New Delhi: The outcry in France over the Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha (BAPS) continued on Sunday (September 13), with the sect originating in Gujarat forced to cancel a parade to end its two-week celebrations. The outfit, which recently inaugurated a temple in Bussy-Saint-George, Paris, said the march would be held at another date.The cancellation of the “grand parade” followed protests by French left-wing groups outside the town hall in Bussy-Saint-George against restrictions imposed on women during a BAPS team visit to Eiffel Tower. The protest was also against the support BAPS has received from French authorities as it expands its presence in France. “BAPS is a problematic religious organisation. The fact that the red carpet is being rolled out for it in Bussy-Saint-Georges raises questions for us,” Anass Bettaieb, section secretary of the Socialist Party, told La Marne, a prominent French news outlet. The new BAPS temple was conscecrated on September 6, and a day before that, a delegation of 100-odd monks visited the Eiffel Tower. Employees went on strike on the following Monday (September 7), saying women employees at the landmark were made to leave their posts and were told not be visible during the visit by the sect.In a statement issued a day after the visit of BAPS delegation, Eiffel Tower staff had said they objected to “professional instructions that led to female employees being sidelined, replaced and made invisible because of their sex”.The all-male BAPS delegation was led by the chief priest, a 93-year-old whose birthday was on September 13, coinciding with the final-day celebrations for the temple. The bar on women led to outrage and anger in France. It also threw BAPS as an institution under the spotlight.“The resulting portrait is far from flattering: a conservative view of society, a defense of the caste system, religious conservativism…Hindu opponents [of BAPS] even label it an ‘extreme-right cult’,” said the report.The publication said that the claim that BAPS was a “cult” was refuted by Cédric Tartaud-Gineste, chief of staff to the mayor of Bussy. “When someone mentions a ‘cult’ to me, I have one immediate reaction: I check the website of Miviludes [the Interministerial Mission for Monitoring and Combating Cultic Deviations] and BAPS isn’t on the list,” he said. The BAPS temple inauguration was handled like “any other religious group wishing to set up here,” the chief of staff said. But on Sunday, the town’s mayor, Yann Dubosc, reaffirmed his support for BAPS in a speech, and lashed out at those who “have apparently become BAPS experts overnight, whereas for years no one was concerned about this organisation’s arrival”.French opponents of BAPS’s philosophy and activities point out the institution’s proximity with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who inaugurated the sect’s temple in Abu Dhabi.Meanwhile, the public-owned company that runs the Eiffel Tower day to day has said it is investigating how the Indian BAPS team could limit women’s movement and visibility during its delegation visit.Modi has had a longstanding association with BAPS and its late spiritual leader Pramukh Swami Maharaj, dating back to before he entered electoral politics. At a BAPS event in Ahmedabad in December 2022, Modi said he first met Pramukh Swami around 1981 and recalled that the spiritual leader had called to check on him during the BJP’s “Ekta Yatra” held in early 1990s.He also said that in 2002, when he was contesting an election from Rajkot, two BAPS sadhus gave him a pen that Pramukh Swami had asked him to use to sign his nomination papers. Since then, Modi had used the pen from BAPS spiritual leader to sign his election nomination papers, including to stand for Lok Sabha from Varanasi.At the inauguration of the BAPS temple in Abu Dhabi in 2024, Modi described his relationship with Pramukh Swami as “akin to that of a father and son”, saying he had continued to receive his guidance while serving as Gujarat chief minister and prime minister.La Marne reports on concerns about the sect’s rule to exclude women from its congregational activities. “The fact that such a large temple is being set up in the absence of a congregation speaks to a desire for expansion,” Arnaud Bonnet, the local Green Party MP told the publication. For him, “what happened at the Eiffel Tower merely confirms the warnings [he] had received from the Hindu diaspora.”“The arrival of BAPS, as well as the privatisation of public space for the festivities, raises questions. If City Hall didn’t know who they were, that’s called incompetence…” said the socialist party representative Bettaieb.Regarding the Eiffel Tower incident, the publication cited Dubosc, the mayor of Bussy-Saint-Georges, as saying that the problem arose less from the BAPS delegation’s request than from the operating company’s decision to grant it, reports La Marne. He said he believes BAPS has become the victim of a “media frenzy” that tends to caricature the movement.The cancelled procession on September 13 was supposed to run through the streets of the town to mark the end of the festivities, La Marne earlier reported.