Growing Up In Punjabi Culture

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Growing up in Canadian society, I struggled with achieving a balance between Canadian or Western culture and Punjabi culture. Many times, values and beliefs that were practiced within my Canadian school or social life clashed with my culture at home. For example, growing up in a practicing Sikh family, I was only permitted to eat vegetarian meals, which was different from all of my friends’ practices. Often, I felt that I had to abandon my cultural roots in order to fit in with my peers. For example, I drifted away from my Sikh identity during my adolescence as I cut my hair (uncut hair is a spiritual symbol of Sikhism) and I introduced meat into my diet. During my adolescence, this cultural clash lead to feeling of exclusion and animosity …show more content…
I acted a certain way to bring and maintain respect and honour to my family. For example, I did not consume alcohol and refrained from dating until a certain age as these activities were disapproved for women. However, as I entered young adulthood, I began to question gender norms in Punjabi culture. While my brother and male cousins could consume alcohol and go to night clubs, my female cousins and I were looked down upon if we did the same. I finally was seeing the inequality between females and males in Punjabi culture. When I was younger, I accepted this inequality without questioning it, however, my Canadian education and experiences forced me to comprehend this unfair treatment. Therefore, I changed some of my behaviours accordingly and challenged my parents when it came to differences in how my brother and I were treated. However, respect and honour are family values ingrained in me since my childhood, therefore, as much as I wanted to rebel against these unequal values, I could not. Nevertheless, I deemed that my parents’ worldviews would remain different from my intersectional-feminist views and values due to our different experiences and

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