californiasardar1

I used to hate this too. I don't know if you've been to Punjab lately, but having a trimmed/shaved beard with a turban is extremely prevalent in Punjab ... much more so than in Britain. I used to hate that, because I thought it made a mockery of our religion. I thought, "if you are going to do it, do it the right way. If you are going to trim your beard, then finish the job. Cut your hair, stop wearing a pag, and stop embarrassing us." But the more I think about it, it's better to encourage boys to keep the Sikh appearance in some form to whatever extent they can rather than adopt the all or nothing approach. The more boys walking around with some part of the Sikh appearance (be it a turban and kesh with a trimmed beard, or just a turban with cut hair and a clean-shaven face), the easier it is for boys who want to keep the full Sikhi sarup to feel like they are not alone and that they have some level of support.

The time when the beard first starts to come in substantially is most awkward and difficult for a young man trying to keep his kesh. Almost all guys I know who had uncut hair and eventually started cutting it did so when their beard first started coming in. It takes a while to get comfortable with it. Here's something you can do to ease the transition if you are worried about looking awkward or not looking like you did before: Stop going out with just a patka, and start wearing a pag. Not just a clumsily tied pag, but a nice, big turban which is tied neatly and looks impressive. Maybe this won't help much, but it might help you feel proud of your changing appearance when you look in the mirror. A lot of boys when their beard first gets kind of big keep walking around in a patka or, at most, a sloppy pag. It's no wonder they often feel funny about the way they look. I know this is not gurmat advice and other members of the forum might scold me for giving it, but if you are one of those "in between" people who has an attachment to keeping his kesh but is worried about being automatically perceived as an amritdhari when you aren't ready for that (and are not sure you ever will be), then you can adopt the more "secular" sardar look: 1. Wear a large turban (as I pointed out before) that is tied neatly. It should be the standard "Patiala Shahi" style, not a dumalla or keski. To get a better idea of what I mean, look at the type of pag that most popular bhangra singers wear. 2. Tie your beard up Again, I don't know how much it will help, but it might help you feel comfortable with your appearance. People might be less inclined to make assumptions about how religious you are if you have a fashionable pag and a tied beard rather than an open beard and dumalla. If anyone is going to jump on me for saying this, I'd just like to say: I'm not saying we should run away from being religious and try to avoid giving the impression that we are religious. But being perceived in this way is often something that young men struggle with. It's tough to carry the weight of such perceptions at such a tender age for many boys. Doing something to ease the transition is worth it if it allows you to keep your kesh.

Hi, I understand what you are going through, and how difficult it can be to question the importance of kesh and the role it plays in our lives. I have a lot to say about this, but will have to post a little later as I don't have the time at the moment to give the response that I'd like to. But I think it's great that you brought up this issue, as it's something which needs to be discussed. So many young Sikhs go through the same struggles. I will respond in full length soon.

You don't seem to have a basic understanding of genetics. I have as much of my father's "stock" as I do of my mother's. Going back, my Nana, Nani, Dada, and Dadi comprise an equal part of my ancestry. We can then go back to my 8 great-grandparents. 8 different surnames, all an equal part of my ancestry. So if my last name is Smith and I have a great-grandfather with the last name Brown, I share as much blood with a member of the Brown clan as I do with a member of the Smith clan. We can keep doing this and going further and further back. The point is, due to naming conventions where the father's surname is carried on, we get the idea that we are somehow more closely related to people with the same surname as us than we would be to anyone else. But that's not true. If you are going to worry about marrying someone with the same last name, you might as well worry about marrying someone with the same last name as ANY of your ancestors. It goes to show how silly it is. It's usually easy to check if you have any substantial relation with someone. If you don't, then don't worry about having the same surname. Marrying someone from the same pind is an entirely different matter, as there is probably some blood relation. However, if you have different ancestral pinds, having the same surname is probably not a problem at all.

This is unbelievably sad. Nobody could step up and take this poor boy to the hospital? wow

Guys, the more I think about it the more I realize just why kesh is important for spiritual growth. If you are going to keep your kesh, you are going to have to let go of the natural desire humans have to be perceived as attractive or popular or trendy. You are going to have to keep your lust for the opposite sex in check. You are going to have to control many of the desires that humans are consumed by. I thought if I tied the nicest, most impressive looking pag and if I fixed up my beard and tied it perfectly (so that it would look short, but still natural ... not all greasy and unnatural with the excessive fixer or gel or spray) it would make a difference. Surely some of those girls who love listening to bhangra songs sung by singers with impressive pags and trimmed beards would look at me and say "he's kind of cute." But no, it doesn't really matter what I do. A pag is a pag and an uncut beard is an uncut beard. Why take a second look, if you're a girl, when you can just find a mona so easily? I tried to look at myself in the mirror and instill some sense of pride (or even arrogance). "Look at me, I'm a sardar. I'm descended from the powerful zamindars." I tried to pretend I had some special (secular) status. You know all those bhangra songs talking about "putt sardaran de". They aren't talking about sardars in a religious sense. It's about an obsession with some sort of perceived status that comes with belonging to a certain social group. I tried to feel proud of my appearance in a non-religious, secular way. Because that's what most girls are attracted to, I thought. I tried to be more proud of my "jatt" background than my "sikh" background, because that's how I thought I needed to present myself. (I apologize for referencing a caste.) Well, my attempts to claim some sort of status, to feel like I was part of some exclusive group, that it was all my birthright ... they amounted to nothing and did not help. Girls who express an attraction to those who are culturally punjabi/jatt are generally specific about excluding the cultural aspects that I was hoping they would include (kesh and pag) Having a well-recognized jatt surname does not make you part of some group or give you any acceptance. The "mainstream" punjabi/sikh/jatt crowd will never accept you, period. Blood doesn't matter. Perhaps this is what Guru Gobind Singh Ji intended when he told us to keep our kesh. Perhaps we are only realizing it in this day and age. There is no social status, or popularity or sex appeal attached to keeping your kesh and wearing a pag. If you are going to do it, you can't do it these days for artificial reasons (at least in the West). You are going to have to keep your ego and desire in check and do it for religion and nothing else.

West London Singh is very entertaining Pedrorizzo has a lot of insightful things to say Samosa Singh contributed greatly to the thread I made about marriage

I think a lot of Sikhs from Pakistan did settle in Delhi, but not THAT many. Keep in mind that roughly half of the Sikh population pre-partition was in what is now Pakistan. Delhi doesn't have THAT many Sikhs. Also, Haryana was part of Punjab at the time. If that many Sikhs had settled in certain parts of what is now Haryana, it wouldn't be part of Haryana, it would be part of Punjab (as Haryana was carved out of Punjab on the basis of self-reported native language, but in effect divided along religious lines).

This brings up another interesting point: Considering how much of Doaba was Muslim pre-partition, a very large chunk of Sikhs who settled in Doaba after partition must have been from Majha or other areas of central/west Punjab. Do you know a lot of people from Doaba who were originally from what is now Pakistan? Did that have any major impact on the culture and language of Doaba? And, considering the economic hardship as well as the migration that Sikhs who moved east during the partition faced, could that be why so many Sikhs from Doaba (many of whom may have originally been from Pakistan) been so eager to try moving abroad?

I never heard of Doaba not being part of Punjab (you know, since Punjab means "five rivers" and Doaba is situated directly between two of them!) You are right that Malwa was not under Ranjit Singh's rule. Before Ranjit Singh, most of Punjab was controlled by various independent Sikh misls. Ranjit Singh conquered/united all of the misls north of the Sutlej River (Malwa is the region of Punjab south of the Sutlej). Ranjit Singh temporarily occupied much of Malwa (including Ludhiana), but various Sikh rulers in Malwa sought protection from the British in order to maintain some nominal control, and the British also wanted to keep Ranjit Singh from getting too powerful. Ranjit Singh did not have the resources to go to war with the British, so he had to relinquish the territory he had conquered in Malwa and signed a treaty with the British where he agreed to stay north of the Sutlej and the British agreed not to interfere with Ranjit Singh's campaigns to gain more territory in that region. Most of Malwa then became princely states which were indirectly ruled by the British (the rulers still had nominal control over internal affairs), while some parts of Malwa came under direct British rule. I've always felt sad, as someone having roots in Malwa, to know that my ancestors were under British rule while a powerful Sikh kingdom existed a few miles away.

As I said before, it depends on who you ask when it comes to explaining why Sikhs from Doaba were the first to leave India (and the reason they went to the UK was it was easier to go to than Canada and America due to immigration policy at that time). People from Malwa claim that Doabans had, on average, smaller landholdings so they had to look outside India earlier for better economic opportunities. People from Doaba will say that they were more adventurous or educated or financially stable, so they had the resources and inclination to look to move outside India earlier than Sikhs from other areas.

So here I am all these months later still looking. I've found that if you try long enough and look hard enough you'll be able to find a few girls willing to talk to you. But finding someone willing to talk to you is just the very first step. Who is to say that someone willing to talk will have enough in common with you for both of you to stay interested and move the talks forward? It's difficult for ANYONE (regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, etc.) to find someone who is right for them. But when you have to try so hard just to find someone willing to talk to you, it adds a sense of desperation because you know how limited your options are. That's not how someone should approach exploring a possible relationship. But it's hard to ignore the facts. I do feel that if I keep trying I will eventually be able to find someone. But I'm not sure if it will be because I found someone I really wanted to be with, or if I just kept lowering my expectations and settled. Anyway, even if I do find someone, the whole process has left me very bitter and disgusted. It's hard for me not to frown these days anytime I see Punjabi/Sikh people. At times, I wish I could just rid myself of my affiliation with the community. This is not the type of feeling I'd want to have moving forward if I do happen to find the right girl. But it's inevitable that the cycle would just repeat itself: I couldn't bare to let my sons cut their hair, but then I'd have to stand by and watch as their "own" community doesn't accept them and they have to go around struggling to find girls to talk to. As bad as things are now, they will be exponentially worse in the future. Perhaps this whole issue has just weighed me down too much and I should just take a break for a while and stop trying so hard to be a part of the Sikh community. Perhaps I can gain some clarity and come to terms with the way things will probably have to happen for me.

You are probably right about the Dhaliwals. However, you are absolutely wrong when you say Sidhus do not exist in Malwa. Malwa is filled with Sidhus! Brars are in fact a subset of Sidhus (Brar was a descendant of Sidhu). So all Brars are Sidhus, but not all Sidhus are Brars. I've known of Brars who use just Brar, some who use Sidhu-Brar (although the non-Brar Sidhus just use Sidhu, as you'd expect). It has nothing to do with whether they live in Malwa or Doaba. It is true that Brars do not exist in Doaba (which is what I asserted earlier). But there are LOTS of non-Brar Sidhus who live in Malwa (including some of my family). Places like Ferozepur, Muktsar, and Patiala are filled with Sidhus (who write "Sidhu" and not "Brar"). I think there are some Sidhus in Doaba, but there are far more in Malwa.

Yeah, it is interesting to learn about the migration patterns of the Sikh diaspora. For instance, I did not know that Majha Sikhs account for most of the diaspora in Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Australia. It wasn't until relatively recently that I found out almost all Sikhs who settled in the UK have roots in the Doaba region (and, indeed, I don't think I've personally met a single Sikh from the UK with roots in Malwa). The explanations will vary depending on who you ask. People from Malwa often claim that landholdings were generally smaller in Doaba, so people from that region were forced to consider migration earlier (and due to immigration policy, the UK was the number one option at that time). Of course, people from Doaba would probably counter and claim that they were more educated and that their landholdings, while smaller, were of higher quality and value, so they had the resources to move. I don't know what the truth is, but it's probably somewhere in the middle. I think you are right about the older Sikh communities in the Yuba City area. However, growing up in southern California, I encountered lots of people who (as I later found out) had surnames found primarily or exclusively in Malwa (Grewal, Sidhu, Brar, Dhaliwal, etc.). I've often wondered how the different origins of the Sikh diaspora in various areas has translated to the religious practice and preservation in different parts of the world. I've heard people claim that Majha Sikhs are the most religious, Malwa Sikhs are most "culturally Punjabi," and Doaba Sikhs are the most western or "modern." I don't know if that's true, and I don't know where Sikhi is stronger in the west (USA, UK or Canada). It does seem on the surface to me that turbans are more stigmatized in America than in the UK (due to the ignorance of the American people, and the way they confuse us with Muslims). In England, turbans appear to be somewhat fashionable and maybe that's why there's a large population of "trim Singhs" who wear pags but have little or no facial hair ("trim Singhs" are basically nonexistent in the US).

Actually, I'd say California is a pretty good mix. Although Doaba is probably still overrepresented (compared to the proportion of population it is in Punjab), I don't think it's nearly as much as in England. There are lots of people in California with roots in Malwa.

Here's another problem with Sikh boys in America: they don't take any care in their appearance. I see too many young men wearing patkas or very sloppy, unimpressive paghs. This gives the kesh-keeping Sikh an unfavorable general image. They become stereotyped as guys who don't take any care in their appearance. At least in India men attempt to tie proper paghs and make them fashionable.

I didn't know that this was common among Sikh boys (I assume you are talking about guys who keep their kesh). Anyway, it's tough in our culture for men to meet women in a "proper" way. Less religious functions (parties, clubs, etc.) are likely to have women not interested in Singhs. And it feels inappropriate to try to meet girls are more religious functions. I guess that leaves friendship as an option (since there doesn't seem to be a good setting to just approach a girl). But ending up emasculated is just bad and should definitely be avoided.

I noticed this in the US shortly after 9/11, but the trend seems to have largely faded away. What's almost as worrisome and embarrassing in another way is to see fully grown Singhs of age 25+ walking around wearing patkas. That just looks bad. As soon as you get a substantial beard you've gotta start wearing a dastaar. Patkas do not look good and should only be acceptable for children (due to convenience) or for adults who are exercising or taking part in some physical activity in which a dastaar would not be practical. Of course, what's much more embarrassing than either trend is to see men walking around Punjab wearing huge dastars with joora underneath but a beard trimmed to the point where they hardly have any facial hair.

It doesn't really make sense to use famous people as examples. I think any reasonable person would agree that Monty Panesar would have a different experience if he were an average joe with the same appearance and personality than he does in real life where he is a cricketer with a certain level of fame. So, unless we all have a realistic chance to become famous (or extraordinarily rich or prominent in some way), these examples don't mean much.

Thanks. I think you make a lot of great suggestions and I'm going to try some of these things.

Thanks for your suggestions. I think you make a lot of great points here. Getting involved in the community is probably a good idea, and it's also very important to try to keep the faith and focus on bani and not lose sight of the most important things.

Actually, since I need all the help I can get, I would be very willing to meet someone any way I can. The reason I've been discussing how to find my own partner is that I'm convinced the "bachola" or "matrimonial list" route is a waste of time precisely because I've usually been turned down point blank. But yeah, I totally agree with you that the best shot I (or any other Singh) would have is to meet women in real life and let them get to know me as an individual.

This is false. If Hari Singh Nalwa were alive today, he'd put his picture up on shaadi.com and every morning he'd check his email and read "SH4820702 has declined your interest". No one would take the time to listen/read about how he got his nickname or what the Pathans think of him. The conversation would end right after it was clear he was a sardar.

This is a great point and it's perhaps the most frustrating part of this search. How do you display your confidence or alpha-male qualities or whatever if no one is willing to talk in the first place? I'm convinced that there are plenty of girls who might be willing to marry a sardar if they met the right one and got to know him. But if matchmaking is going to be done online or through middle-men by exchange of photos and superficial details, these same girls won't even consider a sardar. That's because everyone has a preconceived image in their head of the type of person they'd like to see themselves with and, let's face it, for 99.5% of Punjabi girls the image is going to be of a clean-shaven guy. In the type of matchmaking that takes place in our culture, these superficial images of the type of person one can see themselves with filter people out before they can even be considered as individuals. After all, why should a girl force herself to think outside the box and consider someone who doesn't fit her image when there are clean-shaven guys walking around everywhere? She's not going to say "hmm, this whole time I've imagined myself with someone who looks like (insert clean-shaven bollywood star or whatever), but let me take a hard look at this sardar." Why would she do that when she can just click on the next profile or ask the middle-man to show her the next guy's photo? I sadly think that we are soon approaching the day when the keshdari sikh will have all but disappeared. Every day the notion of keeping kesh as being something "backwards," "extreme," or "outdated" is becoming more and more acceptable in the Punjabi community. When people are looking for a "religious" boy these days, they mean a religious boy without a beard. I've seen a few matrimonials where people even use both the terms "gursikh" and "clean-shaven" to describe the type of boy they are looking for. That's right. Discarding the kesh has become so acceptable and commonplace that some people have expanded the term "gursikh" to include people without kesh. Right now a lot of people who cut their hair still show at least some level of respect and acceptance to keshdari Sikhs because almost every "Sikh" will have either a grandparent or maybe a a few members of their extended family who are sardars. But what will happen in 20 years when young Punjabis will grow up never having known any relatives who keep their kesh? Do you think they will still view Singhs as their own or show them any level of respect?

No response, ConfusedAndFloating?