CHANDIGARH, India – Text messaging with one hand and holding a cup of milky tea in the other, spiky-haired Amandeep Singh Saini, 27, recalled the year-long battle against his traditional Sikh parents to cut his hair.
"I was 14 then. I wanted to jump into the village pool and play in mud. The long hair and the turban were always in the way. It took half an hour to tie the turban every morning," said Saini, a doctoral student in Punjabi literature.
After he cut his hair and discarded the turban, his two brothers followed suit. "My mother wept, my father was angry, but I was stubborn," he said.
"I look around the campus today, and there are so few turbaned Sikhs."
The shrinking number of young Sikhs who have long hair has alarmed many in this religious minority. Community groups say only 25 per cent of Sikhs younger than 30 follow the practice. Young Sikhs say a desire to assimilate, as well as the hassle of combing and tying up long hair, is pushing them to give up the sacred symbol of their faith.
In August, four students petitioned the high court after they applied to a medical college under a Sikh quota but were denied admission because they had cut their hair.
"The case ... has become part of dinner-table conversations everywhere. People are asking, `What am I? What will I be after the judgment?' It is unsettling," said Gurminder Singh Gill, an attorney for the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee, an elected forum of Sikh clergy whose rules are designed to prevent the dilution of Sikh symbols. "The court ruling will impact future interpretations of the word `Sikh.'"
Faced with the recent decline in turban-wearers, the community is thinking up ways to draw young people back to the tradition.
A group called Akaal Purkh Ki Fauj, or the Army of the Timeless Being, organizes Turban Pride Day in April, sends volunteers to schools to teach turban-tying and has introduced a software program called Smart Turban, which helps pick a style.
Since 2005, the group has held Mr. Singh International, a pageant for turbaned Sikhs.
"We need more turbaned role models for our young," said Navnit Singh, who created a 6-year-old turbaned cartoon character, Rony Singh.
"He can get his friends out of any sticky situation," Singh said. "I want kids to think the turban is cool."
In the early 1980s, Sikh extremists insisted on turbans and beards. Then, in 1984, Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards in retaliation for having the army storm the Golden Temple, a Sikh shrine, to rout radicals holed up inside.
Violent anti-Sikh riots erupted, and thousands were killed, touching off years of bloodshed.
"Many Sikhs cut their hair and discarded their identity to escape police brutality," said Ishwinder Singh Chadha, a member of the Institute of Sikh Studies.
Back in the college cafeteria, Saini and a turbaned friend, Sukhjeet Singh Sandhu, discussed their faith.
"Every fold of the turban of a devout Sikh is like a historical chapter of his blood-soaked history, which every Sikh carries with him with great pride and dignity," said Sandhu, 26.
But he trimmed his beard, he said, because "campus life demands it."
