Something unexpected is happening in the living rooms of Sikh Canada. Broadcasters and streaming platforms carrying live kirtan report that their fastest-growing audience is not the elders for whom such services were designed, it is their grandchildren.
Across Brampton, Surrey and Mississauga, second and third-generation Sikhs in their twenties describe a morning ritual that would have surprised their own teenage selves: coffee, a phone propped against the kettle, and Asa Di Vaar live from Punjab.
Community researchers point to a simple driver: connection. "For young people whose Punjabi is uncertain and whose visits to Punjab are rare, live darshan is a door that asks nothing of them except presence," one University of Toronto researcher told this desk. "They can simply sit with their grandmother and be in the same sangat."
It is this generation that Afghan Sikh TV is built for as much as any other. Multi-camera darshan, kirtan audio channels, and subtitled katha are all designed so that a viewer born in Toronto can follow as fully as one born in Tarn Taran.
"It's the bridge we didn't know we needed," one young viewer said. "My grandfather watches the darshan. I watch him watching it. Both of us are home."
AS·TV NEWS DESK
Quick answers
- Why are young Sikhs watching live darshan?
- Connection. Live darshan asks nothing of a viewer except presence, so second-generation Sikhs whose Punjabi is uncertain can sit in the same sangat as their grandparents from anywhere in the world.
- What helps younger viewers follow a live diwan?
- Multi-camera darshan, kirtan audio channels and subtitled katha, designed so a viewer born in Toronto can follow as fully as one born in Tarn Taran.
Reported by the Afghan Sikh TV news desk
The Global Sangat Report keeps correspondents at the historic gurdwaras and a permanent desk in Kabul, reporting on the panth across every timezone, funded by the sangat, answering to no one else.
