I feel more at home with ex-Sikhs than the sangat, but I still feel Sikh

I’ve been trying to figure out what I even am anymore because I don’t really feel ex-Sikh. I still feel deeply Sikh.
But honestly, I feel more at home around ex-Sikhs than I do around the sangat.
I used to be pretty involved. I’ve been on committees, I was a sevadar, and my job has moved me around enough that I’ve experienced different gurdwaras and sangats. I know my experience isn’t universal, but seeing the same shit over and over in different places has made modern Sikh institutions and the sangat almost unbearable to me.

And I know I’m not the only Sikh who feels this way.

The gurdwara politics. The performative praying and religious wear. The obsession with who is and isn’t a “real Sikh.” The constant litmus tests about kesh, rehat, diet, politics, maryada, the Akal Takht, Khalistan, Nihangs, whatever.

There seems to be so much energy spent policing Sikhs and so little willingness to ask why so many Sikhs feel alienated in the first place.
Even the way we approach the Guru has become difficult for me. I have tremendous respect for Guru Granth Sahib Ji, but sometimes it feels like we’ve become more concerned with ritualizing and personifying the physical saroop than actually reading what’s inside it.

Honestly, I’d love to just have the Guru in my home and make Sikhi personal. But even that becomes institutionalized because obtaining a saroop is controlled by religious authorities and requirements about who can have one.

Then there are things we love to claim Sikhi transcends while they remain alive and well in the community: misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, racism and somehow, after everything Sikhi says about it, fucking casteism.
And looking at younger Sikhs online doesn’t exactly make me optimistic either.

It feels like we’re developing our own version of the manosphere: obsessed with masculinity, warriors, “traditional” women, purity, Khalistan, romanticizing Nihangs and proving who is the most unapologetically Sikh.

Sikh influencers are the fucking worst for this. So much content supposedly about defeating haumai seems to be made by people absolutely drowning in it.

I’ve also found myself increasingly uncomfortable with things treated as unquestionable parts of Sikh identity: reincarnation, treating the Gurus like gods to be worshipped, the authority of the Akal Takht, and what I see as an Islamification of Sikhi through increasing rigidity, orthodoxy and religious policing.
I also haven’t really brought my family into Sikhi, and apparently that’s another thing I’m supposed to feel guilty about.
It just feels weird to me.

Sikhi is my path. The idea of turning that into “okay, everybody, we’re a Sikh family so we’re all going to the gurdwara and doing seva together!” feels weirdly indoctrinating to me and almost against what I understand the spirit of Sikhi to be.

I don’t care if any of my kids end up Sikh. I genuinely don’t. Whatever they believe should be something they come to themselves. If one of them finds Sikhi meaningful, great. If they don’t, also great. I don’t understand what value there is in manufacturing more Sikhs just because I happened to have children.
But when I’ve said this to other Sikhs, I’ve actually been chastised for it. I’ve been told I’m “blessed” to have so many kids, yet I’m choosing not to raise them Sikh and “make the Panth stronger.”
And that’s exactly the shit that drives me insane.

Because some of the same community that tells me I have some obligation to produce more Sikhs will turn around and make my kids feel like they’re not Sikh enough anyway.

They’re not Punjabi enough. They don’t know enough. They don’t look Sikh enough. They weren’t raised the right way. They don’t participate enough.
So which is it?

I’m supposed to bring my kids into the Panth because apparently their existence can “make the Panth stronger,” but then they’re going to get judged because they don’t satisfy somebody else’s definition of a proper Sikh?

Make it make sense. Fuck.

And weirdly, that’s why I feel comfortable here.

I value that you guys are willing to criticize the faith you came from. You’re willing to say when something doesn’t make sense instead of automatically defending it because it’s Sikh.

Sometimes I feel more at home with that than I do with a sangat where questioning something immediately turns into a debate about whether you’re a real Sikh.

I actually want to meet more Sikhs who think this way. Sikhs who can love Sikhi without being blind to its problems, and who don’t need everyone around them to practice or believe exactly as they do.
So I genuinely don’t know where that leaves me.

Maybe I’m ex-Sikh institutionally but still Sikh personally. Maybe I’m just a really heterodox Sikh.

are there any others like this?