Synopsis: A couple of days ago we read an article on British Sikh teenagers in our class. Living in a country with around 8 000 Sikhs, most of my fellow classmates did not know much about Sikhs other than that they were “the ones wearing turbans”. I was happy that Sikhism at all was included in the syllabus. However, when I finished reading the article, I wasn’t that happy anymore. Why? Not because I was ashamed or anything of my religion, not at all. But because I was confused about the author’s representation of the Sikhs.
So basically, the article was about how Sikhism had been revitalized because of both racism and the British nationalism and how this affected the young British Sikhs of today (or actually the 90s, as the article was written some 15-16 years back). She talked about Sikhs as an ethnic group of people rather than Sikhs as a religious group. I would prefer that she used the word “Punjabi” instead of “Sikhs”, because that was who she was really talking about. There was almost no mentioning of the Sikh religion, which the author should have thought of as she was after all writing about, according to her, the Sikhs. In my point of view, it was just a coincidence that the Punjabis she was talking about were Sikhs, and therefore not a good enough a reason to replace the word "Punjabi" with "Sikh".
The article discussed many topics that were relevant to the lives of British Punjabi teenagers in the 90s, and it was indeed not only negative aspects included. However, I felt there was more negative aspects mentioned than positive and I am pretty sure the article gave my classmates the wrong impression of Sikhs.
We all know that gender equality is seen in two different lights in the Punjabi culture and the Sikh religion. While the Sikh religion encourages the concept of a man and woman being equal, we often hear about female infanticide, honor killings etc.
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Is it Sikhism or Punjabi Culture? 
