As a team, we don’t think we are “putting” Sikhi and queerness into a conversation. They are already in conversation and have been in conversation. We are simply trying to remind folks of the many different ways this conversation shows up in people’s lives.
We hope to learn from the experiences of Sikhs from LGBTQIA+ backgrounds and how they move through the world. We hope to bring specific attention to the impact of racism, casteism, gender and sexuality (biological dimorphism, patriarchy, and cisheterosexism), capitalism, documentation, and ability in these experiences.
We define queerness and Sikhs through self-identification. Like many queer-identifying and/or trans-identifying individuals, when Sikhs move through the world, they often embody genders and sexualities that challenge dominant, mainstream, and normative assumptions (more about this on our FAQ page). We lean into the possibility that there may be more sharedness in our experiences.
We do not expect to find a “universal narrative” that explains LGBTQIA+ Sikhs’ lives. We expect to find immense diversity. We hope that we can all find moments of sharedness with your siblings and sangat through this diversity. Only then, in the spirit of Guru Nanak Dev Ji, can we build communities and sangats together.
