“Turban pride”

As someone who has some experience with disapproving parental views regarding haircuts, I was interested in today’s NYT article about young Sikhs annoying their elders — by getting their hair cut.

Sikh spiritual leaders express dismay at the rapidity with which a new generation of young men are trimming their hair and abandoning the turban, the most conspicuous emblem of the Sikh faith….

Since 1699, about two centuries after the founding of the religion, Sikh leaders have prohibited their members from cutting their hair, saying long hair is a symbol of Sikh pride. The turban was conceived to manage the long hair and intended to make Sikhs easily identifiable in a crowd.

Apparently the problem isn’t so much a decline in faith as increased exposure to “Westernization,” via media images, etc. “It was a question of fashion,” one young man who has had his hair cut and ditched his turban tells the Times. “I felt smarter without it.”

While that’s somewhat interesting — the “feeling smarter” part, I mean — what’s even better is the countering, “turban pride” movement, which seems to be fighting fashion with fashion:

Standing before full-length mirrors, an instructor shows teenage boys in baggy jeans and sports shoes how to twist the cloth into neatly layered folds on one side and smooth the pleats into sharp lines with a hooked silver pin, which is then concealed beneath the hair at the back.

A “Smart Turban 1.0” CD-ROM offers step-by-step instructions to create fashionable looks and guides new turban wearers on how to choose the most flattering style according to face shape.

To promote the turban as a fashion item, Sikh leaders have also started holding Mr. Singh International pageants. Contestants are judged by looks, moral character, personality, knowledge of Sikh history and principles, and turban tying skills. The sixth World Turban Day will be celebrated on April 13 with a march through Amritsar by thousands of turban-wearing Sikhs.