KAUR is a groundbreaking project. It is the very first animated short film on the life of Mai Bhago. The film runs just over 22 minutes and will be free for everyone to view in the first week of March to celebrate International Women's Day. Read more at: kaur.sikhnet.com.
Here is SikhNet's founder and CTO Gurumustuk Singh Khalsa explaining some of his reasons behind making KAUR:
Women are given the name 'Kaur', which means 'Princess.' But what does that mean for a Sikh woman to be a princess? I was watching my daughter mimic princesses she sees, and I realized we don't really have a very clear identity for Sikh women. Some women wear turbans, some wear chunnis, but often times, if you were to go on the street, you wouldn't know who is a Sikh woman and who is not. That makes it more challenging. I felt that, as my daughter was growing up, we need some role models. I needed some things for her to visually relate to and what it is for a woman to be a Sikh."
Ek Ong Kaar Kaur Khalsa, SikhNet's Program Director, shares her thoughts:
"How do you inspire young girls to be a conscious princess, a spiritual princess, a Khalsa princess instead of a Disney princess? That's where we got back to Mai Bhago and said, 'Who are the women in Sikh history that we know of? Because there are many we don't know of. Mai Bhago is known and she has this amazing story. She empowered herself. She grew up on Dharmic principles. She meditated, learned martial arts and really fought for the life that she loved - this life that Guru Gobind Singh created of equality, freedom and self empowerment. She represented all those qualities."
"We wanted to do the story of Mai Bhago. But if you just tell the story of Mai Bhago, it might not be so relevant for young girls who might think, 'That's interesting, but what does that have to do with me?'
"So we took the Saibhang character one more step. She is young, probably in high school, and she's dealing with bullies and she has an interest in science. She's going through the struggles a lot of girls her age go through because when girls start to hit puberty, they lose a lot of their self-esteem. They lose a lot of their sense of self. They become very insecure.
"Young women may want to start to branch out, but be too afraid to. They don't get the support they need and so they don't. So we molded her not just on a Sikh young girl, but on a young girl from any culture or any time. We wanted this story to have relevance across many cultures and countries because these are universal issues we are dealing with. Mai Bhago is an inspirational figure for any young girl..."
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And don’t forget to MARK YOUR CALENDARS. March 3, 2015. Join us in celebrating International Women’s Day, where we will remember the story of Mai Bhago and the gift of empowerment that the Gurus gave to all women, through SikhNet’s original short animation KAUR.
