Is there a limit to the cost of accommodation?
The UK has been hit with a recent controversy over expenditures, allegedly upwards of £100,000, spent on finding appropriate anti-terror gear that could accommodate the Sikh turban. A good deal of this was spent taking the officer away from duty and asking him to approach equipment manufacturers himself...
Representation and Reality
Apparently the police have arrested over 70 Sikhs in Mumbai for vandalizing MTV’s headquarters there. The reason for the protest and vandalism? Apparently MTV’s poster promos featured a sardarni massaging a man, which they found offensive to the faith community and its principles.
Now, I...
Is there such a thing as Sikh banking?
I had a long and interesting conversation with a friend of mine this weekend on different attitudes towards finance and charity between different world religions. We noted that both Judaism and Sikhi require a 10% charitable contribution, in addition to service, which has no upper or lower bound and...
California Supreme Court overturns gay marriage ban
At the vanguard of civil rights, the California Supreme Court affirmed the right to gay marriage today by overturning two of the state’s previous bans. The legislative debate over “gay marriage” (now, simply marriage) began in California in 2004, when San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom...
The Fierce Community?
While we’ve heard a recurrent Canadian voice that claims that Sikhi is incompatible with being openly LGBTIQ, a new Sikh-specific support group has grown in Vancouver. There have certainly been South Asian-specific support organizations in the diaspora for the last decade or so (within the U.S.,...
A Rotting Harvest?
In keeping with TLH’s agricultural theme, the BBC reported today on the environmental health fallout of the Green Revolution in Punjab (I). The Green Revolution introduced industrial mono-culture farming to small farms. The result was a short and sharp growth in grain production. However, over...
Shahr and Pind: Asian Americans and Rural Development
Last month I attended PolicyLink‘s 2008 Regional Equity Conference in New Orleans. The conference covered poverty and racial inequality in the context of the U.S., but it focused on the connections between living spaces — i.e., between neighborhoods, cities, suburbs, and rural lands.
While...
Happy Vaisakhi!
In one of the rare years in which Vaisakhi falls on April 14th, I wanted to wish everyone a happy Vaisakhi! How did you/your family celebrate? Personally, I totally forgot until reminded by Ms. Phulkari, at which point I coerced my roommate into imitating a dhol while we both danced around. Having settled...
Harambee and Daswand
Right after I graduated college, I moved to semi-rural Kenya. I had heard that there was a historic desi/Sikh population, so I looked for the nearest gurdwara. I found it two hours away on Temple Road in Kisumu, Kenya’s third largest city and the cultural capital of Luo-land.
The Guru Nanak Gurdwara...
Update: The Flying Sardar?
UPDATE: Canadian courts ruled against Baljinder Singh’s request for a religious exemption to its mandatory motorcycle helmet law. While the court found that the law DID violate his right to religious freedom, they felt that the net benefit to the country’s healthcare system justified such...
Where are Sikhs in the U.S. presidential campaigns?
Posted by Camille in General on 03 4th, 2008 | 4 Comments
Apparently everywhere! The Sikh News Network recently ran an analysis (imperfect stats, but interesting) on Sikh fundraising patterns in the current election. They claim that the “longtime affinity for Republicans” has been broken by Hillary Clinton [I’m not sure how prevalent that...
Introducing: Darsh Singh
Can a kesdari Sikh man excel at high levels of athletic competition in the U.S. and practice his faith? Just ask Darsh Singh, junior starter and co-captain of Trinity University’s basketball team:
This season, fans haven’t had to chant for Darsh – the team co-captain has appeared in every...
Who Speaks for Sikh Americans? (Part 1 of 2)
While Sikhs have lived in the U.S. for over 100 years, our numbers have grown tremendously after 1960s immigration reform. With this increase in numbers, we’re beginning to see the first long-term interactions between waves of immigrants and within generations of immigrants. These shifts in demographics,...
Punjabiyaan (Canadiaan?) di boli
New census figures show that by 2011, Punjabi will step up two places to become the fourth most spoken language in Canada (after English, French, and Chinese). Apparently, not only is the influx of Punjabi immigrants driving these changes, but also a resurgence of Punjabi-learning among Canadian-born...
Follow up: A “Sensible” Religious Response to LGBT Sikhs
Earlier this week I blogged about how Queer/LGBT Sikhs have been (shamefully) excluded from the Sikh community by religious leaders. Today, I was sent the following blog post and BBC article about “marriages of convenience” for queer desis who feel they cannot come out, by virtue of their...
Towards a Queer ethos
Queer Sikhs are largely invisibilized in the greater Sikh community, although some are present within the U.S./Canada diaspora. Last month, the debate over the Sikh-perspective on GLBT unions bubbled up in Canada when a leader in the Vancouver community denounced homosexuality [link]:
“I hate homosexuality....
Bhangra is our common link?
The SJ Mercury News ran a story on Dhol Di Awaz [disclaimer: I went to Cal and was part of the Berk SSA] and made the argument that in today’s multi-generational diaspoa, bhangra is the common thread that holds Punjabis together. I thought this was interesting on many levels. While the article...
Mental Health Today — are we serving our community?
Like many communities bifurcated by both their religious understanding (Sikhi) and their ethnic/racial identities (for many of us, Punjabi), there are unique challenges to providing comprehensive mental health services to immigrant communities. Within the context of California, this is not only compounded...
4 days in New Hampshire
Posted by Camille in Politics on 01 12th, 2008 | 9 Comments
Last week I made the trek from Connecticut to New Hampshire to campaign in the presidential primaries. While I’ve campaigned and door-knocked for a variety of issues in the past, I’ve never really been moved to canvass for a presidential candidate. In my voting life, I haven’t really...
love across the lines
After many a post on the quandaries and challenges facing young (Sikh, Punjabi) folks today on the romance tip, I wanted to write something anecdotal about relationships today.
After Partition, and particularly after 1984, I think there’s been a polarization of Sikh identity within the diaspora,...
