Queer Sikhs are challenging bigotry by mixing their identities, faith, & cultural traditions
Followers of the Sikh religion believe in a genderless, eternal, omnipresent God who views all humans as equal; the religion also emphasizes the importance of helping vulnerable people in need, and its central holy religious text, the Guru Granth Sahib, contains no anti-LGBTQ+ scriptures.
However, the religion also originates from India — a country with few LGBTQ+ legal protections where 59% of people consider homosexuality “morally unacceptable” — many LGBTQ+ Sikhs, who are part of the estimated 25 million Sikhs worldwide, say they still struggle to find a place in their religious communities.
Gurleen Kaur, a 30-year-old queer Sikh
Kaur told Queerbeat that she never felt that she couldn’t be both Sikh and queer at the same time.
During the 2020 COVID lockdowns, she wanted to understand her queerness more, so she organized and promoted an online meetup for queer Sikhs: 150 people from eight countries ended up logging in to her event. She eventually met some of them in person years later, and they encouraged her to come out to her family (who is “double-obsessed” with the idea of her getting married, she said).
When she came out to them, her family asked her why she couldn’t just keep dating men, as she had done in the past. Community members told her parents that she was spiritually lost; some suggested they cut her off to teach her a lesson. They didn’t disown her, but she said she feels nervous around them (particularly because they keep mentioning marriage).
In 2022, she founded the Queer Sikh Network, which provides support for LGBTQ+ Sikhs. She arranges Sikh marriage ceremonies for same-sex Sikh couples in California and once organized a kirtan, an ancient devotional Indian practice that uses call-and-response chanting of sacred mantras to unite participants in spiritual closeness and emotional release.
“For me, Sikhi is a great power in my life — a great mental health resource,” she said. “I’ve had to shed a lot of what people told me being a Sikh was to find out what it was for myself. Once I had done that, it made me really sad that [queer Sikh] people had to leave that part of themselves.”
Queer Sikh fashion designer Param Sahib Singh
Just last November, three homophobic men in Delhi, India recognized Singh from his Instagram videos, where he shares his colorful, eye-catching gender-neutral fashions and homoerotic illustrations of Sikh men with over 426,000 followers.
The men covered his head with a cloth, dragged him to the ground, and beat him while calling him hijra (a transgender person) and chakka (an anti-trans slur). “I could hear them saying that I’m a disgrace to Sikhism,” he said. Six months earlier, unknown vandals trashed his studio.
His Instagram videos still get anti-LGBTQ+ comments, but he told the Instagram account Humans of Bombay, “People told me to tone it down. I didn’t. I just kept creating…. Now I’m creating, collaborating, and growing my label.”
“Everyone said pick faith or identity. I chose both because I am both,” he added. “That’s my truth and my strength: I’m a Sikh. I’m queer. I’m an artist.”
British Sikh family law barrister Jasvir Singh
Singh, co-founder of South Asian Heritage Month in July, publicly came out as married to a man in February 2023. At the time, he was the main Sikh contributor to Radio 4’s Thought For The Day and had been honored as a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for his work uniting faith communities and advocating for vulnerable people.
He said he never personally felt that his faith conflicted with his sexual orientation. He did once pray to God to make him straight so that he wouldn’t shame his family, but when his orientation didn’t change, he figured God had shown him his true path; it encouraged him to start coming out to his friends.
“I know that speaking about this is going to be highly controversial. I’m sure there will be lots of people out there who will be upset, annoyed, even angry at me,” he told the BBC. “There is a very small element of the British Sikh community that makes itself loudly heard. From them, I have received death threats for being gay, I have been accused on a TV station of being an infidel, and I have even had individuals call me up and threaten to expose me.”
Though some Sikh religious leaders espouse anti-LGBTQ+ views, Singh is happily married to his husband, Nick, a white, British man who wasn’t born into a Sikh family. Nick has always respected Singh’s religion — they’ve agreed to raise their children in the Sikh faith.
A Sikh religious figure in a gurdwara (a Sikh worship space) once blessed the coming together of his and his now-husband’s families by saying ardas (prayers) for them. “It was so powerful for me and for the two of us,” Singh said.
“Sadly, I know gay Sikhs who have given up their faith, or who feel their only option was to cut their hair, and to become less faithful, or just focus on their inner faith rather than spend time at the gurdwara,” he said.
“My faith has been a constant in my life through good times and bad. I’m not going to waver from my faith but I’m also not going to be ashamed of my sexuality,” Singh added, nothing that he has seen queer Sikhs disowned, beaten, and called pedophiles. He worries they come to associate the faith with that abuse and may even avoid other Sikhs as a result.
When a Sikh family member over the age of 90 saw a video of his wedding online, she told another family member, “As long as he is happy, I am happy,” he said.
“I’ve got nothing to hide and I know that I have got Waheguru [God] with me, as I have had Waheguru with me all the way,” he said. “Just as my Sikhism is part of me, so is my sexuality. So is my turban. So is my identity. I can’t divorce any one thing from the rest of me. That is who I am.”
Queer Sikh fashion influencer Sunny Singh Boparai
Boparai —who is also a gender-affirming medical professional and LGBTQ+ advocate — walked the runway at New York Bridal Fashion Week in October 2024, wearing a floor-length floral skirt, a long white sherwani shirt (that showed off his hairy, tattooed chest), and a black turban. He also appeared later on the runway, wearing a black embroidered kurta tunic and a sequin gold skirt.
The fashions were a deliberate mix of masculine and feminine styles created by Harleen Kaur Chhabra, a Sikh fashion designer who makes some genderless representations of South Asian styles.
“I was really scared just seeing how many Sikh, turbaned men were around,” Boparai told Teen Vogue
“Harleen didn’t have to invite me to be a part of her show, but she chose to because she wanted to make a statement and she wanted to tell a story,” Boparai told Teen Vogue. “It wasn’t something commonly seen in the Sikh community—we always see the hate and the negative rhetoric, but this fashion show celebrated my identity and all of the challenges I faced to get to this point.”
“It’s time the Sikh community starts to make spaces for the trans- and gender-expansive folks. And if you want to talk about a fashion designer in the community that’s making a difference on this front, it’s Harleen Kaur,” he said.
He also encouraged young queer Sikhs to visit Desi Rainbow Parents and Allies, an online resource for LGBTQ+ South Asians, saying, “Never forget that there is a vibrant community of people that are ready to celebrate you, welcome you, love you, and help you shine.”
Queer and trans Sikhs speak out
Baljit is a queer cis Sikh woman who lives in the state of Georgia, told Kaur Life, “The intersection of my queerness and my Sikhi has meant that, like so many others, I have needed to choose my sangat [fellowship]. My sangat are the queer, the gender non-conforming, the trans folks, and the non-binary people who are often not thought of when we say ‘sarbat da bhalla’ (may everyone prosper) in our ardaas.”
Baljit said she saw trans friends and youth cut off from their healthcare or forced back into the closet by family pressure or work discrimination. The resulting emotional distress can lead some queers to self-harm or attempt suicide, she said. So she wants Sikhs to embrace trans and non-binary Sikhs as part of their sangat.
“I want the greater Sikh sangat to come to know my sangat – the sangat of beautiful people not given a fair shake by this society, the sangat who only wishes to love whom they love and live authentically,” she said. “I want them to include this community in their seva with the same generosity of spirit and love as any other.”
manmit, a trans non-binary Sikh, told the publication, “As a trans non-binary Sikh, Sikh spaces have been the most violent than any spaces I have been in. To be violated by the people who are taught to be your sangat is one of the worst. As Sikh spaces have continued to sanction brahminical (jatt) cisheteropatriarchal violence, Sikh spaces need to commit to reconciliation and healing for the queer and trans Sikhs who are being impacted right now by these laws but are not able to seek support from their own sangat/community.”
They said this reconciliation should start with conversations that center queer and trans Sikhs, but added that the work towards change should start with Sikh spaces since “even recognizing the existence of queer and trans Sikhs that at this current moment is nonexistent.”
Sundeep, a Queer Sikh Man in New York City said that, in order to break down religious queerphobia in the faith, Sikhs must also become more comfortable talking about sexuality and gender to their own family members and sangat members.
Baljit added, “I would like to see Sikhs becoming more politically involved in every way: contacting their representatives, protesting, and being visible in the opposition to these anti-trans laws. Simultaneously, I’d like to see Sikhs challenging our families and local sangats to learn more about what it is to be trans or gender non-conforming, but also speaking up in any space they are in where there are anti-trans attitudes. Mindsets will not change without an active effort to change them, and that should be a focus of Sikh allies.”
The world population of Sikhs is almost double the world Jewish population. An estimated 500,000 Sikhs live in the U.S.