Sikhi

There are about twenty-six million Sikhs in the world, a little over twenty-four million of them in India, where they are about two per cent of the population, and most of those in Punjab, where they are some 58 per cent. Outside India the largest communities are in Canada, Britain and the United States, followed by Australia, Malaysia, Italy, Kenya and the Gulf. In Pakistani Punjab, where the faith was born and where millions of Sikhs once lived, only a few tens of thousands remain.

Emigration began under British rule, when Sikh soldiers and policemen were posted across the empire, to Malaya, Hong Kong, Burma and East Africa, and labourers followed them to Canada and California. Many Sikhs who served in Italy in the world wars returned, and Sikh workers now run much of the dairy farming of the Po valley that makes Parmesan cheese. In the 1950s and 60s Doaba families came to the foundries and mills of the English Midlands and to Southall.

Sikhs who have taken amrit, the Amritdhari, keep the five Ks: kes, uncut hair; kangha, a wooden comb; kara, a steel bangle; kirpan, a sword; and kachhera, cotton shorts. Many more keep their hair and turban without being initiated, and Sahajdhari Sikhs revere the Gurus while cutting their hair. Every Sikh man may be named Singh and every woman Kaur, so the names do not themselves show initiation.

The Gurus rejected caste, and the langar, the shared surnames and the absence of a priesthood were meant to end it. Yet caste persists, above all in marriage. Jats make up perhaps two-thirds of rural Sikhs; Khatris and Aroras, the urban trading castes from which all ten Gurus came, through the Bedi, Trehan, Bhalla and Sodhi clans, are about a tenth; Ramgarhias, Ahluwalias, Mazhabis and Ravidasias have their own gurdwaras and pride. The struggle between the Gurus' teaching and the old order of the village is still being fought.

When a child is born, the family goes to the gurdwara, the Guru Granth Sahib is opened at random, and the child's name is chosen to begin with the first letter of the first hymn on the left-hand page. It is the first of many times in a Sikh life when the Guru is asked to speak.