Why I Wear the Turban

“The Turban” exposes a paradox. I can’t ideate ever surrendering my turban. It’s go soldered to my identity, serving arsenic some the eventual in-group badge and a versatile stylistic accessory: eye-catching, a spot exotic, an accidental to adhd colour and flair. But I haven’t forgotten however hard it tin beryllium to carry. Like a immense zit oregon a malformed nose, it becomes a lightning rod for insecurities, the happening to beryllium blamed aft slights and uncomfortable experiences. I’ve been fortunate to flight bullying, but according to 1 survey astir eighty per cent of Sikh boys with caput coverings successful the United States study having the other experience. This is wherefore it’s jarring to spot the turban featured connected catwalks and reddish carpets and successful Renaissance courts. How tin thing that erstwhile threatened to destruct my parents’ marriage, thing that sparks feelings of anxiousness and apartness, beryllium worn truthful casually by others? Why are symbols often the astir burdensome for the radical who clasp them astir dearly?

My great-grandfather died hunting lions, oregon truthful I was told increasing up. The incidental occurred successful the scrublands of occidental India, successful the last years of British rule. He was retired with his oldest son, my maternal grandfather, who was past astir twenty. My great-grandfather was handling his rifle, perchance cleaning it, erstwhile the mechanics misfired and changeable him successful the arm. My gramps ran to his father, pulled disconnected his turban, and tied it astir the wound. He lifted him onto his equine and rode to a hospital, his unshorn hairsbreadth exposed to the world. But the bleeding didn’t stop, and his begetter died.

I person ever had a analyzable narration with this story. I recognize that the lawsuit was traumatic, that it haunted my gramps for the remainder of his life, leaving him not lone fatherless but, arsenic the oldest child, a surrogate genitor to six siblings, including a sister who was inactive successful the womb. Although I ne'er met him—he died 5 years earlier I was born—my ma told maine that he’d kept a photograph of his begetter successful the house, bowing to it often, adjacent aft mundane milestones, similar buying caller clothes.

But that designation of nonaccomplishment coexists with pride. As a young kid, I fixated connected the lions. I was small, bookish, and obsessed with Asian and African mammals—and I loved envisioning my ancestors connected horseback, fearless and regal, stalking the astir royal of beasts. “My gramps died hunting lions,” I would say, mixing up which forebear it was and either forgetting oregon deliberately excluding the different details. As I got older, the infinitesimal of the unwrapped turban grew much salient successful my imagination. Few objects are much ineffable to a Sikh antheral than his turban; utilizing it arsenic a bandage exemplified devotion and compassion, but besides strength. I wore a turban, too, and the communicative imbued the point with a dignified masculinity, positioning maine successful a stately, astir majestic lineage.

Such grandeur was the point, originally. Modern portraits of the laminitis of Sikhism, Nanak Dev, amusement him beturbanned, but historians specified arsenic Jvala Singh, astatine Berkeley, importune that this is simply a humanities misrepresentation. The archetypal 5 gurus, a succession of prophet-leaders, apt donned the seli topi, a woven headdress worn by Hindus and Muslims and associated with humility and spiritual living. The turban, Singh argues, wasn’t wide adopted until the clip of the sixth guru, Hargobind. Responding to persecution by India’s Mughal rulers—and the torture and execution of his father—Hargobind militarized Sikhism. He carried 2 swords, solicited offerings of arms and horses, and swapped the saintly topi for the kingly turban. Roughly a period later, successful 1699, the tenth guru prohibited baptized Sikhs from cutting their hair, and the turban became enshrined arsenic a martial and spiritual request for men.

Valor and nobility were recurring themes successful my childhood. At Sunday school, we learned however Mughal élites monopolized the turban, and however Sikhs usurped it and bestowed it connected themselves. Whenever I scraped my genu and cried, my begetter would punctual maine that I americium a Singh, a lion. My parents—with degrees successful civilian engineering and English literature—aren’t precisely warlike, yet ticker that video from my 3rd day agelong capable and you’ll announcement a shield with a brace of crossed swords hanging similar a trophy connected our living-room wall.

Meaning seldom travels intact, however. Strangers and caller classmates didn’t deliberation of badass lion hunters oregon Mughal-era warriors erstwhile they archetypal saw my patka or, later, the afloat turban. Rather, they tended to infer piety and taste parochialism, figuring that anyone dressed similar maine indispensable beryllium superior astir God and bound to tradition. To beryllium fair, fellow-Sikhs besides infer devotion and discipline, though these are neither the lone readings nor the astir common. We each cognize mone, oregon men with chopped hair, who work scripture each day, arsenic good arsenic full-bearded sardars who portion whiskey, walk Saturday nights flirting astatine hookah lounges, and haven’t seen the wrong of a temple since their sister’s wedding. We each recognize that the determination to support Sikhism’s outer markers reflects countless considerations, including faith, pride, household pressure, the inertia of identity, and the comfortableness of instant belonging—most of which tin stay frustratingly invisible to the Western mainstream.

A straightforward effect to carrying thing truthful burdensome is to driblet it. I’ve seen galore young Sikhs spell this route. After I started college, a kid I had grown up with who spoke overmuch amended Punjabi than I, and whose traditionalist begetter taught america Sikh history, appeared successful Facebook photos with cropped hairsbreadth and a popped collar, arsenic I retrieve it. My cousin’s champion friend, who was featured connected acquisition posters informing the nationalist astir Sikh headwear, experimented with a antheral bun successful precocious school, past chopped his hair. I get wherefore they did it. When you’re misread earlier you speak, scrapping the ocular publication tin look similar the lone mode to reclaim agency. “My assurance is dying due to the fact that I consciousness truthful trapped successful turban that it limits my potential,” 1 assemblage pupil wrote, successful a Reddit station titled “I’m connected the verge of cutting hair.” A seventeen-year-old Sikh calved and raised successful the U.S., aft getting a crewcut with faded sides, explained, “It’s been a accordant root of misery for me, yes evidently due to the fact that of societal isolation.”

Another enactment is to counterbalance the turban’s weight, to formal oneself successful a constellation of symbolic imagery truthful expressive and emphatic that the meaning of the turban is altered oregon overwhelmed. Such compensatory individuality signalling is widespread. A young Black antheral mightiness whistle Vivaldi to enactment passersby astatine ease. An Asian American precocious schooler mightiness break-dance to defy stereotypes of nerdiness. The marginalized and diasporic larn the gestures that champion reroute perception. Like garam masala thrown into a curry, these choices don’t erase the basal ingredients truthful overmuch arsenic augment and redefine them.

For galore turbanned Sikhs, this has often meant looking to hip-hop and Black culture. Scholars similar Conner Singh VanderBeek, an ethnomusicologist astatine Davidson College, and Aranveer Singh Litt, a Ph.D. pupil successful connection arts astatine the University of Wisconsin-Madison, person studied wherefore diasporic Punjabi Sikhs gravitate toward hip-hop, citing its warrior ethos, authorities of resistance, and reflections connected radical profiling and systemic injustice. But there’s besides the tendency to beryllium cool, to beryllium seen arsenic much than conscionable a brownish dude with spiritual caput garb. I retrieve erstwhile kids my age—including the lad of 1 of our temple’s musicians—started showing up successful golden chains, baggy jeans, and hoops jerseys, speaking a hard blend of colony Punjabi and slang borrowed from “106 & Park.”

After I switched schools successful eighth grade, I, too, moved successful this direction, quoting OutKast, past Tupac, past the Soulquarians’ discography, each the portion rocking Timberlands and baggy, zip-up hoodies. I loved the music, yet—and I admit this with immoderate guilt—I besides liked the mentation of myself that it projected: the small cocoa lad whose car bumped Talib Kweli arsenic his dada dropped him disconnected each morning. The acceptable was ever awkward, though, not to notation offensive, thing I learned erstwhile a Black classmate asked maine wherefore I felt comfy gathering my individuality astir a civilization that wasn’t mine.

In college, I developed a antithetic aesthetic assemblage. I had, by this time, progressed from the patka to the dastar, the afloat turban, wearing a benignant akin to my father’s but higher connected the caput and much voluminous. This was the opening of the Obama era. Ironic hipsterdom was ascendant, though it was countered by a subcultural inclination that revelled successful celebrationist joy, psychedelic absurdity, and whimsical transcendence—the cult of Dan Deacon, Devendra Banhart, and Animal Collective. Everything was handmade, loop-pedalled, a small messy, a small lo-fi. I recovered myself successful a societal country that valued creativity, self-expression, iconoclastic sincerity, and the cultivation of interesting-ness. It was often exhausting—a performed individuality—yet I morphed to accommodate it. My parent tie-dyed a turban purple for my nineteenth birthday; months later, my person Arlando screen-printed zigzags onto different one. Though my manner became bolder—purple corduroys, tiny floral-patterned shorts, an oversized sweatshirt with my look printed connected the near bosom similar a logo, everything patched and re-sewn to oblivion—I besides became alert of the materiality of my headwear, however it could beryllium reimagined and absorbed into this newer, much florid self. I stamped a turban with hippos’ faces, screen-printed different with hand-drawn paisleys, and began a signifier of turban-dyeing and turban-painting that has continued to this day.

The effect was a semiotic pivot. Like a chameleon dropped into a heap of Technicolor tapestries, my headwear announced a reimagined self—less pious conservatism, much ecstatic singularity. It was astir this clip that I watched the video of my 3rd birthday. My ma asked maine wherefore I was crying, and I lied, saying thing astir being disappointed that I had tried to instrumentality the cricket bat from my friend. The information was that I didn’t person the words to explicit what I was feeling. The show of maine with chopped hairsbreadth had been unusual and jarring, similar spotting a doppelgänger of yourself doing thing retired of quality and obscene. My hairsbreadth and turban were truthful foundational to my story—gravitational centers astir which I had constructed myself—that the kid connected the screen, truthful evidently me, besides seemed evidently not me.

I erstwhile thought that symbols similar my turban felt dense due to the fact that of different people. They stereotype; they assume; they stare. But nary of those responses would hap without the turban mattering to me. I person chosen to transportation it contempt being gawked at, misread, feminized, and formed arsenic unreasonably devout. Strangers whitethorn not cognize wherefore I deterioration it, but they consciousness that it isn’t arbitrary. This is what makes my turban antithetic from Lord Byron’s oregon Sarah Jessica Parker’s, what happens with immoderate awesome that is important to the idiosyncratic carrying it. It is burdensome not successful spite of its meaning but due to the fact that of it. ♦