Distinctive Imprint in a New Land

It’s 8 p.m on a cool spring night, and preparations for Baisakhi Day, a major religious holiday for Sikhs worldwide, are underway.

In a brightly decorated worship hall, the sound of Indian kirtan devotional music fills the air. Turbaned men and brightly veiled women prostrate themselves before their holy scripture. In the next room, volunteers scurry about to ready 225-gallon vats of curries, lentils, potatoes, pudding and rice for the free community meal that is central to the Sikh tradition.

In sight, sound and smells, the scene this week at the Guru Nanak Sikh Temple could have come straight from the Punjab region in northern India. But this gurdwara, or temple, rises along Orangethorpe Avenue in Buena Park--an oasis of ethnic color on an otherwise bland boulevard of industrial office complexes and fast-food restaurants.

Guru Nanak Sikh Temple symbolizes the growing footprint of Sikhism in Southern California. Sikhs started the temple in 1983 as a two-room house with 80 worshipers. Today, as many as 400 people attend religious services in a new 3.5-acre complex that will ultimately include an elaborate worship hall and library, a community kitchen known as a langar, a school and parking lots. The Sikhs expect to spend $2.3 million on the project and are eyeing the mobile home park next door for eventual purchase as a community center and mortuary.

The flurry of activity, however, also underscores a pressing challenge: the need to build institutions to preserve the Sikh religion and Punjabi culture against the powerful pull of American assimilation.

“Sixty to 70% of our young people are coming under the influence of Western culture because we did not have these kinds of institutions before,” said Amarjit Singh Dhillon, president of Guru Nanak Temple and the 10-temple Federation of Sikh Gurdwaras of Southern California.

Dhillon laments that too many young people are losing the traditional respect for elders, communal ethics and the Punjabi language to what he calls the “everyone-out-for-themselves” ethos of American society. To rescue them from this abyss, the Sikhs at Guru Nanak and other temples are stepping up their children’s activities--including Sunday schools, summer camps, language classes and the like.

At the same time, as more Americans take interest in Sikhism, the religion also faces the challenge of distinguishing the Sikh faith from its Punjabi cultural roots, according to Gurinder Singh Mann, professor of Sikh studies at UC Santa Barbara.

As ties to the homeland weaken, an inevitable occurrence with passing generations in immigrant communities, should it remain necessary to read scripture in the sacred language of the Punjabi people? Serve vegetarian Indian cuisine in the langar? Why not cheese sandwiches? Mann asks.

“In Punjab, you breathe and absorb the religion; there was no need to talk about these issues,” Mann said. “But now there is a clear need to tell young people and mainstream American society what is really the Sikh belief system.”

At stake is a religious tradition more than 500 years old, founded by Guru Nanak and subsequently developed by nine other gurus to address the inequality and other social ills in the Muslim and Hindu societies of what is today Pakistan and the Punjab region of India.

Sikhs profess faith in one God, human equality, universal love and honest work. They pride themselves on being the “best farmers, fighters, entrepreneurs and sportsmen,” according to India Journal editor Mohinder Singh.

Today Sikhism is the world’s fifth-largest faith, with 20 million followers. Thousands of them turned out this week in downtown Los Angeles to celebrate Baisakhi Day with a parade of colorful floats and concerts of kirtan music. Temples this week also held around-the-clock services for the annual ritual of nonstop reading of the Guru Granth Sahib, the 1,430-page Sikh holy book regarded as the religion’s living guru.

Baisakhi Day, officially observed Thursday, commemorates the establishment in 1699 by the 10th and final guru, Gobind Singh, of the religion’s formalized symbols and practices, known as the Khalsa Panth. Symbols are uncut hair, representing God’s creative beauty; a comb to remind Sikhs of their stewardship responsibilities; a dagger, symbolizing the fight against injustice; a steel bracelet, representing the unbroken link to God; and special underwear symbolizing physical activity and sexual fidelity.

The physically distinctive symbols of Sikhism are proud testaments of faith. But they also present challenges. Like Muslims and Orthodox Jews, many Sikhs say they face difficulties ranging from teasing at school to finding American employers who will allow their religious dress.

Dhillon, for one, cut his hair and kept his face clean-shaven while working as a mechanical engineer for an American firm; only after he started his own engineering business in 1971 did he allow his hair to grow.

For those reasons, Singh said, many Sikhs are self-employed and known for their entrepreneurial savvy--including 19-year-old Kahan Singh Dhillon Jr., president and CEO of his own employment firm. The firm trains computer programmers internationally and offers their technical and linguistic skills to U.S. employers. The engaging youth started his first venture, a construction firm, at 17 by borrowing $25,000 from his parents and sold the firm two years later for a $25,000 profit.

The younger Dhillon said staying Sikh is a breeze if you can tough it out through elementary school. He did, defending his faith against teasers and tormentors. Now he not only wears his turban proudly, but his best friend, Ryan Nelson, wears one too.

“Sikhs have the same view as I do: We all come from the same God,” said Nelson, 23, an employee of Dhillon’s firm who was raised as a Christian but is exploring the Sikh faith as a possible path for himself.

He pointed to the rows of Sikhs sitting together, sharing a free meal after the Wednesday night service this week. “I like the equality. The brotherhood is unbeatable. I’ve met more people in six visits here than I did in two years of going to church,” Nelson said.

A community of native-born American Sikhs has existed since the 1970s as part of a worldwide organization known as Sikh Dharma, headed by the Siri Singh Sahib, Yogi Bhajan. They and the Punjabi immigrants tend to worship separately but share both the challenges and joys of practicing the faith in the West.

Unlike Punjabi Sikhs, however, some of the American Sikhs also faced strong family disapproval about their decisions to embrace the faith. More than two decades ago, when Kirtan Singh Khalsa first told his Catholic parents he wanted to follow the Sikh path--complete with growing his hair, wearing a turban and changing his name--it didn’t go over well, he said, especially because he was the only son of an only son and had his Italian American father’s lineage to worry about. Over time, however, Khalsa said, his parents have come to accept his choice.

The joys, Sikhs say, are too numerous to name: The spiritual insights they’ve learned from Yogi Bhajan. The tranquillity and connection to God the Sikhs say they feel every morning at 3:45 a.m., when they awaken for meditation, prayer and chanting. The values of kindness, community, generosity, service, family strength and monogamy. The healthy lifestyle of vegetarian diets and no smoking or alcohol.

“There’s a tremendous pressure not to be Sikhs,” Kahlsa said. “In the beginning, it can be very difficult. But as you grow in the lifestyle you find the strength and beauty in it.”