Visitors to Paris’s iconic Eiffel Tower last Monday (September 7, 2026) had to turn back in disappointment. The monument was closed following a protest against the management’s move to replace all women staff with their male colleagues for the visit of a 100-strong delegation from the Hindu religious sect, Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha (BAPS).
BAPS is known for adopting strict gender segregation. But the attempted imposition of its belief system in a country that takes pride in its progressive culture and gender norms sparked a swift backlash. French politicians were also quick to condemn the incident, with far-right leader Marine Le Pen saying, “In France, we will never accept that the presence of women be limited. BAPS, however, is no stranger to controversy. But the lawsuit claimed that BAPS made them do manual labour, including cutting, grinding, polishing, carving and installing stone, and other heavy construction work.
The abundantly funded religious group, according to its website, has over 1,300 temples across the world and a presence in more than 50 countries. It hit global headlines in 2021 following a lawsuit filed in a federal court in New Jersey that accused it of exploiting Indian workers brought to the U.S. on religious-worker (R-1) visas. An R-1 visa is meant for volunteers or devotees engaged in religious work.
Terming the incident “totally shocking and unacceptable”, Ariel Weil, the president of the company that runs the Eiffel Tower, announced an internal investigation to establish accountability and ensure it “never happens again”.
A criminal investigation, which began in May 2021 under the Biden administration, was abruptly closed in mid-2025 by Department of Justice officials under the second Trump administration. The BAPS contested these claims. No reasons were given for the closure, which was unusual, given that the Trump administration pursued forced labour charges against other religious organisations. The civil cases against BAPS, however, remain open, with workers pursuing claims linked allegations of occupational lung disease. Interestingly, the wider Swaminarayan tradition to which BAPS belongs has a documented history of resisting Dalit temple entry. In a landmark judgment, the Supreme Court ruled against them.
When the Bombay Harijan Temple Entry Act, 1947 granted access to Dalits excluded from Hindu temples due to untouchability, representatives of the Swaminarayan Sampradaya resisted it vigorously.
The litigants claimed that BAPS “intentionally recruited workers from the Scheduled Caste” and subjected them to “forced labour…document servitude, conspiracy, and confiscation of immigration documents in the course of and with the intent to engage in fraud in foreign labour contracting. They litigated all the way to the Supreme Court, going to the extent of arguing that Swaminarayan Sampradaya constituted a religion “distinct and separate” from Hinduism and therefore its temples did not come under the legislation governing Hindu temples.
