Feminist Sikh - Guru Nanak

From the Vancouver Sun:

“Guru Nanak is to me a feminist,” says Sikh scholar Nikky-Guninder Kaur Singh.

That’s why the Punjabi professor can’t accept how her religion has become so patriarchal; filled with “machismo” and a “warrior” mentality that often contradicts its original teachings.

The founder of Sikhism, Guru Nanak (1469–1539), was a truly “egalitarian,” “inclusive” man and a champion of women’s rights, Kaur Singh said this week before giving a lecture at the Asian Centre at the University of B.C.

The author of a dozen books, including the just-released Of Sacred and Secular Desire: An Anthology of Lyrical Writings from the Punjab (I.B. Tauris), laments how virtually all sacred duties within the 23-million-member religion continue to be performed by men.

Film: Rebel Queen

From the Guardian:

The film Rebel Queen tells the remarkable story of the last Sikh ruler of Lahore – a fearless Maharani who waged two wars against British rule in India. She is an inspiring figure for young Asian women today.

An Indian woman wearing a crinoline over her traditional clothes, and emeralds and pearls under her bonnet, walks in Kensington Gardens in 1861. She is the last Sikh queen of Lahore, the capital of the Punjab empire, and her name is Jindan Kaur. She died two years later, in 1863, and was buried in west London.

Maharani Jindan Kaur's life – much of which was spent raging against the British empire for cheating her out of the Punjab, then a vast country stretching from the Khyber Pass to Kashmir – is the subject of a film called Rebel Queen, which premiered at New York's International Sikh film festival and is set to be shown in the UK in February.

Headware: An Interfaith Connection

From the Mercury News:

Their head wear displayed a full palette of colors and patterns, and symbolized different faiths. But the two dozen Sikh and Muslim women who gathered Saturday at a Fremont community center knew their turbans and scarves had a singular effect on many others in a country where their beliefs are in the minority.

They make the women stand out as different, and to some, threatening.

Organizers said local Sikhs and Muslims had never held such a multifaith forum to address shared concerns about discrimination and profiling, but decided to do so because it remains a daily concern. While the overt hostility that peaked shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks by Islamic terrorists has subsided, more subtle discrimination persists, they said.

Sikh and Muslim women are expected to cover their heads. In the Sikh faith, which traces its roots to 16th-century India, both men and women cover their hair, which they do not cut. In Islam, which began in seventh-century Arabia, women cover their heads as a sign of modesty.

Though the event was aimed at women who cover their heads in both faiths, a couple of Sikh men attended as well.

Canada's Female Sikh MP in Hot Water

From the Times of India:

Embattled Indian-Canadian MP Ruby Dhalla, who is facing charges of abuse by her two former nannies, was in more trouble on Thursday when an advocacy group working for foreign workers testified in support of the nannies.

Thirty-five-year-old Ruby Dhalla, who is the three-time MP from the local Brampton-Springdale constituency, faces the allegations by her two Filipino nannies that they were underpaid, overworked and forced to do non-nanny jobs while they were employed briefly at the MP's home here in February 2008.

A former Miss India-Canada runner-up, Dhalla has called the allegations "a political conspiracy" to defame her.

She is the first Sikh woman to become an MP in Canada and is widely considered to become the first South Asian cabinet minister in a future government by her Liberal Party.