Hi there,
posting a response many years after the question was posed, but thankful for the opportunity to do so, since it is somewhat of an important topic, especially as it relates to how people see each other within the Sikh community.
Textile development up until the mid-20th century (or mid 1900’s) meant that fabric was either very coarse/thick or ultra fine, and the latter was/is Mal-Mal or F-74.
As a result, people used to starch their turbans. This made it bigger and clean (yet very light,) by increasing and hardening the layer of the fabric.
This was common amongst all Sikhs, for the most part, and of all backgrounds and castes.
So, you had most Sikhs either wear starched mal-mal or unstarched mal-mal.
While many sub-groups like Artisan workers, farmers or tradespeople from the Sikh community moved to other parts of the world, they took this style of Turban and fabric to the different parts of the world.
However, in India (and the rest of the world) textiles and manufacturing expertise evolved, resulting in better quality fabrics that didn’t need to be starched.
Consequently, people in Punjab especially, but also other parts of India started to wear full-voile and rubia-voile Turbans.
But people who left India continued to wear the old type of starched mal-mal fabric.
This is why people have different styles of turbans within the mainstream turban (ie, we are not talking about parnas, dumallas or gol dastars, only the layered turban which allows for a fifty in the middle aka Patiala-shahi style.)
