SAN ANTONIO — Amid lines of soldiers, one after the other in standard-issue dress uniform and black beret, will be one in a turban and full beard Monday — the first Sikh in a generation allowed to complete U.S. Army officer basic training without sacrificing the articles of his faith.
Capt. Tejdeep Singh Rattan, a 31-year-old dentist, graduated Monday at Fort Sam Houston after the Army made an exemption to a uniform policy that has effectively prevented Sikhs from enlisting since 1984.
“I am overjoyed to serve my country, work with my fellow soldiers and to have completed basic training,” said Rattan in a statement released by the Sikh Coalition, a New York-based advocacy group that pushed the Army to allow him and another Sikh to go on active duty without sacrificing the unshorn hair mandated by their faith.
The other soldier, Dr. Kamaljeet Singh Kalsi, is completing an emergency-medicine fellowship and is scheduled to attend basic training this summer, said coalition director Amardeep Singh. Rattan and Kalsi offer health care skills that are in high demand in an Army stretched by wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
For Sikhs, the unshorn hair wrapped in a turban and beard are required to keep adherents in the natural state in which God made them, Singh said.
