Standing Up for the Truth

"A lot of people ask me why I wear a turban," goes one of my jokes. "I tell them it's because it contracepts my vices. But you know what, turbans are great contraceptives … I haven't had sex in five years!"

I became more ambitious. I now wanted to show the entire audience that Indians, Muslims or brown people in general were affable and moderate. Because I received my first couple of threats from Sikhs, I had to convince myself that my fellow Sikhs were in fact also moderate. But it felt strangely exciting reading the verbal barbs posted on my first YouTube clip: I was having an impact.

I e-mailed some of the overzealous Sikhs and told them that I was making fun of prejudice against those who wear turbans, not the turban itself, which seemed even more sacred now. After 9/11, many Sikhs had cut their hair and stopped wearing turbans. The menacing looks and discrimination were too much. Our visible identity in numbers was dwindling in both America and India. Bollywood films had reduced Sikhs to fools and caricatures. In America we were being taken too seriously; in India, not enough. It sometimes made me feel compelled to conform and fit in, too.

But I realized that Sikh symbols, like the turban, were important, just as all religious symbols are. And a symbol can no more be destroyed by humor than a word's meaning can be torn by a paper shredder. The only thing one had to worry about was mitigating one's faith, the act of countering darkness with bare-knuckle punches.

Yet religious symbols don't always serve as a catalyst for truthful living. Wearing one for the sake of wearing it reduces religion to superstition. Sikh society and many others in India remain divided by tribalism, female infanticide and gender discrimination. So many take the religious symbols as garbs and amulets of salvation alone, rather than as a palette to paint understanding and soften the edges.

Still, I completely understood my fellow Sikhs' sensitivity and their fear of being marginalized further. I really didn't mind the death threats and the heckling, as long as I continued not having sex.

Singh lives in Williston Park, N.Y.

© 2008