Image via News India Times
The city of Modesto, California has sworn in their first Sikh police officer. Officer Varinder Khun Khun is allowed to keep his beard and wear his turban, religious requirements for Sikh men, despite the police department’s usual requirements that officers be clean-shaven. It seems he may be the first such Sikh police officer in the United States, though it’s possible less observant Sikhs are serving elsewhere.
Khun Khun was born in India, is 28 years old, and graduated from the Napa Police Academy on June 11. He approached the Modesto police chief over a year ago to talk to him about the possibility of serving as a police officer while maintaining his beard and turban. He expressed concerns that grooming policy wouldn’t allow this, but Police Chief Galen Carroll told him that they would accommodate him. More important, the chief maintains, is that officers be people of character. What’s especially important is that the police department reflects the community, and that Sikhs who need police assistance have somebody who they feel can relate to them.
Khun Khun’s joining the police department helps to realize a 2012 law signed by California Governor Jerry Brown, which added protection against discrimination based on religious grooming practices to the states Fair Employment Act. Khun Khun also joins three Sikh US Army enlistees, who successfully won permission to keep their beards and turbans while serving.
Sikh men are often mistaken for Muslims in the United States, especially during this election cycle, and sometimes face discrimination or violence on those grounds. American Sikhs have worked hard to make it clear that they are not Muslims, but they have also resisted the urge to throw their Muslim neighbors “under the bus.” It is actions such as these, which are very much steeped in Sikh religious teachings that should make Varinder Khun Khun an excellent officer.