{"id":5133,"date":"2005-03-20T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2005-03-20T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2005\/03\/20\/2005-03-20-new-york-sikh-student-retains-right-to-wear-kirpan\/"},"modified":"2005-03-20T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2005-03-20T12:00:00","slug":"2005-03-20-new-york-sikh-student-retains-right-to-wear-kirpan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2005\/03\/20\/2005-03-20-new-york-sikh-student-retains-right-to-wear-kirpan\/","title":{"rendered":"New York Sikh Student Retains Right to Wear Kirpan"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a HREF=\"http:\/\/www.unitedsikhs.org\/PressReleases\/PRSRLS-16-03-2005-00.htm\">Source<\/a><\/P><P>NEW YORK, USA, March 16, 2005: Despite 15-year-old Amandeep Singh&#8217;s exemplary academic and disciplinary records, he was suspended from his New York state Greenburgh Central School last month when the kirpan he has been wearing to school for 7 years was deemed to be an offensive weapon by his school authorities. The school principal determined at an initial hearing that Amandeep&#8217;s kirpan, a small knife that is an element of Sikh religious expression, was a &#8220;weapon&#8221; and had suspended him after a hearing. The United Sikhs advocacy team led by New York lawyer Gurpatwant Singh, intervened with the assistance of lawyers from the Becket Fund. Yesterday, Amandeep received a letter from School Superintendent Josephine Moffett expunging his record of the suspension and allowing him to wear his kirpan at school. Gurpatwant Singh said, &#8220;We recognize that the school has upheld the First Amendment and we admire the stance taken by the school.&#8221; Amandeep Singh&#8217;s family had sought help from the Sikh community last month and United Sikhs responded on Feb 7 by submitting a written representation to the Principal&#8217;s Office on the Sikh Articles of Faith. The Principal&#8217;s attention was drawn to Amandeep&#8217;s right to practise his religion under the First Amendment and a copy of the Sikh Rehat Maryada, code of conduct, was submitted in support. <BR><br \/>\n<\/P> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>SourceNEW YORK, USA, March 16, 2005: Despite 15-year-old Amandeep Singh&#8217;s exemplary academic and disciplinary records, he was suspended from his,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5133"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5133\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}