The Smithsonian is refusing to remove a photo some Sikh Americans finds offensive from the exhibition Beyond Bollywood: Indian Americans Shape a Nation, reports SikhNN.
The photo shows two Sikhs with short hair despite the fact religiously mandated unshorn hair – is a basic tenet of Sikhism.
“The Smithsonian has no intention of making changes to the exhibition’s labels and artifacts,” said Emily Grebenstein, a spokeswoman for the show’s curator. “We have confirmed that both men in the photograph are Sikhs.”
“That’s a very flimsy argument,” said Sukhmander Singh, professor emeritus of civil engineering at Santa Clara University, in California. “To take these people’s word, which has no substance in the Rehat Maryada, …is totally out of line.”
You can read more about this controversy and see the controversial photo in SikhNN.