disappear so that men could preserve their religious purity.
Because if the liberation of women is genuinely the principle, then it cannot depend upon whose religion is being discussed. Otherwise, women are not being liberated. They are simply being moved around the chessboard of somebody else's ideology.
And that, perhaps, is the oldest trick in the political-religious book.
Tell women that they are being protected. Tell them they are being liberated. Tell them they are being honoured. And then quietly decide where they are allowed to stand. The real test of any civilisation is not how magnificently it builds its temples. It is whether the women who built, staffed, cleaned, served and lived around those temples are allowed to stand in the same public space as men without being told to disappear.
That is a test worth applying consistently. To BAPS. To the BJP. To the government. To every religion. And, inconveniently, to ourselves. Because equality becomes meaningful only when it is applied to people whose beliefs we do not share.
Otherwise it is merely another decorative carving on the temple wall.
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