Sikh spiritual leaders express dismay at the rapidity with which a new generation of young men are trimming their hair and abandoning the turban, the most conspicuous emblem of the Sikh faith. While there are no hard data, Jaswinder Singh, a lawyer and leader of a “turban pride” movement, estimates that half of India’s Sikh men now forgo the turban, compared with just 10 percent a couple of decades ago.
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Since 1699, about two centuries after the founding of the religion, Sikh leaders have prohibited their members from cutting their hair, saying long hair is a symbol of Sikh pride. The turban was conceived to manage the long hair and intended to make Sikhs easily identifiable in a crowd.
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In addition, since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Sikhs traveling abroad have complained of being mistaken for turban-wearing Taliban and harassed by airport security guards.
Last time I went to India, I noticed that it was villagers with haircuts. A larger number of people in the city still tended to keep their hair. And at the same I noticed that the Sikhs diaspora had proportionally higher number of turbaned Sikhs.
ReplyDeleteAs the article mentions, the new "heros" are from Bollywood. I guess people absorbed in the Bollywood culture will invariably try to emulate it. And the fact that Sikhs in Punjab are so miseducated about their own history doesn't help either.