Haircuts or turbans: many young Sikhs are forgoing turbans and cutting their long hair--leaving spiritual leaders dismayed.

• Author: Gentleman, Amelia
• Position: INTERNATIONAL

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When he was 14, Jugraj Singh abandoned his turban and had a lifetime's growth of hair cut off. Like many young Sikhs in India, Singh found his turban--the most conspicuous emblem of the Sikh faith--a bother. It got in the way when he took judo classes, and washing his long hair was time-consuming, as was the morning ritual of winding seven yards of cloth around his head.

"In the end, it was a question of fashion," says Singh, now an 18-year-old business student. "I felt smarter without it."

Singh is not alone: A new generation of Sikh men is choosing style over tradition, setting aside their turbans and cutting their long hair. The trend is leaving spiritual leaders dismayed.

Sikhism was founded at the end of the 15th century in northern India. It is based on a belief in one God and the rejection of the Hindu caste system, which divided Indian society into hereditary classes. Today, there are 18 million Sikhs in India, most in the northern state of Punjab, and 23 million worldwide. Hundreds of thousands live in the U.S.

Sikh leaders have long prohibited their members from cutting their hair, saying long hair is a symbol of Sikh pride. The turban, worn mostly by men, was conceived to manage the long hair and to make Sikhs easily identifiable in a crowd.

These days, however, not every young Sikh wants to stand out so boldly.

TURBAN PRIDE

Jaswinder Singh, a lawyer and leader of a "turban pride" movement, estimates that half of India's Sikh men now forgo the turban, compared with just 10 percent a couple of decades ago.

"The problem is very severe," he says from the headquarters of his organization, Akaal Purkh Ki Fauj, or Army of God, in Amritsar, the spiritual home of the Sikhs. "We are going to have to battle hard to turn back the tide. Otherwise, another 20 years will pass and India won't have any more Sikhs in turbans."

The dwindling number of turban wearers reflects less a loss of spirituality than increasing Westernization and the accelerating pace of Indian life, Jaswinder Singh says.

He puts the start of rapid decline at the mid-1990s; as India began liberalizing its economy, more people traveled abroad, and satellite TV arrived in the villages of Punjab.

Working mothers became too rushed to help their sons master the skill of wrapping a turban, he says, and increasingly moms just shrugged it off and let them cut their hair. Some abandoned the turban in self-defense after Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was...