Dastar

Abstract: In the spring of 2003, the United States Supreme Court was presented with what appeared to be the relatively simple issue of whether the provisions of the U.S. Trademark Act (“the Lanaham Act”) prohibiting “false designations of origin” could be used to prevent the copying of creative work without giving attribution or credit to the original producers of the work. The Supreme Court, in Dastar v. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp., incorrectly held that the relevant provision, section 43(a), was incapable of identifying the parties or entities that were the origin of “communicative content” because “origin of goods” as used in the provision only applied to the producers of the tangible physical objects. The holding in Dastar goes against over 50 years of precedent, literal statutory language, and legislative history. Prior to the Dastar opinion, plaintiffs had been successful in cases involving unauthorized edits of recordings, television programmes, stories, omission of co-author's credit, and even...

Abstract: This chapter undertakes an ethnographic analysis of the shifting meanings that the dastar (turban), as a gendered body marker, may represent for Sikh diaspora in countries of resettlement. Drawing from fieldworks in Italy and the United Kingdom, this chapter focuses on the transnational disruption between first and further migrant generations, discussing lived accounts of turban wearing among Sikh young women and men, from eager adoption to reluctant rejection. Historically, the dastar has been the prerogative of baptised Sikh males. Contemporary concerns include choice or pressure in wearing unshorn hair and the dastar, Sikh media imaginary and the dominant discourse on performing a minority politics of resistance, discrimination that the turban might prompt in diaspora contexts and recent advocacy turns including the rise of Sikh feminism. Young diaspora Sikhs are flanked between the personal and political relevance of dastar wearing, which is meant to re-cast on one’s flesh the spiritual union with God, but may often invoke other values, which are always gender specific and context dependent, yet rarely acknowledged. Explicitly, Sikh hyper-masculinity runs parallel to the upsurge of women’s dastar dress, revealing the emergence of assertive feminine subjectivities. Rather than representing one sacred dress code, this religious garment engenders multiple positionalities, where body aesthetics convey layers of competing social ethics.

Abstract: In the religion of Sikh, wearing the turban or the dastar is a religious practice that is a symbolic proof of their faith to the Sikh Guru’s teachings and their holy book. The dastar carries its own distinguished characteristics in terms of the way it is worn, its measurements and colours. It completes the Sikh dresscode or uniform, known as Panch Kekaar or the 5Ks, that is an integral part of their identity. Nevertheless, not all Sikh followers wear the dastar. This depends on individual’s willingness to undergo a baptism ritual, known as the amrit sanskar. The dastar-wearing Sikhs who have requested for amrit are called amrit-dhari; they are true Sikh followers who adhere to the teachings of their Sikh teachers. One of the objectives of this study is to provide information to the multi-racial society in Malaysia, especially the Muslim society, concerning the wearing of dastar in Sikhism and its relation with baptism. Through this information, it is hoped that a society that is tolerance and have mutual respect for each other, irrespective of race and religion, as aspired by the concept of 1Malaysia, is borne. In this study, the textual analysis method is adopted to retrieve information on the dastar and the amrit sanskar ritual. In addition, various references in relation to the Sikh religion were also made. Keywords: Dastar, Sikhism, amrit sanskar, panch kekaar