Sikhs Want U.S. Army to Waive Dress And Appearance Regulations

April 15, 2009

Author: Kevin Baron

Source: SALDEF/Stars and Stripes

http://www.saldef.org/content.aspx?&a=3711&z=4&title=

Seeing “Integrate the U.S. Army” on a protest sign recalls the civil rights struggles of African-Americans in the mid-20th Century. But on Tuesday, under a cold wet spring sky, more than a dozen Americans of a different minority, the Sikh faith, stood in front of the iconic Iwo Jima memorial to World War II with one simple request: Let us serve.

The Pentagon has informed two Sikh personnel in the Army Reserves, a doctor and a dentist, that they must remove their turbans and cut their hair when they are called into their regular Army service later this year, according to a Sikh advocacy group.

Capt. Kamaljeet S. Kalsi said the Army recruiters who approached him during his first year of medical school in 2001 said they wanted him, and his beard, turban and long hair, to serve in the medical corps.

Seven years later, Kalsi expects to begin the Officers’ Leadership Basic Course in July. But superiors in the Army’s Health Professions Scholarship Program told him last year that he may have a problem with these “articles of faith” and an Army medical advisor to the U.S. Surgeon General informed him he may face resistance over his turban and beard.

Kalsi wrote to commanders at the Army Graduate Medical Education Office in December 2008 asking for exemption, but was denied.

On Tuesday, the Sikh Coalition filed a formal complaint with the inspectors general of the Army and the Department of Defense on behalf of Kalsi and 2nd Lt. Tejdeep Singh Rattan, a Reservist since 2006. The group was formed after two Sikhs were attacked in Queens, N.Y., on the night of 9/11 as reprisals for the attack.