Hair Speaks: Sikh Women 1

Hair Speaks: Sikh Women Voicing Spiritual, Sexual and Identity Body Politic

Abstract Through a Sikh Feminist Perspective this exploration will attempt to draw attention to one of the five Kakkars of the Khalsa- Kesh. Through this inquiry, I will highlight a journey of layered complexities and questions that Khalsa-Initiated and pre-contemplative Khalsa-Initiated women silently negotiate their bodies within. The inquiry will explore questions as: what hair on the body constitutes as Kesh? How? By who? And For whom? The paper will illustrate an aspect of the depth of complexities that manifest in a place where womens bodies, their bodily hair, and their experiences are disregarded, negated and given no space. As a Khalsa-Initiated woman, I am forced to propel myself into a place of negotiation where my voice, access to identity, and my sexuality is dictated twice over- once within the hegemonic Western imposed ideals of what is feminine and what is not and then again within Sikh spaces, where the accepted norms have been cultivated by and continue to be located in male voices and history. Niki Guninder Kaur Singh has illustrated in, The Five Ks and the Accoutrement of the Khalsa, how womens knowledge, herstory, interpretations and bodies have been written out of Sikh significance, other than as vulnerable beings whose sexuality has been and continues to need to be both guarded and guided (97-137). In this paper, I offer to juxtapose these two places where womens voices and political bodies have been rendered insignificant. I will engage in ethnographic analysis of narratives of the Initiated as well as pre-contemplative Khalsa-Initiated women in terms of their spiritual, sexual and identity body politics and experiences.

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Sample of 10 interviewees will be collected through snowball method. The criteria of inclusion will be that all subjects are South Asian women that identify as Sikh, express a commitment to not cutting the Kes of the head, live in South Western Canada or North Western coast of United States and are between the ages of 23 and 35. Interviews will be conducted through a general interview guide approach.. Data of interviews will be analyzed using methods of typology and analytic induction.

Hair Speaks: Sikh Women Voicing Spiritual, Sexual and Identity Body Politic
Note:

The short submission here is one that will give a brief synopsis of the developing paper and research. Here I highlight a few of the overarching themes that surfaced. It is in the presentation that I will go into further details of methodology, findings, themes and conclusion. With reverence for The Divine,

Introduction
Nikky Guninder Kaur Singh remarked in, The 5 Ks and Accoutrement of the Khalsa, that Sikh representation and body politics have cited themselves in the body of the Sikh male. His hair, his turban and his 5 Ks have honed the attention, speculation and research into identity, sexuality and other anti-hegemonic discourses.1 I am attempting to expand on Nikky Singhs work by bringing attention to the bodily hair of Sikh women; a space that has been rendered irrelevant to Sikh epistemology, spirituality and identity politics. Bodily hair is discerned as necessary by most, yet not offered space in Sikh discourses on any level, other than in the private complexities women negotiate themselves within. What Im proposing has occurred is that by continuing to reiterate that no bodily hair is to be removed and leaving the discussion for
1

(Singh, 2005)

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womens bodily hair unexplored, ignored and marginalized as a personal issue of vanity, we have rendered womens bodies silent and void of political agency.

Varinder Kalra states in, Locating the Sikh Pagh, The turban forever renders Sikhs in some halfway house between tradition and modernity.there is no space for the turban wearer in the plains of the west...2I would like to reframe this perspective and argue that the haired bodies of Sikh women are too rendered in a halfway house between a sovereign feminine identity and the readily available all-encompassing hegemonic ideal of the western modern woman; somewhere between the hidden and the rejected. There is no space for womens bodily hair in the plains of the West, in the communal spaces of the Sikhs nor in the private of our bedrooms...in fact, there is little room left in our own mirrors.

Interviews
Early on in this research, I recognized that women were able to clearly identify various voices and messages that contributed to the navigation and negotiation of their femininity and Sikh identity. They easily expressed pressures and expectations from different peoples, spaces, roles and communities; however, the women were not so easily able to identify their own personal voice of thought, analysis and/or decision making in the same manner. In fact, it was quite challenging at times. For many of the women, the discussion continued to focus on reflections of expectations of others; expectations of the self in regards to hair, identity and femininity were largely unexcavated territory and difficult. Thus, it was with hopes to listen, understand, narrate and politicize the voices I heard, that I began the research into the journeys of ten women. All of whom navigated their bodies, identity and hair through the realm of the
2

(Kalra, 2005 )

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consumerized mainstream expectations of femininity and the realm of an aspiring strong Sikh identity. Through listening to the stories of their struggles in the complicated nexus of pressures and expectations, it became evident that they carried similar themes of guilt, shame, confusion and frustration and that often their physical bodies too were or had been, reflective of their torn experience; at times a cite of strong esteem and confidence, and at others a cite of confused emotions responding to confusing expectations.

I became really attached to it[hair]...its a huge part of how I am as a woman...of what my beauty is. But also a huge part of how self conscious I am of myself...I have a mustache and some dharree coming in...and I have large eyebrows and really hairy arms and legs and so its also a point of contention for me...I was teased as a little girl...now there is a different pressure that comes along with trying to find a husband...and Im a Sikh woman, were [supposed to be] strong!

As Sikhs, we grow up learning that our Kes embodies our identity; however, most often and almost always, the attention, discussion, history and images representing Sikh identity speak to and represent the identity of Sikh men only;3 their hair, their Dastar and their dharees. 4 For women, the Kes of the head becomes relegated to fulfilling norms of femininity or to complacency of expectations; head Kes of women rarely, if ever, takes up space in political identity discourse. Furthermore, the politic and contention embodied in their facial and bodily hair is marginalized and silenced as a personal issue void of global socio-political constructions and implications. Silencing and erasure occurs in (not exclusively) two spaces, once in Sikh discourses and again on the corporeal body itself.5 Facial and bodily hair is most usually either removed physically through a variety of means as waxing, plucking, laser etc.; kept un removed
3 4

(Axel, 2001) (Singh, 2005) 5 (Axel, The Nations Tortured Body: Violence, Representation, and the Formation of a Sikh Diaspora, 2001)

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yet hidden away as embarrassingly personal and unacceptable; managed discretely through bleaching; or rejected socially if unremoved and visible. Consequently the hair is denied a presence, politicization or agency; rather, remains something to be dealt with.

Whats the big deal? Such a girl issue, theres bigger things to worry about. They just want to take the easy way out; getting rid of it is easy, keeping it is the test... Why doesnt she just remove it? She looks like a man, how is she going to get married?

Each of the remarks above reflects a message that was either directly or indirectly communicated to the ten Sikh women I interviewed. Each of these comments carried with them a voice and message laden with judgement, assumption or ignorance rooted in a reality of directives and expectations coming from all levels of family, Sangat, intimate relationships and society at large; whether in the home, school, work, Gurdwara or through the thousands of media images we are inundated with everyday, these voices played a key role in how the women came to know their bodies, their femininity and their identities as Sikh women.

I stopped going swimming, I was in competitive swimming. I didnt feel comfortable with my leg hair. Sometimes I would shave a little bit without telling my parents..but it wasnt worth it. It was just too much...

People and their gendered performativity are markers of their socio-culture constructions.6 Womens bodies have specifically endured a particular expedited construction of gender that has superimposed itself through a Western globalized imperial-consumerist cultural heteronormative hegemony of beauty and femininity. This construction of the feminine is one

(Butler, 1997)

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that informs gendered expectations on a global span, even for Sikhs and Sikh communities. Whether in Panjab or the diaspora, mainstream expectations of femininity have become the norm, the rational and the accepted. Juxtaposed against the expectations of a Sikh identity, women have struggled personally and silently in the very political feat of countering the gendered hegemony through their ab-normal, ir-rational and un-acceptable, un-feminine hair, without any collective acknowledgement or regard. In fact, women have experienced their struggle being reduced to one of mere weakness; thus, left in the margins for women to discuss during the free time and open Q&A periods of camps and retreats.

The expectation for a woman is that she should be pretty appealing to the eye...pressure to be groomed...and apart of being pretty as define by society is the conventional pretty, where you dont have facial hair The way people look at you is just like...you can go remove it [hair] you know. You dont have to do that [keep it]...They treat you differently, theres a different vibe. I wouldnt say all of society,...but generally.

Women stated that although many of them had attended many camps and retreats, that this is an issue that has always arrived wrought with tensions and overall taboo. Whether discussions at home or the Gurdwara, they stated that there were fewer discussions, more directives and usually a quick wrap-up of the discussion, as it would quickly tread into sensitive areas. Again leaving the struggle unexplored. Here I would propose that a great injustice is occurring as we render the social struggles of our times as predicaments that we as a collective cannot counter, for fear of what the discourse may entail. From a Khalsa analysis, I cannot think of a more powerful tool to counter the violence of domination, imperialisms, hypocrisy or hegemony over land, person or consciousness, than through asking, observing and

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listening to the most marginalized; and thus challenge the status quo. Today Sikh women are fighting a war waged against their gender before they are even born; should they live, they live to experience systemic constructions on many socio-economic-political levels that continue to marginalize and silence their existence.

The very fact that Sikh women are finding themselves in this struggle speaks to the cultural restrictions and battle of the corporeal space the body is vying to be haired and hairless at the same time; expected to embody a particular femininity, yet be a Sikh woman at the same time. If Sikh women are not to ascribe to the only norms of feminity and sexuality they are exposed to, then an alternative needs to be available; an alternative that expectedly will not be embraced by the West, but will absolutely need to be embraced and written into our interpretations of sexuality and identity in Sikh spaces and discourse.

The presentation will illustrate in more detail some of the journeys of the women and highlight how some shared that through self-reflexivity, criticalness and self-challenge, that they were able to navigate themselves towards a decision that took the spectators out of the room, connected them with their voice and thus developed a strong sense of identity for themselves.

Axel, B. K. (2001). The Nations Tortured Body: Violence, Representation, and the Formation of a Sikh "Diaspora". Durham: Duke University Press. Butler, J. (1997). Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative . London: Routledge. Singh, N.-G. K. (2005). The Five Ks and the Accoutrement of the Khalsa . In N.-G. K. Singh, The Birth of the Khalsa: A Feminist Re-Memory of Sikh Identity (p. 252). Albany : State University of New York Press .