Turban diktat kicks up row in school

New Delhi: Hindu parents at a school are protesting after the school's Sikh authorities asked all students to wear traditional Sikh headgear to school.

School authorities in the Sikh-dominated state of Punjab says they were merely enforcing a stipulation in its prospectus that students of all faiths have to wear the traditional Sikh headgear called the "patka" or "dastaar".

But parents of other faiths say this is an affront to their religion, and have drawn parallels to Sikh protests in France in 2004 after the government there banned religious symbols such as Sikh turbans and Muslim headscarves in state schools.