When religion crosses the republic

 The Eiffel Tower controversy is not merely about women being pushed aside—it exposes the dangerous collision of religious conservatism, political power and the constitutional idea of India

By Ramphal Kataria

“A woman does not become invisible merely because a religious visitor wishes not to see her. The moment a public institution makes her invisible to accommodate that wish, equality itself has been made invisible.”

“The disturbing question is not merely what BAPS asked for. It is why a modern public institution agreed to it—and why a political establishment so closely associated with religious mobilisation appears so comfortable around the expanding temple-state spectacle.”

“When the Prime Minister lends the prestige of his office to a religious inauguration abroad, the boundary between private faith and public authority becomes dangerously blurred.”

The Eiffel Tower has become an unlikely courtroom of modernity

The Eiffel Tower was temporarily closed in Paris on 7 September 2026 after employees protested over the alleged sidelining of female staff during a private visit by a BAPS delegation. According to staff representatives, female employees were asked to leave their workstations, withdraw to other areas and, in some places, were replaced by male colleagues. The Eiffel Tower’s operating company, Société d’Exploitation de la Tour Eiffel (SETE), subsequently acknowledged that the delegation had requested arrangements intended to limit interactions with women and conceded that such conditions should never have been accepted.

BAPS has denied that it deliberately sought to exclude women and apologised for any pain or inconvenience caused. An investigation has been announced in Paris to establish precisely what instructions were given, who gave them and how the private visit was organised.

That investigation must be allowed to establish the facts. Yet one fact is already beyond dispute: a controversy over whether women should be physically removed or rendered invisible during a religious delegation's visit has erupted at one of the world's most recognisable symbols of liberty, equality and modern republicanism.

That is why this episode cannot be dismissed as an ordinary dispute between a religious organisation and the management of a tourist monument.

It is a political and constitutional question.

It is a question about women.

It is a question about religion.

And, for India, it is also a question about the image that the Indian State projects when its highest political office associates itself publicly with a religious institution whose delegation has become embroiled in such a controversy.

The French authorities have understandably treated the matter as one concerning equality. Paris officials have described the reported treatment of female employees as unacceptable, while French political leaders have reiterated that women cannot be required to disappear from public life to accommodate religious demands.

And there lies the extraordinary irony.

The controversy has erupted in France—the land whose modern political vocabulary is famously expressed through Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité.

A religious delegation originating from India is alleged to have brought with it a demand that sits uneasily with the most elementary understanding of gender equality.

The Eiffel Tower, therefore, has inadvertently become the stage upon which two competing ideas of society have collided:

the republican idea that public space belongs equally to women and men, and the patriarchal idea that women may be required to withdraw from that space to accommodate religious sensibilities.

The question is: which idea should prevail?

There can be only one democratic answer.

Equality must prevail.

Not merely a BAPS controversy

It would be intellectually convenient to stop here and say: BAPS is a private religious organisation; the Eiffel Tower is a French institution; the Indian Government has nothing to do with it.

Indeed, India's Ministry of External Affairs has taken precisely that position, describing the Eiffel Tower matter as a matter between the entities concerned.

Legally and diplomatically, that distinction is understandable.

Politically, however, it is incomplete.

The reason is Narendra Modi.

On 6 September 2026, Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed the gathering at the inauguration of the BAPS Swaminarayan Hindu Mandir in Paris through video conference. The Prime Minister described the temple as a milestone in India-France cultural relations and said that the temple would enrich France's diversity and strengthen bilateral relations. He also expressed his intention to visit the temple for darshan in the future.

That is not an accusation of legal complicity in the Eiffel Tower incident.

But politics is not merely about legal liability.

Political symbolism matters.

When India's Prime Minister participates in the inauguration of a temple in a foreign country, praises the religious institution from the highest public platform and links its presence to India's cultural diplomacy, that religious institution inevitably acquires a degree of public visibility and political legitimacy beyond that of an ordinary private association.

That does not make BAPS a governmental organisation.

But it does make the optics impossible to ignore.

The question therefore is not:

“Did the Government of India order women to be removed from the Eiffel Tower?”

The more serious question is:

“What happens to the distinction between State and religion when the political head of a constitutional republic repeatedly places the prestige of his office alongside religious institutions and religious ceremonies?”

That is a legitimate democratic question.

And it deserves an uncomfortable answer.

The constitutional India is not a temple-state

India is not a theocracy.

India is not a Hindu State.

India is not a Muslim State.

India is not a Sikh State.

India is not a Christian State.

It is a secular constitutional republic.

The Preamble promises justice, liberty, equality and fraternity, including liberty of belief, faith and worship. The Supreme Court has repeatedly treated secularism as a foundational constitutional principle. In S.R. Bommai v. Union of India, the Court emphasised that the Constitution permits citizens to practise religion while requiring the State to remain committed to equality and secular governance.

Article 25 guarantees freedom of conscience and the right to profess, practise and propagate religion, but that freedom is expressly subject to public order, morality, health and the other fundamental rights. The Constitution also permits the State to regulate secular activities associated with religion and to undertake social-reform measures.

This distinction is crucial.

The Constitution protects religion.

It does not constitutionalise religious domination.

It protects the believer.

It does not permit the believer to become the ruler of the non-believer.

It protects worship.

It does not authorise religious doctrine to determine the rights of another citizen.

And it certainly does not permit the State to surrender equality before religious demands.

The Indian constitutional arrangement is therefore not one of hostility towards religion. It is more sophisticated.

The State must protect religious freedom without becoming an instrument of religious power.

That is the principle at stake.

Religion is a right, not a governing ideology

There is an important distinction between a Prime Minister being personally religious and the State becoming religious.

A Prime Minister is a citizen before becoming Prime Minister. He or she is entitled to faith, worship, prayer, pilgrimage and personal religious belief.

There is nothing unconstitutional about Narendra Modi visiting a temple as a private individual.

There is nothing inherently unconstitutional about a Prime Minister extending greetings to a religious community.

There is nothing unconstitutional merely because the Prime Minister participates in a cultural event organised by Indians abroad.

The problem begins when the public office becomes inseparable from the religious spectacle.

When the Prime Minister's official machinery, public communication, political symbolism and governmental prestige repeatedly become attached to religious ceremonies, the distinction between personal faith and State representation becomes progressively blurred.

That distinction matters enormously in a country as religiously, linguistically and socially diverse as India.

The Prime Minister is not the Prime Minister of Hindus.

He is not the Prime Minister of Muslims.

He is not the Prime Minister of Sikhs.

He is not the Prime Minister of Christians.

He is the Prime Minister of the Republic of India.

That office belongs equally to the believer and the atheist, the temple-goer and the mosque-goer, the churchgoer and the person who follows no religion.

The Constitution does not ask the State to become anti-religious.

It asks the State to become non-discriminatory.

That is a much higher standard.

The politics of the temple

The problem becomes more profound when the contemporary political culture of the BJP and the RSS is considered.

For decades, the political project associated with Hindu nationalism has sought to transform Hindu civilisational identity into a central organising principle of Indian political mobilisation.

The distinction between cultural Hinduism and political Hindu nationalism is often deliberately blurred.

Temple construction, religious symbolism, pilgrimages, ritual occasions and public displays of religiosity have increasingly become important features of political communication.

The issue is not whether temples should exist.

Of course they should.

The issue is whether the State should derive political legitimacy through temple symbolism.

That is a completely different question.

The Ram Mandir consecration at Ayodhya on 22 January 2024 provides a striking example of the fusion of religious spectacle and national political symbolism. The Prime Minister's central presence in the ceremony was politically consequential precisely because the Ram temple had been at the heart of one of the most politically charged religious movements in modern Indian history.

To call attention to this is not to deny the religious significance of Ram to millions of Indians.

It is to ask why the office of the Prime Minister should become the principal visual face of religious ceremonies.

A Prime Minister attending a temple in a personal capacity is one thing.

A Prime Minister functioning as the central political personality of a religious inauguration is another.

The distinction may be subtle.

Its constitutional significance is not.

The Prime Minister is not a priest

A Prime Minister may pray.

A Prime Minister may bow before a deity.

A Prime Minister may visit a temple.

But the constitutional office should never acquire the appearance of a priestly office.

This is not a personal criticism of Narendra Modi's religious faith. It is a criticism of the political presentation of constitutional authority.

The Prime Minister represents the Republic.

The priest represents a faith tradition.

The two roles perform fundamentally different constitutional functions.

When the head of government appears repeatedly at religious ceremonies in a manner that makes the religious occasion itself a major component of political communication, the citizen can reasonably ask:

Where does the State end and religious politics begin?

The answer should always be clear.

Unfortunately, contemporary political culture often makes it deliberately unclear.

France and the extraordinary irony of Paris

The Eiffel Tower episode becomes even more revealing because it occurred in France.

The French Revolution transformed the political vocabulary of the modern world. Liberty, equality and fraternity became foundational political ideals, while the French republican tradition developed a particularly strong conception of laïcité—the principle of secular public authority and institutional separation from religious domination.

France has its own complicated history with religion.

It has not always been perfectly tolerant.

It has its own controversies over religious dress, religious symbols, immigration and Islam.

Therefore, France cannot claim some immaculate record of secular virtue.

But that does not weaken the fundamental point.

The French Republic has established a powerful political expectation that women cannot be removed from public life because a religious belief finds their presence objectionable.

That principle is not anti-Hindu.

It is not anti-Muslim.

It is not anti-Christian.

It is not anti-religion.

It is pro-equality.

The BAPS controversy therefore presents an almost surreal historical inversion.

India—one of the world's oldest civilisations and a country that proudly speaks of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam—has a religious delegation in Paris that is accused of insisting upon an arrangement that made women less visible.

At almost the same time, India's Prime Minister was telling the Paris temple inauguration that India's spiritual traditions represented universal brotherhood and that the temple would contribute to cultural relations between India and France.

The contradiction is painful.

What kind of universal brotherhood requires women to disappear?

What kind of cultural diplomacy exports equality selectively?

What kind of spiritual civilisation asks a woman to step aside because of her sex?

These are not anti-Hindu questions.

They are questions that any civilisation confident in its values should be willing to answer.

When religion becomes an alibi for discrimination

Religion cannot become a magic word that immunises discrimination from scrutiny.

If a religious practice concerns an individual's own worship, conscience or ritual, democratic society must protect it.

But when that belief is converted into a demand that another person surrender an equal civic or professional position, the matter changes.

A male employee cannot reasonably claim that his religion gives him a right to exclude female colleagues from their professional roles.

A customer cannot ordinarily dictate that a public institution's women employees should disappear because of the customer's religious sensibilities.

A religious delegation cannot acquire sovereignty over a public workplace simply because it is religious.

This is the precise reason the SETE response is important. The Eiffel Tower operator acknowledged that the conditions requested to limit interaction with women were inconsistent with its values and with equality between men and women.

That admission should not be ignored.

Nor should the investigation be prejudged.

But the principle is straightforward:

religious freedom protects a person's faith; it does not grant that person authority over another person's equality.

Marx and the new opium

Karl Marx famously described religion as the “opium of the people.”

The statement is frequently reduced to an attack upon faith, but Marx's argument was more complex. Religion could provide consolation to people living under suffering while simultaneously obscuring the material structures producing that suffering.

The metaphor becomes disturbingly relevant in the twenty-first century.

The opium has not disappeared.

It has been modernised.

It comes through spectacular temples, televised rituals, political pilgrimages, religious inaugurations, social-media imagery, monumental architecture and the constant merging of sacred symbolism with political identity.

The nineteenth-century opium was perhaps administered through the pulpit.

The twenty-first-century opium is delivered through television, social media, political spectacle and state-associated religious events.

And what makes the Paris episode particularly fascinating is that this spectacle has travelled beyond India.

The temple is in France.

The Prime Minister addresses its inauguration from India.

The religious delegation visits the Eiffel Tower.

A dispute over women follows.

Suddenly the old Marxian question acquires a new geographical location:

What happens when the religious spectacle leaves the temple and enters the workplace?

The answer is visible at the Eiffel Tower.

Women workers were reportedly instructed to move aside.

The monument closed.

Workers protested.

French politicians reacted.

An investigation began.

The religious institution apologised for the distress.

The spectacle of faith collided with the reality of labour rights and gender equality.

The opium, for a moment, encountered the alarm clock of constitutional democracy.

The BAPS labour controversy cannot simply be forgotten

This is not the first time BAPS has faced serious controversy abroad.

In 2021, more than 200 Indian workers were involved in litigation concerning work at the BAPS temple complex in Robbinsville, New Jersey. The complaint alleged that predominantly Dalit and other marginalised workers had been brought to the United States on R-1 religious visas but were actually engaged in extensive manual construction work. It alleged working hours exceeding 87 hours a week, compensation of approximately $450 per month and other coercive conditions.

The allegations included confiscation of passports, restrictions on movement and exploitation of caste-marginalised workers. BAPS disputed aspects of the allegations, and the litigation has continued; the case therefore must be described as allegations rather than established judicial findings. As recently as 2026, the case remained active, with litigation over motions and protective relief.

This history matters not because every allegation against a religious organisation must automatically be believed.

It matters because it demonstrates why religious institutions, like governments and corporations, must be judged by universal standards.

A temple does not become a moral exemption zone.

A religious charity does not become a labour-law exemption zone.

A religious delegation does not become an equality exemption zone.

And a temple does not become a constitutional exemption zone.

If a religious organisation preaches compassion, service and human dignity, its treatment of workers and women must withstand the same scrutiny that would apply to any other institution.

Indeed, religious institutions should welcome higher scrutiny.

The greater the moral claim, the greater the moral responsibility.

The Dalit question makes the debate even sharper

There is another uncomfortable contradiction.

The BAPS tradition publicly presents itself through service, spirituality, community welfare and universal values. Its Paris inauguration has been presented as an expression of cultural harmony and India's civilisational contribution to Europe. BAPS itself describes its global activities in terms of faith, service and harmony.

But the New Jersey litigation brought allegations involving Dalit workers and extraordinarily poor labour conditions.

The juxtaposition demands scrutiny.

India's constitutional morality did not emerge merely to protect religious sentiment.

It emerged to destroy hierarchies.

Article 17 abolishes untouchability.

Equality before law is guaranteed.

Equality of opportunity is guaranteed.

The dignity of the individual is embedded in the constitutional order.

Therefore, any religious organisation operating globally must be asked a basic question:

Does its social practice reinforce human dignity, or does it reproduce hierarchy under the protective language of tradition?

That question is not anti-religious.

It is precisely the kind of question a democratic society must ask.

Tradition cannot become a licence to freeze society

One of the most dangerous arguments in religious politics is that something must be respected simply because it is old.

Age is not an argument.

Tradition is not an argument.

Antiquity is not morality.

The fact that a social practice existed in the eighteenth century does not make it suitable for the twenty-first.

Human civilisation progresses precisely because societies periodically examine inherited practices and ask whether they remain compatible with dignity, equality and liberty.

If tradition had absolute authority, there would be no abolition of slavery.

There would be no women's suffrage.

There would be no abolition of untouchability.

There would be no modern labour law.

There would be no constitutional equality.

The central question must therefore always be:

Does this practice respect the equal human dignity of the person subjected to it?

If the answer is no, tradition cannot be its defence.

The real victim is not Hinduism

There is an important distinction that must not be lost in the political heat.

The Eiffel Tower controversy is not an indictment of Hinduism.

Hinduism is too vast, diverse and internally plural a civilisation to be reduced to the actions of one religious organisation or delegation.

Nor should Hindus around the world be made collectively responsible for the actions alleged in Paris.

The criticism should be directed at the specific conduct, institutional decision-making and political symbolism involved.

Indeed, the strongest defence of Hinduism is not to suppress criticism of BAPS.

It is to insist that Hinduism, like every other faith tradition, can survive scrutiny.

A confident civilisation does not need immunity from questions.

It needs the courage to answer them.

And what of the Indian Government?

The Government of India should not be accused of directing the Eiffel Tower incident without evidence.

That would be intellectually dishonest.

Nor is the Prime Minister legally responsible merely because he addressed the inauguration of the Paris temple.

The government is therefore justified in distinguishing its diplomatic role from the dispute at the Eiffel Tower.

But the political establishment cannot simultaneously claim that religious institutions are purely private when controversy arises and celebrate their public symbolism when political benefit is available.

That is the uncomfortable contradiction.

If a temple inauguration is sufficiently important for the Prime Minister to address an international gathering and describe it as a milestone in India-France cultural relations, then the government cannot pretend that the institution exists in a completely isolated private universe whenever questions arise about the social values associated with it.

Political proximity creates political responsibility—not necessarily legal liability, but moral and reputational responsibility.

The Government should therefore do something simple.

It should say clearly:

India supports religious freedom, but India does not support discrimination against women.

It should say:

Indian cultural diplomacy does not endorse gender discrimination.

It should say:

No religious tradition should be interpreted as a licence to diminish the dignity of women.

And it should say it without embarrassment.

The Government must not export religion as foreign policy

There is also a larger foreign-policy question.

India's cultural diplomacy should showcase civilisation, literature, yoga, music, cuisine, philosophy, science, architecture and pluralism.

It should not become synonymous with temple diplomacy.

A country of 1.4 billion people contains innumerable traditions.

India's civilisation is not exhausted by temples.

Its heritage includes Buddha and Kabir, Nanak and Basava, Ambedkar and Tagore, Gandhi and Periyar, Sufi traditions and Bhakti traditions, Sanskrit scholarship and Tamil literature, Buddhist philosophy and modern constitutionalism.

The most powerful Indian message to the world is not:

“Look at our temples.”

It is:

“Look at the extraordinary plurality of a civilisation that learned to live with difference.”

That is the India worth exporting.

The constitutional patriotism India needs

The RSS-BJP political project has often been criticised for attempting to make Hindu identity central to Indian nationalism.

Whether one agrees with that criticism or not, the constitutional alternative is clear.

Indian nationalism does not require religious uniformity.

It requires constitutional loyalty.

The Indian citizen does not become more Indian by being more Hindu.

Nor does the Muslim become less Indian by being Muslim.

Nor does an atheist become less patriotic because he does not worship.

The Constitution is the common political religion of the Republic—not in the theological sense, but in the sense that constitutional values provide the common framework within which radically different beliefs coexist.

That is why the Constitution matters.

It protects the believer from the State.

It protects the minority from the majority.

It protects the individual from the community.

And, most importantly, it protects the citizen from the State's temptation to identify itself with one religion.

The danger of the “majority faith = national identity” equation

Once religion and nationalism become politically interchangeable, criticism of religion begins to be portrayed as criticism of the nation.

That is dangerous.

A Hindu can criticise a temple.

A Muslim can criticise a mosque.

A Sikh can criticise a gurdwara.

A Christian can criticise a church.

An atheist can criticise all of them.

That is freedom.

But when religious institutions become politically sanctified, criticism becomes politically costly.

The result is a society in which religious organisations gradually acquire an informal veto over public debate.

That is precisely what a secular constitutional order must prevent.

What happened at the Eiffel Tower is therefore larger than the Eiffel Tower

The Eiffel Tower is made of iron.

But what happened around it was a confrontation over something much more precious:

the visibility of women in public life.

If a woman must leave her workplace because a religious visitor does not wish to encounter her, she has not merely been moved geographically.

She has been reduced institutionally.

Her professional identity has been subordinated to someone else's religious sensibility.

That is why the staff protest matters.

It was not simply a workplace dispute.

It was a defence of the principle that women do not require anyone's religious permission to occupy public space.

The Paris investigation should therefore establish the precise facts.

But whatever its eventual findings, one principle should remain non-negotiable:

No religious delegation—Indian or otherwise—should be permitted to impose gender segregation upon a public workplace.

The answer cannot be another religious counterattack

The temptation will be to respond to criticism by saying that Western societies are hypocritical.

France has racism.

France has Islamophobia.

France has colonial history.

France has its own gender inequalities.

All true.

None of it answers the question.

If France fails its own ideals, France should be criticised.

But India's failures do not become acceptable because France has failures.

Democracy cannot operate on the logic:

“Your hypocrisy excuses mine.”

The proper democratic response is:

“Let us both do better.”

A warning for India

The Paris controversy should serve as a warning to India itself.

If religious organisations increasingly become vehicles of political legitimacy, if political leaders increasingly appear as chief participants in religious ceremonies, and if religious symbolism becomes a principal language of governance, the distinction between citizen and devotee begins to disappear.

That is dangerous for everyone—including Hindus.

Because once the State acquires a religious identity, every citizen who does not share that identity becomes psychologically peripheral to the nation.

The constitutional promise is precisely the opposite.

The Republic belongs equally to everyone.

The Prime Minister must choose the Republic

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has repeatedly spoken about India's global cultural influence, India's civilisational heritage and India's role in the world.

That influence will not be measured by the number of temples inaugurated abroad.

It will be measured by whether India is seen as a civilisation capable of combining tradition with modernity, faith with equality, spirituality with human dignity and cultural pride with constitutional restraint.

The Paris temple can be a symbol of Indian cultural presence.

But if its surrounding controversy leaves the impression that Indian religious conservatism seeks to export gender segregation along with temple architecture, India's soft power suffers.

That is why the Government should take the matter seriously.

Not because BAPS is responsible for the Indian State.

But because the Prime Minister has chosen to associate the highest office of the Republic with the inauguration of the institution at the centre of the controversy.

The answer should not be defensive.

It should be constitutional.

A temple is private. A woman at her workplace is public.

This distinction should settle the debate.

A religious organisation can determine who participates in its rituals, subject to law.

It can organise its ceremonies according to its beliefs.

It can maintain its religious traditions.

But it cannot carry those private rules into another institution and demand that employees of that institution surrender their equality.

The moment it does so, it crosses from religious freedom into social authority.

And the State must say no.

Conclusion: Let the Eiffel Tower remain standing

The Eiffel Tower survived wars.

It survived political upheavals.

It survived changing governments.

It survived the ideological battles of modern France.

It has now become the unlikely backdrop to a debate that India must take seriously.

The question is not whether BAPS is Hindu.

The question is not whether Narendra Modi is personally religious.

The question is not whether France has its own contradictions.

The question is whether religious belief can dictate the public status of women.

The answer of a constitutional democracy must be an emphatic no.

India's Constitution does not ask its citizens to abandon religion.

It asks the State to avoid becoming the instrument of religion.

It does not abolish faith.

It prevents faith from becoming a hierarchy of citizenship.

It does not prohibit temples.

It prohibits discrimination.

It does not attack belief.

It protects conscience.

It does not tell Indians what to worship.

It tells the State whom to serve:

every citizen equally.

That is why the present episode should not be brushed aside as a “private event”.

It is also why the Government of India should not overreact by treating BAPS as an enemy or by prejudging an ongoing investigation.

The appropriate response is simpler and more principled.

Investigate. Establish the facts. Condemn gender discrimination. Defend women’s equality. Maintain constitutional distance from religious authority.

And, above all, remember that the dignity of Indian civilisation is not demonstrated by the size of its temples.

It is demonstrated by the dignity accorded to its people.

If India wishes to project Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam to the world, it must first demonstrate that every woman—whether Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian, atheist or otherwise—is equally visible within the human family.

Otherwise, “universal brotherhood” becomes an unfortunate phrase in a world where women are still being asked to disappear.

Marx's metaphor of religion as opium remains provocative because political power has always discovered the usefulness of sacred emotion.

The twenty-first century has merely changed the delivery system.

Today the opium does not necessarily arrive through a sermon.

It arrives through spectacle.

Through cameras.

Through social media.

Through political endorsements.

Through monumental temples.

Through the fusion of religious ceremony with national prestige.

The democratic antidote is not atheism.

It is constitutional morality.

The antidote is equality.

The antidote is fraternity without hierarchy.

The antidote is liberty without religious veto.

And the antidote is a State confident enough to say to every religion:

Worship freely. Believe deeply. Serve humanity. But do not ask the Republic to make another human being smaller so that your faith can feel larger.

That is the line between religion and the Republic.

That line must not be crossed.

And if the Eiffel Tower controversy teaches India anything, it is this:

A nation does not diminish its civilisation by questioning its religious institutions. It diminishes itself when it becomes too afraid to do so.

References

1. Constitution of India, Preamble; Articles 14, 15, 17, 25, 26, 27 and 28.

2. S.R. Bommai v. Union of India, Supreme Court of India, 1994, on secularism as a constitutional principle.

3. Supreme Court of India, judgment discussing Articles 25–30 and the constitutional protection of religious freedom subject to constitutional limitations.

4. Supreme Court of India, discussion of Section 123(3) and 123(3-A) of the Representation of the People Act and the constitutional limits on the use of religion in electoral politics.

5. Reuters, “Paris investigates claim women were hidden from Hindu delegation at Eiffel Tower,” September 7, 2026.

6. Associated Press, report on the Eiffel Tower reopening after the staff strike over the treatment of female employees, September 8, 2026.

7. Euronews, “Eiffel Tower reopens following staff strike after female employees ‘made invisible’ for Hindu group visit,” September 8, 2026.

8. Ministry of External Affairs / Indian media reporting, statement that the Eiffel Tower matter was between the concerned entities.

9. Prime Minister of India, remarks at the inauguration of the BAPS Swaminarayan Hindu Mandir in Paris, September 2026.

10. Press Information Bureau, Government of India, “Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi addresses gathering at the inauguration of BAPS Swaminarayan Hindu Mandir in Paris,” September 6, 2026.

11. BAPS, official information concerning the 2026 Paris Festival of Culture and temple inauguration.

12. Kumar v. Bochasanwasi Shri Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha, Inc. et al., U.S. District Court, District of New Jersey, 2021 complaint alleging forced labour, wage violations and exploitation of Indian workers.

13. Reuters, report on allegations by Indian workers concerning labour conditions at the BAPS temple in New Jersey, May 2021.

14. NPR, reporting on the New Jersey litigation and allegations concerning Dalit workers, June 2021.

15. BAPS litigation status, reporting continuing proceedings in the New Jersey case through 2026.

16. Karl Marx, “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right” (1844), for the famous formulation concerning religion as the “opium of the people.”