If not in Gujarat, at least in Paris, women have been served justice after the influential Gujarat-based Swaminarayan sect allegedly discriminated against female employees of the Eiffel Tower by asking the company operating it to make women employees invisible when the saints visited the iconic monument recently.
The Swaminarayan sect, one of Gujarat’s richest and most politically connected religious organisations, has, as usual, denied the allegations. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had virtually inaugurated the Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Sanstha (BAPS) temple in Paris.
But an internal investigation by an independent firm has now uncovered a series of operational failures related to the September 5 visit. The failures resulted in “female staff being excluded from the visit that day, an unacceptable situation,” SETE, the company that operates and manages the Eiffel Tower, has said, while emphasising that its chief, Patrick Branco Ruivo, will step down. The Swaminarayan sect had contacted the Tower with its “requirement” that women employees be made invisible during their visit, and the company reportedly complied.
However, in a mark of solidarity, all Eiffel Tower employees went on strike, protesting the exclusion of their female colleagues during the Swaminarayan sect’s sadhus’ visit. The Eiffel Tower, which receives around 7 million visitors a year, remained closed on September 7 because of a staff strike protesting what a union official described as “unacceptable” management instructions.
Patrick Branco Ruivo, director general of the Société d’Exploitation de la Tour Eiffel (SETE), who took over as company chief, will leave his post by the end of the year after agreeing to the Swaminarayan group’s discriminatory demand, SETE has confirmed.
BAPS had not agreed that it had demanded the exclusion of women staffers, but had officially issued a statement saying: “this coordination was undertaken purely as a matter of operational courtesy and logistics to ensure a smooth visit for a large group without inconveniencing the Tower’s employees or the public. It was never, at any point, intended as a request rooted in gender.”
Patrick Ruivo’s decision to step down, and the internal investigation revealing that women employees were indeed asked to step aside and become invisible when the Swaminarayan sadhus were around, establish that BAPS’s clarification was misleading. BAPS saints do not talk to, interact with or look women in the eye. In Gujarat, where the organisation is headquartered, it is a “normal” practice to ask women to become invisible whenever and wherever these sadhus descend. This includes offices and even media houses.
Women journalists, including this author, have not only been barred from attending press conferences but, in important interactions organised by Swaminarayan chief priests, they have been “ requested” not to attend and “respect tradition”.
BAPS has 1,300 temples worldwide, including the one Prime Minister Modi virtually inaugurated in Paris. BAPS scholar Yogi Trivedi, who has been associated with the Swaminarayan sect for decades, recently wrote in Firstpost:
“There is no doubt that the vows laid down by Shri Swaminarayan are particularly stringent, at least in theory. And yet, one must understand the climate of nineteenth-century India, when he was actively confronting abuses of authority by religious figures against women disciples. These vows were designed to protect disciples and cultivate personal renunciation, never to impose on women and society….to that end, Shri Swaminarayan ordered his monks to suspend these rules immediately during any life-or-death emergency. The principle upon which these vows are based, of course, becomes complicated as the norms in communities evolve and the definitions of imposition and equality change in society.”
The exclusion of women at the Eiffel Tower in Paris has stirred international controversy. Aurore Bergé, the French minister delegate for gender equality and the fight against discrimination, wrote on X: “In France, we do not ask women to step aside. No dogma, no religion is superior to the laws of the Republic.”
Yaël Braun-Pivet, president of the National Assembly, said: “Welcoming others never means giving up our values. In France, women are fully present in public life. No one tells them to become invisible.”
Former French President François Hollande had also extended support to the Eiffel Tower staff who walked out. Notably, not a single BJP or Congress politician in India had defended the French women demanding equality. “Equality between women and men is a fundamental achievement of our Republic. It applies everywhere, to all women and all men, without exception,” Hollande had written.
Parliamentarian and former prime minister Michel Barnier wrote on X: “It is therefore utterly unacceptable that an order aimed at making women disappear from this space could have been issued.”
He added: “In France, we will never accept that the presence of women be ‘limited.’”
BAPS and Past Controversies
During a landmark legal battle in 1966, members of the Swaminarayan sect argued in court that they were not part of Hinduism but a distinct religion. They did so in an attempt to avoid the Bombay Harijan Temple Entry Act, which required Hindu temples to open their doors to Dalits, a historically marginalised caste group. The Indian Supreme Court rejected the appeal, concluding that Swaminarayan sect followers were indeed Hindu.
In 2013, two former BAPS monks filed a complaint accusing senior BAPS leaders of sexual assault dating back to the 1970s. BAPS leaders denied the allegations. The complaint did not result in any publicly reported criminal charges.
In 2021, a US federal class-action lawsuit accused BAPS of exploiting low-caste labourers from India to work on its temples. The case, brought on behalf of about 200 Indian workers, alleged that they were lured from India, coerced into employment agreements and forced to work more than 12 hours a day with only five days off a year at a temple in Robbinsville Township, New Jersey.
The suit said they were paid as little as $1.20 an hour, far below the US federal minimum wage of $7.25 and New Jersey’s $12 statewide minimum.
A US federal investigation into labour trafficking at the Robbinsville temple has since been closed without criminal charges, but the civil class-action lawsuit brought by the workers continues.
In 2015, the sect courted controversy after the publisher of the Malayalam edition of former President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam’s last book asked its female translator not to be present on the dais at the insistence of BAPS monk Swami Brahmavihari Das. Das has been seen with Modi numerous times in recent years.
In 2024, women attendees at a Kolkata conference were asked to leave the front rows and backstage before a session to be addressed by BAPS monk Swami Gyanvatsal. The conference was organised by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI), and Gyanvatsal, according to a report in The Federal, “threatened to leave if his condition was not met”.
BAPS and PM Modi
When Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the Paris BAPS temple, he appeared on a giant screen inside the new temple calling the event “a new milestone in the cultural relations between India and France”. Rather than distance himself, Modi added that “in mind and spirit…I am experiencing myself right among you”. This virtual inauguration was viewed by lakhs of people across the world.
However, as Kunal Purohit wrote in The Wire: “The show of intimacy wasn’t an aberration. They emerge from an intimate relationship that Modi has developed with the BAPS sect for over four decades, as The Wire found.”
According to Seeing The Sangh, a dataset that maps the Sangh and its affiliates globally, housed by CERI-Sciences Po in Paris and published and hosted by The Caravan magazine, BAPS is “conclusively” linked to the Sangh. The dataset cites three reasons: BAPS receives funds from Sangh outfits; it has hosted talks by Sangh and RSS officials at its events; and it has co-hosted many events with Sangh outfits.
Since the BJP’s first formation in Gujarat in 1995, the BJP and RSS have consistently backed BAPS. “We cannot win if we do not have BAPS’ blessings” is the general political rhetoric in Gujarat.
Patidars form the richest and most influential segment of BAPS followers. It has been rumoured that Hardik Patel, a young Patidar who had begun an agitation for Patidar reservation, had the blessings of BAPS and that it was part of a strategy to unseat then Chief Minister Anandiben Patel. It was also speculated that a senior BJP leader, a rival of Anandiben Patel, was involved in this political strategy.
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