Sikh Youth Challenges: High divorce rate, tough finding partners

By Mohan Singh Rendhawa | Malaysia |

The biggest challenge of the 21st Century faced by young people today is the high rate of divorce. The Sikh community has so far not taken any visible action  to address this challenge. 

Various  programs are going on as usual and divorced couples are left to find their  own solutions.  The parents of divorced couples are struggling to provide the emotional and financial support to bring up their grandchildren and lessen the trauma of their divorced young people. The high divorce rate will also effect the next generation of Sikhs raised in such an environment. 

Since the frequency of divorce in the Sikh community today is very high, we need to find ways to help young people having relationship problems so as to prevent a marriage from breaking down.  The root cause in most cases is financial management and lack of anger management skills. 

The Perak Sikhs have set up an organisation ‘Sikhmai’ to provide support for single mothers by helping them to come together to share their problems.  Simple skills are taught to single mothers to help them earn money to support their family.

READ ALSO: KL seminar to discuss Sikh youth challenges and prospects

The challenge is for the community to work on a strategy to reduce the number of breakups by providing marriage counselling centres in all major towns in Gurdwaras. Teaching anger management skills may also help young people to learn conflict resolution skills. Skills in handling the five thieves – namely kam, krod, lobh, moh and hanker as mentioned  in the SGGS  – will definitely help. Unfortunately,  we as a community only mention this in our Ardas and ask for divine intervention to help us. What is needed is the development of the inner strengths of young people by organising workshops related to these emotions.

Family leadership workshops may help. There is a beautiful book by Dr Stephen R Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families. Couples who are going to tie the knot could be given training using this book as a guide.

Difficulty in getting a partner to marry 

Due to the high divorce rate among young Sikh families, the challenge of many young Sikhs is to find a suitable match and get married after they have established themselves in a job. In the 20th century, women did not have much of a choice. They followed the choice of their parents and agreed to get married to the groom chosen by their parents. Today, young ladies are working. They are independent, hold high-paying jobs and have their own set of standards for a man they want to settle down with. 

There is no work-life balance among ambitious young Sikhs. They work hard in building a career and do not have a place or an event to meet other young Sikhs. The young professionals end up in clubs and bars where few young Sikh ladies are found. Young people meet people from the other communities in their work environment  fall in love resulting in mixed marriages. This trend is on the rise. 

Lack of preparation for marriage

During the 20th century, there were distinct gender roles: male the sole breadwinner, female the homemaker. Parents used to upskill their daughters from a young age to take on the homemaker role by gradually equipping them with skills of cooking cleaning and sewing. 

But in the 21st century, both the girls and the boys are in the school system working hard to earn a good qualification, the focus is passing exams. The target is not just to pass but to get straight A’s in their examinations. With the heavy workload of school and the number of subjects to prepare for both the boys and girls do not get a chance to acquire living skills of a home maker.

TOMORROW: PART 2

(You are invited to join and share your thoughts at the one-day seminar – ‘Sikhi & Sikh Youth in the 21st Century: Challenges and Prospects’ – on June 30 (Sunday), from 9am to 3.30pm, at the Asia Pacific University (APU) in Kuala Lumpur. Click here to join. It’s free.)

Author: Lt. Col. Rtd. Mohan Singh Rendhawa is a Fellow Institute of Personnel & Development UK  and also a Fellow of the Institute of Public Relations Malaysia. He served the RMAF for 27 years and has been a corporate trainer for 28 years after he took his early retirement from the RMAF. The views of this article are the personal opinions of the writer.

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KL seminar to discuss Sikh youth challenges and prospects  (Asia Samachar, 17 June 2024)

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