The decision to keep women away when a delegation from Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha (BAPS) visited the Eiffel Tower provoked outrage in Paris and headlines in India. The Mayor of Paris called it unacceptable. Marine Le Pen, the French opposition leader, demanded an inquiry. But has it also embarrassed the Macron Government? Has it damaged India’s image? And is it a result of the close relationship between BAPS, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Gujarat BJP? In an interview with Karan Thapar for The Wire, Christophe Jaffrelot, one of the world’s top authorities on Indian studies, professor of South Asian Politics at Sciences Po in Paris and Professor of Indian Politics and Sociology at King’s College, London, discusses this and more.This is the full text of the interview, transcribed by Tamanna Kaul.Karan Thapar: Professor Jaffrelot, the decision to keep women away when a delegation from the BAPS denomination of the Swaminarayan sect of Hinduism visited the Eiffel tower recently has provoked outrage in Paris and headlines in India. Let me start by asking how do you, as a scholar of Indian politics and sociology, view this development?Christophe Jaffrelot: Well, it’s a very important development because you mentioned Marine Le Pen and the mayor of Paris, but it went across the spectrum. Everyone in the political class asked what’s going on there. And the question was; but what is the situation of women in Hinduism? And that is the question that we never asked. We never asked this question because it was taken for granted that gender issues were not on the top of the list of problems on the Indian side. And this is something you can explain because the BAPS temple is presented, from day one, as a typical Hindu temple. There is this systematic attempt at presenting the Swaminarayan movement as the embodiment of Hinduism in the diaspora. You have Hindu in the name of the temple and it’s not only in Paris, it’s also in London, it’s also in Chicago. Everywhere. So you have to explain to people that BAPS is not Hinduism, that the way priests and monks in the BAPS movement relate to women is not the standard Hindu practice. But you see the kind of damage that is causing in terms of soft power for the image of India.Karan Thapar: So, now people are questioning the role of women in Hinduism. They’re mistaking BAPS for Hinduism and they’re questioning the role of women in Hinduism. The extent to which Hinduism gives gender equality to both sexes?Christophe Jaffrelot: Yes, it has something to do with the very notion of equality in France. You know, you don’t have in French political culture the sense of multiculturalism that you find in the UK and the US. The values of republicanism – liberty, equality, fraternity may be a work in progress – but anytime there is any attack on one of these pillars of the French Republic, then there is an uproar and equality especially now, I would say, is the order of the day between genders and any attack on that front was bound to bounce back.Karan Thapar: Let’s explore that point a little further. It’s not just that women were kept away, but Dian Dovone, a union representative, has told Euro News that women workers were moved away from their workstations as the BAPS delegation passed by. That’s not just a breach of equality. It’s not just reprehensible. It’s actually embarrassing.Christophe Jaffrelot: Yeah, but that was bound to happen. We all know that the monks and the priest of BAPS can’t be in the company of women. You know what I find also very surprising in this, is the level of unpreparedness. We should have been prepared. Everyone should have been prepared for this. It’s one of the rules and regulations of the BAPS very well known by everyone. And this temple has been under construction for years. There’ve been delegations of the BAPS many times and every time the problem of how they relate to women was raised. So you have this incident in a very incomprehensible context and the question I asked myself is: Why did they take the risk of sending a delegation to a place like the Eiffel tower? What’s the point? Why do you need, as the high priest of BAPS, to climb the Eiffel tower – a place that has nothing sacred, nothing particularly religious, except if you look at it as a kind of myth and there I would say two things. One, is to have this photo op with the high priest of BAPS at the Eiffel Tower is a way to tell the world ‘look, we have now our footprint in the capital of France, the country of secularism, the secularised country par excellence’. Two this is a way to say, you may come as a tourist to France, do visit the BAPS Temple as well. And you know the location of this temple is very interesting. It’s next to Disneyland, Euro Disneyland and such a huge temple is not designed for the few Hindus we have in France. It has a different purpose. And I think the purpose is twofold. A symbol of the presence of Hinduism in a country like France and second, a place where you can visit, when you visit France as a tourist.Karan Thapar: Clearly, the BAPS high priest and the BAPS delegation were deliberately seeking to exploit the image of the Eiffel Tower. It is without doubt one of the world’s most iconic structures and for millions it’s a symbol of France.When they think of France, they think first, of the Eiffel Tower. Has this decision to keep away women when the BAP’s delegation visited undermined the values that the Eiffel Tower stands for? And has that upset the French?Christophe Jaffrelot: Well, that’s a good point. I had not thought about it before Karan, but I think it was certainly part of the outrage. It was not only about equality and gender relations. It was also a way to somewhat capture and appropriate what is so French that is indeed felt over. This association of the symbol of France with a priest goes against the old tradition of France as a secular country. You can’t find a more secular country in Europe, maybe in the world. It’s impossible to use religious symbols in public spaces. There is a law and you may remember that when the law was passed there was another problem, the turban of Sikh boys who could not go to school because they could not wear the turban. So you can see how deep this is. So to associate a symbol of the French identity to a religious figure certainly added to the outrage.Karan Thapar: Emmanuel Gregoire, the mayor of Paris, as I said in the introduction, has called this unacceptable. Aurore Berge, the French equality minister, has said, “In France, we do not ask women to erase themselves.” Marine Le Pen, the right-wing opposition leader, has demanded an inquiry. Has this incident embarrassed the Macron government?Christophe Jaffrelot: It has embarrassed the Macron government because the relationship between Macron and Modi is now very deep, very solid and there is no doubt that behind the BAPS temple is an official attempt at making France and India even closer.Modi makes a point to take part in inaugurations of BAPS temples around the world, either in person or from a distance. He was there in Abu Dhabi and for the Paris temple he gave his blessing in a video recorded message and the Indian embassy was constantly involved in the process of the making of this temple and the Indian ambassador to UNESCO was also very much involved. So, it’s not an unofficial private-religious only event. It’s very political in many ways which is also a reflection of the use of the state machinery of India by a group that is supposed to be made of non-state actors. You have non-state actors, now, very much part of the state machinery, the official diplomatic machinery of India.Karan Thapar: The truth, as you know professor Jaffrelot, is India also proclaims that it is a secular country although Indian secularism has been under threat during the Modi years very substantially. As a result of this incident, how do the French people view India and in particular the belief that we’re a secular country where everyone is equal? Has it affected the way India is perceived by the French people?Christophe Jaffrelot: That was already somewhat the case. There was a real fascination for India and not only in France but across the world, that was the soft power of India. The soft power of India was based on secularism, so much tolerance and toleration, democracy, rule of law, and not only Bollywood, far from that. That’s why the prestige of India, since the Nehru years, gave India a moral authority across so many countries. That image has changed. There is to my mind a transformation of the soft power India tries to, I would say systematize when you claim that your civilization is superior, is older, is the mother of democracy, is the mother of science. Of course, you do not attract sympathy the way soft power countries do, the way Japan and South Korea are doing. You alienate, you antagonize and I think this is where the nature of the soft power India tries to activate is changing and that is resulting in less empathy for the country. Karan Thapar: Has empathy for India diminished?Christophe Jaffrelot: Look at the opinion polls, Karan. The Pew Research Center opinion polls across the world. It has something to do also with the diasporas. You clearly have a new attitude among the diaspora in the US, in the UK, in Australia. In the context of rising racism, you know, racism has increased in the US, in the UK and when a minority does not try to integrate but try to develop even more visibly to expose even more visibly its culture, then you have tensions and tensions are also between minorities. When you have the Leicester riots in UK between Hindus and Muslims, you tell theUK people, well there is something new that is now in our midst. All these factors play a role. It’s not only of course the BAPS incident and other incidents even though these incidents have played a role and what happened in the US the BAPS temple in Robbinsville where Dalit workers had been brought without observing the labour laws. So much so that some of them died of silicosis, which has also taken its toll.Karan Thapar: So there is a rethinking of the way India is perceived and that is to India’s detriment isn’t it?Christophe Jaffrelot: This is what the surveys have told us for a few years now. All the surveys converge on this front. This is partly reflected in the erosion of tourism in India. You don’t have as many tourists in India as in Albania today and that’s partly, to my mind, a reflection of this change of the image.Karan Thapar: Quite right, fascination for India is waning. Instead, what is taking its place is concerned about the sort of country it is and a revelation that maybe we misunderstood India.Christophe Jaffrelot: I hope I’m wrong but you may be right.Karan Thapar: Let me ask you a very different question. SETE, the company that runs the Eiffel Tower has told French journalists that the BAPS delegation requested that their visit to the Eiffel Tower be organised in such a way as to limit interactions with women. My question is why did the French authorities agree? Was that mistaken courtesy or just a foolish mistake?Christophe Jaffrelot: Well, they were very embarrassed by that and the information you are mentioning just now became public only yesterday evening and journalists could produce the note you are referring to. Yes, that’s very embarrassing.Both hypotheses, the two questions you ask, are plausible. I would say it comes from above. There was probably a chain of command responsible for asking the Eiffel Tower management to make sure that everything went well. It is so political. Nothing wrong should have happened and in fact they took the risk of having a trade union resisting this order.Karan Thapar: When you say a message came from above are you hinting at the Elysee palace?Christophe Jaffrelot: I don’t know. It may not be that high, but it’s very plausible that everything had to be done by the French authorities for making this delegation, spending the time they wanted to spend in the Eiffel tower, smoothly.Karan Thapar: This is clearly a suggestion that the higher authorities whether it’s the Elysee palace or the Quai d’ Orsay or wherever, are aware of the very close relationship between Narendra Modi, the Swaminarayan and the BAPS high priest. In a sense this was done as a difference to the prime minister’s sentiments?Christophe Jaffrelot: That goes without saying and we know this proximity is very old. As early as 2001, Narendra Modi and the BAPS worked together in Gujarat. You may remember after the earthquake in Gujarat, Modi became chief minister 6 months after that, so much reconstruction work was handed over to the BAPS. So much work was done jointly with the Vishva Hindu Parishad and others and villages were rebuilt the way they wanted villages to be rebuilt. That’s the first instance of collaboration between BJP in Gujarat, BAPS and Narendra Modi. But there are so many other instances. The inauguration of the Sabarmati riverfront – who was on the boat with Narendra Modi? No one else but the BAP’s leader. And the list of events is very long. Plus what happens in the diaspora when Modi himself inaugurates BAP’s temples.Now this is clearly a sign of a kind of Gujratisation of Hinduism at the highest level and the fact that the Ayodhya temple looks very much like a BAP’s temple is not something unimportant to my mind. And then you have a big BAPS temple in Delhi. There is no BAPS temple outside of Gujarat except in Delhi. Why? And when these events come to India, where does he go? To the BAPS temple in Delhi? So you have this kind of osmosis between the state, the Modi government at least, and a sectarian movement that of course the French government cannot ignore. No one can ignore this.Karan Thapar: Let’s for a moment talk a little about the relationship between BAPS, the Swaminarayan sect and Narendra Modi. It’s something that Indians are not fully aware of. You’re a scholar not just of India but of Gujarat in particular. You can help explain it to the audience. In 2024, Modi described his relationship with the former leader of BAPS, the former high priest Pramukh Swami Maharaj as akin to that of a father and son. That suggests a very close relationship, emotional, spiritual and sentimental?Christophe Jaffrelot: Yes and it has to do with the variant of Hinduism that BAPS embodies Hindutva. There are close affinities between the two. You take, for instance, their view of the history of the Hindu civilisation. BAPS temples are not only places where you pray. It’s not only for religious practices. There are schools, exhibitions, museums, shopping malls and restaurants. It’s a business in a way, but it’s also very interesting to see what they say of the Hindu civilisation and you’ll find there all the basis, I mean all the pillars of the Hindutva ideology. You know about the Aryan invasion, Sanskrit, the mother of all languages and so many other things. Two, the kind of discipline the priest and the monks observe is very similar to what you find on the RSS side. You know, it’s very fascinating to see this obsession with aceticism, very strict vegetarianism, no garlic, no onion in any of the BAPS temples. That’s another ethos, another discipline that matters and third the caste issue, you know in the diaspora, the Sangh parivar and BAPS have joined hands for fighting any law, regulation denouncing caste as a mark of a criterion for discrimination.It happened in the UK in 2013 and in the US. Their vision of caste is such that you have a very brahminical ethos at the back of the mind. In the diaspora BAPS temples are not for lower caste people and you have another temple for the low caste people in some places. Remember that in 1958, they wanted to be recognised as non-Hindu for not being obliged to open their temples to Dalits. Now, that’s their legacy, that’s the baggage. In Gujarat, where vegetarianism with all its meaning is so important, you have one caste group that has become the most important, I would say milieu for BAPS, the Patels. Patels have followed a Sanskritization process by becoming BAP’s followers. They were the first caste in the whole history of India to transition from agriculture to trade and from trade to professional activities. They are advocates, doctors and of course merchants. And they became the main support base of BJP in the 1980s. Because of Solanki’s decision to promote reservations they shifted from Congress to BJP, from Chimanbhai to Keshubai Patel. That helped of course BJP a great deal but that also transformed BJP making it even more BAPS oriented. So all these explanations pertaining to ideology to social support, electoral support, explains why Narendra Modi and BAPS are very close.Karan Thapar: Is Narendra Modi in any sense indebted to BAPS? I don’t mean financially, I mean emotionally and spiritually? He revealed in 2002 that when he stood from Rajkot, Pramukh Swami gave him a pen to sign his nomination papers and since then I believe Modi has used the same pen to sign all his election nomination papers. Does that one little story reveal not just the bond between Modi and BAPS but a sense in which Modi feels indebted to BAPS?Christophe Jaffrelot: I don’t know. This is very interesting. I have no idea of the intimacy question but we’ve seen them together, the BAPS leader and Narendra Modi on many occasions. And it’s a little bit like the purohita and the ruler. As if the BAPS leader could be the moral counselor legitimising political authority, the politician and that’s why Modi has attended many BAPS functions and vice versa. When I mentioned the inauguration of the Sabarmati riverfront in Ahmedabad it’s the first time we had a priest in the boat. I mean on the right, next to the chief of the government and this idea that you need some religious legitimisation to your temporal power is very much there in the RSS. Golwalkar wanted to be the Raj Guru of the Indian government. So, it is plausible that we have a very strong reciprocal relationship between the two. Karan Thapar: My last question professor Jaffrelot, BAPS has tweeted a statement expressing sincere apologies to anyone who may have been hurt or inconvenienced by this situation. Is that apology sufficient or is it too little and too late or is it actually irrelevant? Christophe Jaffrelot: Well, it’s too early to say what the impact of this note will be. It will be very interesting to see now how the mayor of Bussy Saint Georges, the place where the temple is, behaves and related to the BAPS people. How will the pilgrims be welcomed and perceived?They may not have heard of this apology and will the prejudice and the stigma remain? There is certainly something more to do. Apologies may not be sufficient and people will have to to certainly work on it. The Indian embassy has been completely silent on this issue. No apology, no explanation, nothing. And I think the bull is in their court to a large extent if they want to undo the damage that has been done.Karan Thapar: It’s not just the Indian embassy in Paris that has been completely silent. When the spokesperson of the Indian Ministry for External Affairs Randhir Jaiswal was asked about this, he refused to say anything claiming this is a matter purely between the entities concerned. In other words, this is a matter purely between BAPS on the one hand and the authorities that control the Eiffel Tower on the other. Is that a narrow view? Christophe Jaffrelot: Of course, you can’t say that when your embassy people are taking part in the inauguration of a temple in the company of the person who is presiding over the region. We don’t have a state, we have regions in France. Valérie Pécresse was very upset when the incident occurred because she had been involved officially, she represented the French authorities and you have this incident. So it’s not between two entities that do not include the Indian state. It was part of it.Karan Thapar: So the Indian response is blinkered if not totally insufficient?Christophe Jaffrelot: You know this is the strategy of denial we see so systematically. You know this government does not say anything when a building crumbles down killing Indian students, doesn’t say anything when Chinese are encroaching on the territory of India in the Himalaya. Anything wrong is denied but that’s not enough definitely.Karan Thapar: Professor Jaffrelot thank you very much for the time you’ve given me and thank you very much for your insight into this story which not just intrigues Indians, it perplexes them, it distresses them and undoubtedly it will also embarrass them. I’m deeply grateful to you. Take care, stay safe. Christophe Jaffrelot: Thank you Karan.