Regression can't be peddled as diversity

Earlier this week, the Eiffel Tower found itself at the centre of a cultural skirmish. A Hindu temple organisation reportedly sought - and attained - gender restrictions on female staff working at the monument. Understandably, it sparked outrage and rebuke. The episode is a reminder of a principle too often forgotten: when you enter someone else's 'house' - whether country, institution or household - you abide by 'house rules'.

Temptation to bend local norms in accordance with other cultural practices is strong, particularly when cloaked in the language of 'respecting all traditions'. But respect cuts both ways. To demand that a host suspend its standards - of gender equality, racial fairness, caste neutrality or civic order - is not cultural accommodation but cultural imposition. France, especially with its secular republican ethos, is right to insist its public spaces be 'indiscriminate'. To do otherwise, as critics make of its 'lax' immigration policy, would be to erode the very values that define its society. This principle extends beyond a sect's whims being attended to in Paris. A society that tolerates, say, spitting on pavements because 'that's ok back home', or a vegetarian household coerced to put meat on its menu for its guests, ironically corrodes cultural pluralism. Uniform civil codes - whether in formal laws or informal social standards - exist precisely to prevent such friction. Exceptions can, and should, be made. But only to enrich, not undermine local norms.

Globalisation has made cultures and values intermix. But they cannot be used to slip in culturally-insensitive or offensive behaviour tolerated 'elsewhere'. 'Our house, our rules' may sound blunt. But it ensures that regressive 'club rules' aren't passed off as diversity.