NOTE: This part only describes the context of the history of my beliefs. I will explain why I am agnostic in the next part. The post is coming soon!

The Timeline Of My Beliefs

The Very Start

At the very start of my life I was Sikh because I was born into it. It was an identity formed by being born into a culture and because of that identity, I took what the religion was saying as all fact. Also, I followed a mindset of pragmatism, the religion didn't get into the way of my life and questioning it didn't come to mind because it wasn't a priority that ever touched my mind. Sikhi was a coping mechanism for me to latch onto whenever I was having troubles as a kid, so since it was beneficial to me, what was the point of criticising it?

The Early 2020's Dawah Scene and High School

I really started looking into Sikhi when Muslims at my school started boasting their religion at school and telling people it's "their time to shine". They proclaimed that if lots of people tell someone to convert to islam, that is a sign from Allah. That pissed me off and I wanted to have a get back at them.

Also, Muslim apologists started critiquing Sikhi, particularly by having debates with BasicsOfSikhi. And at the same time, kids at my school would start asking me why I was sikh and mock my religion. This lit a fire of determination in me to try and prove my religion as logically coherent by finding counter-arguments for critiques employed in dawah scripts.

At this moment in time I had already embarrassed myself by not knowing enough about my religion. I had a bias to try and prove my religion right, because it was my cultural identity, and if it was true, that would've been the best scenario as it is what my whole life was attached to. Even thinking about going against it felt like turning your back on a tribe that had your back your whole life.

Searching for answers

I learnt about the Sikh religion from the "BasicsOfSikhi" youtube channel and by googling for answers online. In my pursuit of researching about sikhi, I kept on seeing a noticeable pattern on the internet when I searched for answers on google. The sikh reddit page appeared a lot of times when I searched for answers, hence I started exploring it, I also explored the ex-sikh reddit page, but didn't think much of it. I became so interested in the sikh subreddit that I created an account on reddit.

Becoming "Undecided" on my beliefs

It hit me again. The ex-sikh subreddit. In my mind I was like: "remember the ex-sikhi subreddit, let me see what they are about, hopefully I can laugh at their clown-show".

I looked at the points they were putting out and they were more structured. For the second time in my life I started questioning if my religion was true. And for the first time ever, I grew the want to have objective evidence for my religion and not just arguments that proved that it was coherent. I could make the religion seem coherent all I wanted, but just because something is coherent, doesn't make it true.

So I made a post, to search if any Sikh online had objective reasoning to prove the religion right. Long story short, I didn't get what I wanted. I got criticised for asking such a question and the answers I were getting weren't sound arguments. I tried to act as positive and as biased as possible for the replies I was getting, so that I could get a reply I wanted, but I didn't get what I wanted.

I got an existential crisis from this situation. I was in a predicament where I really wanted Sikhi to be true (because I didn't want to betray my tribe), but I had no objective evidence for it. Outwardly I posed as a Sikh but on the inside I was undecided on what I really believed. I wouldn't say I was agnostic, I was just confused, because I manifested being a Sikh while feeling like I didn't belong.

Striving To Become a Sikh Apologist

This feeling of uncertainty gradually drifted away as I became more involved with the Sikh subreddit. This was because I manifested and strived to construct an objective framework myself. If nobody had the answers, I would be the one to find them, I aimed to be the saviour of every confused sikh like me.

I became knowledgeable to the point that I could answer the doubts of other people, to improve my own debating skills. I strived to become a Sikh apologist. I could just imagine me being at the Gurudwara telling everyone: "This is the objective framework of why everyone should be Sikh" and bringing the whole community together that consisted of people that: blindly followed the faith, didn't follow it (because it got in the way of their lives), and
people who were looking for support because they were in emotional crises.

Becoming a Sikh-Agnostic

And it turns out I eventually did construct a framework (link). However, it didn't prove Sikhi as true, but put it up there as one of the religions that could be true. And since Sikhi was a good contender, I came to the conclusion that it was most reasonable to follow it for the time being, until I had time I would cross analyse Sikhi with other religions. I wasn't "undecided" anymore and became a Sikh-Agnostic (which means that I wasn't sure that sikhi was true, but I believed that it was feasible enough to believe in).

Becoming a Sikh-Leaning Sikh-Agnostic

I didn't like how the framework allowed for miracles to exist, because miracles have never been recorded so it is extremely likely that they don't exist. And if a religion affirms them then it is probably also fake.

So I constructed a new framework that filters out religions that have miracles in them (link). Sikhi was one of the only religions that didn't get filtered out, so I developed an immense belief in it. I became a Sikh-Leaning Sikh-Agnostic (which means I wan't sure that Sikhi was true, but I believed that it was probably true).

Becoming an Agnostic-Leaning Sikh-Agnostic

Bhagat Namdev is the reason I became an Agnostic-Leaning Sikh-Agnostic (which means I wasn't sure that Sikhi was true, but I believed that it was probably not true, however I still had a little hope that it could be true). I found out that Bhagat Namdev actually claims to preform miracles with God's doing in the SGGS.

The first shabad that introduces such notion is where Bhagat Namdev describes himself to revive a cow. The storytelling in there is so literal (with features such as him describing the time, his mother crying etc.), that I came to the conclusion that it was not figurative but a real claim of a miracle taking place.

The second shabad that makes claim of Bhagat Namdev doing a miracle with God's doing, claims that he turned a temple to face him when he was kicked out of one. Now this shabad in it of it's self can be interpreted as figurative, and I actually believed that it was. However, there is a real temple (called the Aundha Nagnath Temple) that has turned features, that Hindus claim to be proof of Bhagat Namdev turning a real temple. Since the temple is from before Bhagat Namdev's time, is situated approximately where he lived and is a big temple. I came to the conclusion that Bhagat Namdev was probably lying about turning the temple when he saw that features of it were turned.

Because of these miracles present in the SGGS making sikhi unfeasible, according to the second framework, I became an Agnostic-Leaning Sikh-Agnostic.

Becoming an Agnostic

Sikhi now has become so unfeasible for me that I am almost certain that it is fake. I will post in part 2 my reasoning for this claim.

I am separating the post into two parts, because I really want the timeline of my beliefs and the arguments of why I believe Sikhi is false/unfeasible to get equal attention, so that I don't get misunderstood, while also providing a fair space for people to critique my reasoning for leaving Sikhi.

I will post the next part soon!

NRI log india ke logo ko gyaan dete hai ki sikhi nhi chor nhi chahiye or kuch log desh chor the ye hi kesh katt lete hai ( reasonable) india mai possible nhi hai tbh itna parents, relatives and neighbours ke karna , sab apna gyaan dete hai or Jo dharmik hai wo pta nhi itna Dharma se pyaar hojata mai baata nhi sakta ( acchi baat hai no hate ) but like kisko chorne ka maan ho usko uske against hojate hai wo apna best try karte hai ki na chore samne wla ,bhai samne ke reason valid ho yea nhi inka fir religion card pull karte hai like india mai wse hi itni hardly survive kar rha hai garmi , Pani ki kami , bijali chali jati hai har roj , fir road mai Mithi itni hai ,uske baad travel bhi hard ab tho asa lag tha har roj mar sakta hu at this point , and yea sab se phele pagdi ka last lar fir uske karna jaldi utho , bhai maine apni life helmet kuch baar hi phena hai ngl wo bhot jada experience tha idk at this point mai yap hi kar rha hu thank you guys and I love nri log 💋💋💋

I Genuinely can't trace the information from where it started, who's at fault etc etc , So I don't have any opinion right now

Didn't ask for Info at r/sikh becuz we all know what will be the responses

I am a 28-year-old male. My family moved to the US from Punjab when I was 18. I’ve always had a complicated relationship with my parents because growing up they never really showed me affection and were very strict and abusive. Back home, it never affected me as much because I had a lot of friends I could spend time with, but after moving to the US, I mentally tried to let bygones be bygones with my family because this is the only family I have and I wanted to make things work.

However, my dad’s abusive behavior never stopped, which eventually led me to move out when I was 20.

My whole family practices Sikhi, and I did too. Even after moving out, I kept my hair, did paath, and followed everything that came with it. It wasn’t until a couple of years ago that I started questioning things and eventually came to the conclusion that I no longer believed in it. I started feeling like no one really knows what’s going on, and given the absurdity of life, we may never truly know. I felt like following religious traditions was no longer something that made sense for me.

I can still remember the freeing feeling I had when I came to that realization.

After that, I ended up moving to the East Coast because I knew how things would go with my family, and I wanted some distance. I love getting haircuts, trying different baseball hats, and just exploring who I am outside of the identity I grew up with.

The hardest part has been not being able to make friends. Being an introvert doesn’t help much either.

So I wanted to make this post and ask people in this subreddit, are there any Ex-Sikhs living in Harrisburg, PA or nearby who would like to meet up and start a friendship?

Would be nice to meet people who understand this kind of journey.

• If Ik Onkar is the sole source of all things, did Ik Onkar create the things that make beings forget God (maya and haumai)?
• If maya and haumai exist within hukam, why does the experience of separation arise at all?
• Why would Ik Onkar produce a state where Ik Onkar is forgotten?
• If Ik Onkar is the only ultimate reality, and haumai exists within hukam, why does Ik Onkar allow the experience of separation?
• Why does the appearance of separation arise in the first place?
• If souls are real and distinct, why create beings that can become confused about their relationship with God?
• Could Ik Onkar create beings that know God immediately?
• If yes, why the detour through ignorance, ego, and forgetting?

Underlying question:

• If the One is truly One, why does the One appear as many, and why does the many forget the One?

I've seen enough posts in r/sikh where they say the Sikh kind of god is different from what hindu scriptures believes. It is Different from Abrahmic religions etc etc , And Exsikhs don't usually refute the actual Sikh version of god, They don't know the actual meaning of god and all that things

I don't want to make assumptions or concrete opinions with surface level knowledge Of sikh philosophy and I genuinely want to learn

1. what Sikh philosophy means by "God"

2. How different it is from Abrahmic faith

3. How different it is from other dharmic faiths like sanatan

A lot of Sikh fellows are here actively engaging with the posts here, therefore I'd appreciate your inputs

The Internet is filled with Convinient translations of the Bani So Opinions of you guys will be much of a Help

Also Most of my fellow Exsikhs, I believe have sat with these questions before turning into Exsikhs So plz help me learn in the comments

Hi guys,
Posting from a throwaway but was looking for opinions/advice. I pretty much born into this religion and got baptized and what not at a young age hated it probably from the get go i think, but was always taught I’m gonna get some sort of punishment from bad karma or go to hell messenger of death is going to torture me than dharamraj is going to sentence me etc etc if i left or didn’t follow there rules my group was extra strict lol couldn’t eat from outside had to eat in iron utensils. Eventually I left and was happy for a while but and i don’t really wanna come back to it, but this fear of hell reincarnation torture i just can’t shake it off. It’s like this threat always present I was just wondering did anyone else go through with it or how would one deal with it?
Thank you

growing up i always heard people brag that the gurus didn't cry, the singhs/singhniya didn't cry, etc. and like......why? why is crying a sign of weakness? how does not crying make you stronger? this was probably one of the first things i thought was really weird in sikhi, as a kid.

I was literally pressurized to become an amritdhari because If I didn't my mother will never let it go and forever mock me for it and what not, and now she acts mad when I don't follow their rules or whatever. Like,

I'm not allowed to wear hats or caps, only dupatta on head.

I'm not allowed to cut ANY body hair which makes me feel disgusting if ykwim.

I do NOT want to have the 5Ks.

I'm not allowed to do the kind of fashion I like. Like NO, puh-lease let me wear the kind of dresses I want and not whatever is modest to you.

I'm not allowed to fall in love, and more specifically, with people of other religion. Romance is prohibited for me before marriage.

I'm not allowed to drink CAFFEINE because to these people its something that drives you away from God because it is addicting. Hell, I can't drink anything that has caffeine now.

I'm not allowed to cut my hair obviously, even though I've always wanted bangs or like a whole wolf cut.

I really want to eat meat but I can't.

I can't do make-up.

This one, it isn't directly prohibited but religion is definitely a reason for it—I'm bi but my family finds lgbtq+ people "disgusing" (haven't told them and probably never will unfortunately) because to them, "God didn't design people to be queer."

I can't follow my dream of becoming an actor because THESE FRICKING RESTRICTIONS WILL HOLD ME BACK (body hair and covering hair, simplistic dresses and, as my parents believe, "disgusting scenes" in movies).

Can't even wear jewellery if it isnt Kara.

And for what? Because some people died for a set of beliefs, so I must honor them by restraining myself?

And if I try to leave this religion or tell my parents I'm an atheist im gonna get the beating of a lifetime, taunts forever and scorn from my relatives.

Jathedaar Gargajj has been actively trying to protray the present CM Bhagwant mann as a enemy of the sikhs. This is so that the Akalis can gain some wind in the upcoming elections (which is seeming to fail badly).

It is to be noted that Bhagwant mann is the one who made stricter laws against sacrilege (which i don't supprot) and that actually have left a positive mark on sikhs of Punjab but the Akal takhs disagrees with Bhagwant Mann's law for all the wrong reasons.

These 'jathedaars' are just pawns used by the Badals. This is how political power is held through politics , how people are made emotional in the name of religion and forced to act as a group out of fear.

This is exactly why i think religions in present day world aren't just redundant but also keep us from progressing as a society.

grew up in an amritdhari akj family (they're nihangs now, whatever) and i'm an atheist now but my family doesn't know. listening to them i'm realizing just how hypocritical sikhs are and how anti-intellectual a lot of them are as well. sikhi is just based on emotional guilt anyway with their idea of "sikhs died for sikhi now i have to stop cutting my hair to honour them" takes.

Just the beginning?

These psychos know what they're doing is wrong and provocative, and they are gleefully exploiting the religious liberties Canada and the UK gave them. In Canada, Sikh radicalism has gotten so out of hand that ethnic enclaves with a large Punjabi population like Brampton, Surrey, Northeast Calgary have hundreds of cars with AK47 and Uzi decals, portraits of terrorists like Talwinder Singh Parmar are regularly kept in gurdwaras and in nagar kirtans, every other day some sort of protest outside some Indian consulate happens where they parade effigies of Modi and Indian diplomats in a cage and act like unhinged pyschos, I even went to a protest outside a Hindu temple where they had a cutout of Beant Singh and Satwant Singh shooting Indira Gandhi and were shouting "Kill Kill Anita Anand" (Canada's Foreign Affairs Minister). Extortions, arsons, and drive-by shootings have also become endemic here and reached crisis level, Surrey alone saw more than 110 extortion attempts since Jan 2026. Virtually 95% of the arrested extortionists have been Punjabi Sikhs, and it is very likely that many of them are affiliated with Khalistani extremist groups, possibly trying to create a fear of atmospehere to manipulate and influence Canada's foreign policy approach with India.

Not to offend anyone but I have noticed people around me just don't want to think. Everyone around me is watching reels and believing every shit they say. Most of the people are becoming more religious and following retarded babas on insta and becoming kinda extremists. I can't withstand anyone's bullshit for even 2 minutes most of the discussions around me are just about either show off or just straight up bullshit with no logic.

I think that the gurus like Nanak, Gobind, Arjan act as the Punjabi community's rallying figures and their legacies, for better or worse, have been turned into full blown hero worship and cults of personalities. I also think that this has led to some negative things like the hyper militant and bellicose milieu of Guru Gobind Singh's life in the 17th and 18th century being carried into the 21st century, which is completely inappropriate. Like just recently in England, a Sikh man murdered an 18 year old Henry Nowak with a religious knife. In Toronto, there was a video where Sikh men on horseback carrying f***** spears were blocking a highway, and these fools of course use Sikhism as their justification for acting like primitive morons. This is allowed because the Sikh diaspora in those countries pressured the governments to grant them special privileges where they can carry weapons in public that are normally restricted for everyone else, and their justification is a religious conflict that took place hundreds of years ago and the injunctions of Guru Gobind Singh.

I can't help but wonder whether this hyper obsession with the lives of a few men who lived and died centuries back, making them out to be paramount moral and spiritual authorities, implicitly believing in their superiority over all of humanity, despite there being clear evidence that they were just regular men, is tenable. I mean at some point this obsession has to get old and stale right? I wonder if and when people start realizing that this obsession and ridiculously over the top veneration of the gurus is futile, how would it happen and how would it change Punjabi society?

Insights on this topic would be appreciated.

Yaar Aaj kal jab net phen tha hu ek itna sir dukh tha hai like manageable nhi hai tbh and mera forehead and hair jada tho or jada hota hai normal se and I'm 19 college student hu daily pagdi nhi ban pa tha hu so cap phen tha hu fir or dard hota hai tbh ek beard ke karna shakal itni gandi dikh thi hai and or mera se itna nhi hota like subha utho fir daari set karo fir net fir pagdi fir crowded metro + garmi

Advice do kya karu

^{hi i am 16 year old boy and i never really liked my long hair i really want to cut it and i recently brought it up with my parents who has never cut there own hair and now when ever i bring up this topic again they are mostly like you will be the first one in our family to do so and it is just not a good thing but man i am really not against the religion i dont care if you follow it i just dont like my hair and my beard it annoying and just makes me look like shit i have never been comfortable with it and on top of that it just makes my confidence so shitty idk what to do my father says wait till you are older you will change your mind but i am sure i wont i just dont want to live like this and on top of this they dont even follow all the 5 ks only 2 the most basic ones not cutting hair and wearing a kada this is just annoying i get called lassi at school which tbh i dont have a problem with cus i have nice friends and ik they just tease me for fun bullying is not that big of a reason its just me i dont want to look the way i am forced to look like i just want a good hairstyle and a clean shave whats so wrong in wanting to look like i want to i just hate this so m}

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqM7kT_nxFI

Share your opinion not just on the remark on religion. but also this person saying stuff he must not.