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Last week’s European Court of Justice ruling that employers have a right to set dress codes (that can exclude religious symbols and dress), came as a shock to turban wearing Sikhs, Muslim women who wear a headscarf, and many Christians and Jews. Despite assurances from the government, legal experts and the European Court of Human Rights stating that faith communities in the UK would continue to be free to both practice and manifest their religious belief, postings on internet discussion groups, suggest some people still feel the ruling might be used to their disadvantage. Some European politicians, playing to growing populism, welcomed the ruling. For me it was all déjà vu. in the early 80s, I spent a day and a half in court as an expert witness for the then Commission for Racial Equality, in a case against a school that said its uniform rules did not allow a Sikh boy the right to wear a turban in school. The case, that went all the way to the House of Lords, finally established the right of Sikhs to wear the symbols of their faith. During my cross-examination, I was asked: ‘Would you be equally offended if you were told you could not enter a church or a school? I replied: ‘No, because for a Sikh it is not necessary to go to a church. But it is necessary to be educated. A Sikh child would be placed at a severe disadvantage, especially when, to add to the hurt, he is told, “we are doing this in the interest of the racial harmony”. I honestly thought that we had now finally moved on from earlier insensitivity, to ‘those not like us’, but populism, which can open the door to racism, seems to be gaining ground in much of the world, with its unstated message that those ‘not like us’, are responsible for all our problems. Guru Gobind Singh, the last of the Sikh Gurus, directly challenged such prejudiced thinking. He taught: Though some see only difference, We are all of one race in all the world. We all have the same form, compounded of the same elements The one Lord made us all. I believe the Gurus words are a timely warning against the growing allure of populism, now all too evident in much of the world.