Is asking a Sikh not to wear a turban really like asking him to cut off his head?

Isn’t it more like being disrobed and exposed in public?

Or, why use similie at all. Simply put, it is asking someone to disregard their faith. This is no different from any other thorny issue where private faith and public rules come into conflict.

Though I don’t disagree with the conclusion, Sunny. Indeed, I think secularism is strengthened when many individuals are each allowed to express their own faith. One offsets the other, none are given primacy.

I thought a pug was a turban?

“Pug” is slang and is short for “pugri”, which does indeed mean “turban” as Sunny has mentioned.

But does it have to be a turban

Well, technically not. “Kesh” is sacred in Sikhism, the turban itself is not. However, the turban does have major connotations in Sikhism, primarily due to its association with Guru Gobind Singh.

It should also be noted that in traditional Sikh culture — as with northern Indian culture in general — historically the person removing his own turban in front of another party would regard this as an act of self-abasement in certain situations. So there are some further connotations there too.

It is. kesh is about keeping long hair, and thus tying it in a turban.

If Sikhs wish to wear turbans and it does not impinge on their operational effectiveness, then they should be allowed to. Sikhs fought for the British army in their hundreds of thousands wearing turbans, and they were a credit to us. Police forces cannot afford to turn away competent ethnic minority candidates over something nonsensical like this. Also, the sight of a Sikh with a turban and full beard can be an arresting sight, and inspire confidence towards the police from the general public.

Something being described as a muddle is generally a sign that the person doing the description doesn’t understand, can’t concisely describe, the point in question.

This tends to become a problem when their response is to try to change it, rather than spend more time trying to understand the situation: someone who doesn’t understand what they are changing _will_ break whatever aspects do work.

‘having a simple straightforward description’ and ‘being suitable for living in’ are, since the 60s, generally regarded as opposing goals by architects, at least in the uk (some other countries do seem to have less of a problem living in clean-lined boxes in the sky).

In fact, if you look at things in the right way, using terms that make sense, you can understand which aspects of the anglo-sikh arrangement work, make sense, and are generalisable to other similar pairs of interacting cultures.

This means dropping arbitrary categories like ‘religious’, ‘cultural’, ‘legal’ and ‘human rights’ rules (as in ‘my belief is an unalienable human right, yours is a quaint ritual, theirs is primitive barbaric superstition’).

Instead you use a three-way split:

1. personal/individual/ritual: directly affects the person who does it: ‘don’t drink palm wine’, ‘wear a turban’.

2. ethical/moral: directly effects a small number of people personally known to an individual. ‘Marriage is for life’, ‘abortion is a crime’, ‘homosexuality is a choice’.

3. civil/national: directly effects the welfare and security of the realm as a whole. Theres a whole intersting history of how murder get generally bumped up to this category as a specific change to the organisation of society.

(I suppose there might be a fourth level, global, to cover things like nukes and genocide, but that’s a whole other discussion).

That way, you can actually usefully talk about the different setups of the Saudi Arabia, France, UK, India, Isreal, Malaysia and so on, discuss which aspects work, which don’t, and so predict what the consequences of a proposed change are likely to be.