Marriage, The Perception Of Beards And Turbans, And The Future Of Our Religion (My Story)

[Guru_Da_Chella]

You are right that in a relatively short period of time this problem may go away by virtue of the fact that hardly any sardars will be left.

Just think about it:

1. Every day, keshdari boys are cutting their hair. On the other hand, how often do clean-shaven boys who have clean-shaven fathers suddenly decide to keep their hair?

2. How often does a girl with clean-shaven brothers and a clean-shaven father marry a sardar? I'm willing to bet it's quite uncommon. By contrast, it is not uncommon at all for a daughter of a sardar to marry a clean-shaven boy (and then have sons who'll grow up to be clean-shaven).

In other words, all of the traffic is going in one direction.

The number of Singhs is decreasing exponentially. I know many of you will continue to insist that this is okay because anyone who cuts their hair was too weak in the first place, and that only the strong will survive. But it is not very far fetched to conceive of a scenario in, say, 50-100 years where the population of sardars will be so small that they will truly be threatened by extinction. They might literally have trouble finding unrelated women to procreate with. I'm not joking.

Then we'll all be able to enjoy a rewritten history where kesh will be portrayed as an outdated practice that was only appropriate for its time, and something that is not required of a Sikh. Maybe the pundits will get their wish and we'll merge back into Hinduism.

I was hoping that we make such a big shout about this that the anti-turban problem will become a minor issue. At the moment it is such a major issue that I don't know which other issue to compare it with? Turban is such a respectful thing to wear, and very culturally, it is seen very respectful in punjabi and jatt culture, to be protected with honour and even life. To disrespect turban is supposed to be seen as really bad in our culture!!!

Well, some hindus actually respect turbans, some have a lot of respect for turbans. Some have great respect for Khalsa, others see khalsa as a warrior army but as either part of the hindu society, or allied with it. I am however seeing more positive turban roles in bollywood movies brought in with the increase in punjabi influence in them. I have seen some hindu punjabi girls liking sardars, I have been liked by hp girls, just don;t understand what's wrong with our own sikh girls liking turbans?

True. The traffic is only going one way. Our people are taking this clean shaven business way too lightly and nothing is being done about this. We are already a minority within the Sikhs and this all just happened since the mid 90s. Long ago when a Sikh boy cut his hair, it was a big deal within the family. Many times Sikh boys did not have the guts to cut their hair simply out of fear of his parents. But now even the parents do not care, and largely because Sikhi has taken the back seat in people's lives. Sikh mothers actually prefer their sons to be clean shaven because they think the boy will look more like her favourite bollywood hero and not to mention the fact that many of those same mothers preferred to marry a clean shaven man.

Before this trend of Sikh girls wanting to marry clean shaven boys was only in the west. But now this manmukh trend has caught up in India which is the heartland of Sikhi. A friend of mine who was educated and born and brought up in the west went to India to marry and HE was rejected by a girl in India because she wanted a clean shaven boy and the girl wasn't even from the cities. She was from a Pend in Amritsar(Guru Ki Nagri!!!).

This is an extremely serious problem and the Panth does not even realise it. Sikh jathabandis need to temporarily put every other issue on the back seat because right now more than ever MASSIVE Parchar is needed in Punjab to bring people back to Sikhi. If it is not going to happen now the damage will be irreversible for many decades. Right now the damage can still be undone. If Sikhs in India will not do the job maybe Sikhs in the west should go to India and do their part in doing parchar. I myself am planning to do this in a few years time. If not now, do it for your future generation because when your son grows up, who will be left to marry him? or would you rather see him cut his hair out of frustration just to get married? Singho! do something.

So many parcharaks come here on tours in the west to do Katha. They need to do it in India, not here. Punjab is the mecca of Sikhi. If SIkhi is lost there, what hope will be left for Sikhi in the rest of the world? before many people used to feel bad seeing so many hair cutting Sikhs in the west, but at least we had hope for Punjab. But can we still feel that hope now seeing so many Sikh boys becoming hair cutters in Punjab? Something seriously needs to be done.Right now the situation of Punjab is such that you will hardly find a Sabat soorat Gursikh boy in Punjab's village. When you do find one, it turns out the boy is a kirtaniya so that is why he has a untrimmed beard. I myself whenever I go do any pend in Punjab, the first thing people think is that I must be some kirtaniya or giani because full Sikhi sroop has become so uncommon amongst young Sikh boys.

We are taking this problem way way too lightly, you are so right. Gurdwaras are setting up matrimonials but not doing anything visible to gain any respect for sardars when it is soo obvious that the majority of sikh girls that use the services are anti-turban.

We need to speak and do parchar in a way that shows turban as super respectful, and to show disrespect to turban as being a very shameful thing.

If someone in India does it, then we can catch them there. Sometimes we must ask them, that do they feel ashamed of living and being born and bred on the land of the gurus and on the land where turban was of utmost importance? Also why do they find it difficult to wear turban on Guru's land when there are people in western countries wearing turbans with great respect?

But that's the more polite questions, sometimes you have to talk to the people there in their own language, which is not politeness! ie just shock them lol

[kds1980]

Well, some hindus actually respect turbans, some have a lot of respect for turbans. Some have great respect for Khalsa, others see khalsa as a warrior army but as either part of the hindu society, or allied with it. I am however seeing more positive turban roles in bollywood movies brought in with the increase in punjabi influence in them. I have seen some hindu punjabi girls liking sardars, I have been liked by hp girls, just don;t understand what's wrong with our own sikh girls liking turbans?

If Hindu or other religion girls are OK with sardars then what is the problem? Muslims don't care Whether the girl is muslim or not they just marry them and raise their family as muslims why sikh men just care about this issue.I think Sikhs need to shed this western liberal mentality that men and women are similar if a sikh man marry non sikh woman and raise family as sikhs then nobody should see it as problem

[lsingh]

Many of the Sikhs who emigrated to the West in the 60's and 70's mostly from the Doaba region of Punjab immediately cut their Kesh on arrival in the UK. Many of them drank and smoked and at the time the aetheist communist movement was quite strong amongst them. Many of them were not interested in Sikhism and just wanted to make money. As many people have said they would ridicule people who kept their Kesh and went to the Gurdwara. This kind of behaviour rubbed on to their families and has been mentioned their children would try and put down Sikhs who kept their identity. So with this mentatlity their children did not want to marry GurSikhs , hence why you have so many people asking for a clean shaven person.There has been some turnaround after 84 with respect for Sikhi rising in the west but it is not still the majority who believe in it. Gurdwaras need to push for respect for keeping Kesh and role modeles need to be presentrd to children.

[Guru_Da_Chella]

Well most of the sikhs who emigrated from Punjab were from the Doaba region in the 60s and 70s! And also its true, and since my family originates from Doaba, I can truly say Doaba people are the worst at respecting turban in the Indian punjab regions! And if it helps, you can ridicule them for their lack of respect for turban I give my permission!

Call it atheist communist, or just illiterate and uneducated, cos that's what I call it. The truth is, most of these turban hating families, and I say most or perhaps many, come from a background where their immediate ancestors, like parents or grandparents were uneducated or illiterate etc. I say we should lift their negativity towards turbaned males and put it back onto these loser families and make them look like they come from ignorant and uneducated backgrounds. Once we expose the losers they really are, maybe then we can instil cultural and dharmik values back into them as once again our brotherhood between each other is strengthened.

Anyway, I don;t care if anyone is with me or not, as long as no one stands in my way, as I believe these losers don't have the brain capacities to defend themselves to what we can speak against them, and lol. I laugh yet me and some other posters marriage prospects are really lowly, but what does negativity solve, negativity is the reason we are here in the same place! Positivity will make us rise once again (By the way I hope I can change most of the losers that post on this forum). I won't rest until I make these families and girls feel disgusted about the way they hate the paghs!

[DustOfTheSaintsFeet]

It's not just those who wear turbans.

I am not amritdhari and get abused, both verbally and physically by many, even/ especially my own family for practicing Truth.

It may not just be the turban, it's probably the fact that most on here are trying to discover who they really are. The kalyug negative energies that people harbour and emit sense this Truth/light that we emit and it irritates them greatly, hence you will find many amritdharis/students of Truth being slandered, targeted and even killed and or tortured- like our Gurus, those who have accepted martyrdom etc.

How many of you have been targeted by people and the motive of the attacker is totally illogical. Negativity is very powerful, not only are we attacked by humans(who have become demons on earth due to the negative frequecies they vibrate at), we are also attacked by demons/ghosts who do not like us doing bhagti.

My advice is to get used to it, it's MahaKalyug, all we can do is teach people out of the illusionary bulls*it until Peoples thoughts clean up or thoughts die, bringing along Satyug.

[californiasardar1]

Many of the Sikhs who emigrated to the West in the 60's and 70's mostly from the Doaba region of Punjab immediately cut their Kesh on arrival in the UK. Many of them drank and smoked and at the time the aetheist communist movement was quite strong amongst them. Many of them were not interested in Sikhism and just wanted to make money. As many people have said they would ridicule people who kept their Kesh and went to the Gurdwara. This kind of behaviour rubbed on to their families and has been mentioned their children would try and put down Sikhs who kept their identity. So with this mentatlity their children did not want to marry GurSikhs , hence why you have so many people asking for a clean shaven person.There has been some turnaround after 84 with respect for Sikhi rising in the west but it is not still the majority who believe in it. Gurdwaras need to push for respect for keeping Kesh and role modeles need to be presentrd to children.

Yeah, I've noticed that people whose families came to the West in the 60s or 70s seem to have less respect or awareness about Sikhism (I think my family, which has been in the US since the early 70s, is an exception). It seems they felt the only way to make it in the West was to completely shed their Sikh identities and try to become white, and thats what they encouraged in their children. By contrast, people who came to the West in the 80s and 90s (perhaps partially due to decreasing discrimination of minorities in Western countries, and partially due to the events of 1984) appear to have a little more respect for their religion and culture (although this doesn't seem to have translated when it comes to keeping kesh).

I never knew much about the whole Doaba/Malwa/Majha differences, but now that I think about it, most of the people I know of whose parents came here in the 60s and 70s (and who have little regard for Sikhism) are from the Doaba region. However, in the big picture, I don't know if the differences are really all that noteworthy. Perhaps Malwa has a smaller proportion of fully clean-shaven Sikhs than Doaba and a higher proportion of trimmers who wear turbans. And perhaps that means, in a very marginal sense, the people from Malwa have more attachment to the Sikh religion. But when it's all said and done, the number of young turban-wearing, non-trimming men in either region is depressingly small.

[californiasardar1]

True. The traffic is only going one way. Our people are taking this clean shaven business way too lightly and nothing is being done about this. We are already a minority within the Sikhs and this all just happened since the mid 90s. Long ago when a Sikh boy cut his hair, it was a big deal within the family. Many times Sikh boys did not have the guts to cut their hair simply out of fear of his parents. But now even the parents do not care, and largely because Sikhi has taken the back seat in people's lives. Sikh mothers actually prefer their sons to be clean shaven because they think the boy will look more like her favourite bollywood hero and not to mention the fact that many of those same mothers preferred to marry a clean shaven man.

Before this trend of Sikh girls wanting to marry clean shaven boys was only in the west. But now this manmukh trend has caught up in India which is the heartland of Sikhi. A friend of mine who was educated and born and brought up in the west went to India to marry and HE was rejected by a girl in India because she wanted a clean shaven boy and the girl wasn't even from the cities. She was from a Pend in Amritsar(Guru Ki Nagri!!!).

This is an extremely serious problem and the Panth does not even realise it. Sikh jathabandis need to temporarily put every other issue on the back seat because right now more than ever MASSIVE Parchar is needed in Punjab to bring people back to Sikhi. If it is not going to happen now the damage will be irreversible for many decades. Right now the damage can still be undone. If Sikhs in India will not do the job maybe Sikhs in the west should go to India and do their part in doing parchar. I myself am planning to do this in a few years time. If not now, do it for your future generation because when your son grows up, who will be left to marry him? or would you rather see him cut his hair out of frustration just to get married? Singho! do something.

So many parcharaks come here on tours in the west to do Katha. They need to do it in India, not here. Punjab is the mecca of Sikhi. If SIkhi is lost there, what hope will be left for Sikhi in the rest of the world? before many people used to feel bad seeing so many hair cutting Sikhs in the west, but at least we had hope for Punjab. But can we still feel that hope now seeing so many Sikh boys becoming hair cutters in Punjab? Something seriously needs to be done.Right now the situation of Punjab is such that you will hardly find a Sabat soorat Gursikh boy in Punjab's village. When you do find one, it turns out the boy is a kirtaniya so that is why he has a untrimmed beard. I myself whenever I go do any pend in Punjab, the first thing people think is that I must be some kirtaniya or giani because full Sikhi sroop has become so uncommon amongst young Sikh boys.

I think you are absolutely right. The Sikh community should put all other issues aside and focus on how to turn things around before it is too late.

I think a big problem with the youth is there are no authoritative figures to even push them in the right direction. If you go on facebook and look at any random Khalistan or Bhindranwale page, most of the kids posting there have their hair cut (it's quite amusing, I must say). They obviously have some love for Sikhi in their hearts, but my guess is that no adult in their lives ever even attempted to get them to keep their kesh, and it was probably never even a consideration for them at any point in their lives, no matter how they eventually came to take pride in their religion.

However, I think that observation mostly applies to the West, where the youth generally are brought up with indifference towards our religion. Sadly, in Punjab, it seems not to be indifference, but rather actual contempt. In the West, innocent kids will have grown up without ever having been taught about their religion. In Punjab, they will grow up aware of the religion and with the view that the last thing they want to be is someone who looks like a "giani" or "baba". With them, it's not that the option of keeping their kesh was never presented to them. In Punjab, kids are all well aware of that option. It's just that its been portrayed as the obviously wrong option.

[californiasardar1]

Well most of the sikhs who emigrated from Punjab were from the Doaba region in the 60s and 70s! And also its true, and since my family originates from Doaba, I can truly say Doaba people are the worst at respecting turban in the Indian punjab regions! And if it helps, you can ridicule them for their lack of respect for turban I give my permission!

Call it atheist communist, or just illiterate and uneducated, cos that's what I call it. The truth is, most of these turban hating families, and I say most or perhaps many, come from a background where their immediate ancestors, like parents or grandparents were uneducated or illiterate etc. I say we should lift their negativity towards turbaned males and put it back onto these loser families and make them look like they come from ignorant and uneducated backgrounds. Once we expose the losers they really are, maybe then we can instil cultural and dharmik values back into them as once again our brotherhood between each other is strengthened.

Anyway, I don;t care if anyone is with me or not, as long as no one stands in my way, as I believe these losers don't have the brain capacities to defend themselves to what we can speak against them, and lol. I laugh yet me and some other posters marriage prospects are really lowly, but what does negativity solve, negativity is the reason we are here in the same place! Positivity will make us rise once again (By the way I hope I can change most of the losers that post on this forum). I won't rest until I make these families and girls feel disgusted about the way they hate the paghs!

I think you make a lot of good observations. Many of the people who came int he 60s and 70s were reduced to making a living working in factories and holding other types of undesirable jobs. It's almost as if to compensate for their own inferiority complex they wanted to prove how "western" and "modern" they were.

[SarabhaPanjab]

yaar.. give it a rest now.

These insecure "she doesnt like me, cos i wear a turban" singh's need to blardy man-up

the threads are embarrassing..

[Guru_Da_Chella]

yaar.. give it a rest now.

These insecure "she doesnt like me, cos i wear a turban" singh's need to blardy man-up

the threads are embarrassing..

yes, and I shall find these girls and literally make them cry for being dumb. Once I have spoken to them, they shall shudder to disrespect any ones turban again.

MUHAHAHAHAAHAHA (ignore that)

I never knew much about the whole Doaba/Malwa/Majha differences, but now that I think about it, most of the people I know of whose parents came here in the 60s and 70s (and who have little regard for Sikhism) are from the Doaba region. However, in the big picture, I don't know if the differences are really all that noteworthy. Perhaps Malwa has a smaller proportion of fully clean-shaven Sikhs than Doaba and a higher proportion of trimmers who wear turbans. And perhaps that means, in a very marginal sense, the people from Malwa have more attachment to the Sikh religion. But when it's all said and done, the number of young turban-wearing, non-trimming men in either region is depressingly small.

oh, Doaba was an area that was majorly used by the British during the Raaj and so became industrialised.