Hi,
Let me start with some background about myself. I was born and raised in America. My hair has been uncut my entire life. I don't drink. When I was young, my parents taught me about the Sikh religion and I was always very proud of it. I don't think any other religion is as progressive or sensible.
While I have always been proud to be Sikh, I can't say the same about being Punjabi. Why? I had some very bad experiences with Punjabi people in my youth. The children at the local gurdwara (where most kids had cut hair) would often tease me for keeping my kesh. As we got older, the teasing became less frequent, but I still felt like I was always shunned or excluded to a certain extent by the other kids. I was also ridiculed for being poor (my family doesn't come from a poor background in India, or a so-called "low caste", but some unfortunate circumstances that I will not get into contributed to a relatively low standard of living). Ironically, my non-Punjabi friends seemed to give me much less grief over my hair or the economic background of my family.
I know that these are just my own personal experiences, and I am not trying to say that all Punjabi people are like the ones I encountered as a youngster, but they nevertheless left me with a very bad taste in my mouth. I felt completely rejected by Punjabi people and since I left home to go to college, I tried my best to steer clear of them. I am aware of how paradoxical this all is: a man who is proud to be a Sikh and will not change his appearance or lifestyle to assimilate into "mainstream America", and yet feels uncomfortable around other Sikhs and does his best to avoid them.
Anyway, as a result of my bad experiences and subsequent isolation, I never really imagined myself marrying a Punjabi Sikh girl. Of course, I couldn't really imagine a non-Sikh girl taking an interest in me either. I guess I wasn't living in reality, but for what it's worth, I'd usually think of unrealistic scenarios in which I'd end up with a white girl, and never of unrealistic scenarios in which I'd end up with a Punjabi girl.
As I've gotten older (I'm now 27), I've slowly moved back into reality and realized how impossible it is for a non-Sikh girl to be interested in me. The association that people have with bearded, turbanned men and Islamic terrorism is just too pervasive. And even to the more enlightened, I will always look too "foreign". Consequently, I have tried to make myself understand that my bad experience with Punjabi people was something that I needed to come to terms with and let go of.
For the last year, I've tried to get back in touch with my Punjabi roots, and I've also tried to meet Punjabi girls. Of course, having isolated myself from the Punjabi community for so long, I don't know many Punjabi people and I've had to resort to matrimonial websites (like shaadi.com) to meet girls.
Here's the impression I've gotten: due to my beard and turban, I have about as little chance with 99% of Punjabi girls as I do with the average American girl.
Being objective, I'm far from a bad looking guy. I tie my beard, I'm tall, fit, and highly educated. If you are wondering about my caste, I'm jatt. Yet, I'm having a very hard time finding anyone who is even willing to talk to me.
I don't know where this leaves me. I could never live with myself if I cut my hair and shaved off my beard. It would violate my religious principles, and it would be a slap in the face to all the taunting and discrimination I have endured in my life. Yet, there is this inescapable feeling that I have that my decision to maintain a Sikhi sarup is equivalent to being sentenced to a lifetime of loneliness. I've been able to deal with what I went through as a kid, I've been able to put up with the post 9/11 bull-----, but this is just too galling.
Please understand that I'm not trying to make this a men vs. women issue. (I know there are a lot of issues that women in our religion/culture have to deal with.) And I'm not saying every last Punjabi Sikh girl will only consider a clean-shaven man. But, being objective, there are very few who would entertain the thought of marrying a sardar with an uncut beard.
I hope that this is just a difficult period that I'm going through and that if I look hard enough I will find the right person (although I have very serious doubts). But lets look at the issue beyond myself or any one person. It's human nature for a man to want the affection and companionship of a woman. What is going to happen to our community if the only options for a keshdari young man are to 1) go to India and find someone who he might not have much in common with and who is likely only interested in him so that she can come to America, or 2) go on with a needle-in-a-haystack type search (as I am doing) . Nobody likes to have such limited options, and it will be difficult even for substantially religious men to resist cutting their hair under such circumstances.
If we are to prevent the bearded, turbanned Sikh from disappearing, we have to do something. Blaming young Sikh women is not right and it is not productive. People are products of their environments, and from a young age, both in India and the west, people are conditioned to look at beards and turbans as unattractive. I wish we could do something to counter this. I wish there were some high profile, handsome sardars for people to observe. Beards and turbans do not have to be associated exclusively with al-Qaeda operatives you see on the news or buffoonish sardars in Bollywood films. They can have the regal, commanding quality that I (at least) get when I look at paintings of Guru Gobind Singh or Hari Singh Nalwa.
Anyway, I would greatly appreciate any insight or comments you might have about my predicament in particular or this larger problem that our community is facing.
