Gurfatehji,
I think we need to be realistic here and accept a few quite painful home truths. What has kept the home fires burning for so long is Izzat. Izzat has meant that for a long time young Sikhs were to petrified of shaming their families to look or behave like anything other than Sikhs, in public anyway.No one wants to be the only one in the family with cut hair, unmarried, or living a certain lifestyle, but nowadays, there is nothing unusual in being a mona, or a drinker, or even a smoker, it is commonplace, nothing unusual, the stigma has gone, the question of Izzat no longer exists.
But let us look at the sort of people this affects, lets take Baljinder Singh, a figment of my imagination, Baljinder is 21, lives in UK, comes from a family that consider themselves Gursikh, but actually follow a Vedic version of Sikhism, mixed in with a bit of Abrahamicism, Baljinder wants to cut his hair and go to University.
Now 20 years ago, this would have been a huge shock and shame for the family, Baljinder would probably have bowed to parental pressure and kept his hair, married, had kids, and passed on his own version of the Vedic/Abrahamic/Sikh religion to his kids, religious ceremonies and meetings are mostly social events, and Baljinder, as turbanned and bearded as he is, is no more a Sikh than Donald Duck, however, what is happening is that each generation gets further and further away from the purity of Sikhism, and more and more in tune with Punjabi culture including Hindu rituals and traditions.
Of course nowadays, families do not really care, there are so many mona types that another is not a big issue, it is not an izzat issue any longer, but what will happen is that people will become full proper sikhs not because of the social issue, or the izzat issue but because they have a yearning in themselves to find the true Guru, so you may well end up with less turbans, but the ones that are left will more committed, more true, more informed, less Vedic, less Abrahamic,
There is nothing that breaks my heart more than A full keshdhari Sikh, sporting all the K's, with absolutely no idea what he is talking about, innocently spreading what he thinks is Sikhi
