I was taken by the story in today’s Globe and Mail about
“the new face of Canada’s Sikhs” [1]. The story’s hook is that a young slate of candidates has been successful in an election to manage one of North America’s largest Sikh temples, one where there has been significant and violent tensions over the years between moderates and traditionalists. The Globe’s front page had a wonderful picture of a seated line of older, bearded, turbaned Sikh men, among whom sits Gursimran Kaur, a 19 year old woman who ran successfully on the youth slate.
The story made much of the “progressive” message of Gursimran Kaur’s platform giving one priority to “gender equality and fighting domestic violence”, but said little about what it means to return “to reintroduce traditional customs”, the other major aspect of the platform, except to say that equality is a fundamental element in traditional Sikh religious beliefs. My own ignorance prevents my integrating those two fundamental premises in more than a superficial way and I look forward to hearing more about this.
More detail on the first part of the platform can be found on the Sikh Youth website [2] posted as part of the youth slate’s campaign. This seems to me to be among the most interesting political developments in some time (I am not ignoring the Obama campaign, of course). For a feminist seeing gender equality as playing such a significant role (with very practical plans for implementing it) for young women – and men – is reassuring. Now I’m curious how all this will come together, but for now this promises to be a fascinating political case study.