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A Pictorial Journey of SIKH SHRINES of #PUNJAB by a Singh who travelled to hundreds of Sikh shrines on his bicycle!

Some stories can only begin with “once upon a time” — like this little-known history of an indefatigable pilgrim, Dhanna Singh ‘Patialvi’, who travelled to every Sikh shrine in an undivided India on his humble bicycle in the 1920s and 1930s, clicking pictures and chronicling his travels.

When his lost legacy — eight diaries and more than 200 pictures — came up for preservation at the Punjab Digital Library (PDL) in Chandigarh, Singh returned to life, 85 years later, to tell the story of the Sikh shrines as they stood in that bygone era. While many of these Gurdwaras are big centres of the Sikh faith today, some have lingered on the margins and a few remain unknown. What we know about Singh is from his diaries and a brief mention in the Sikh Encyclopaedia.

Born as Lal Singh Chahal in the early 1890s at Ghannauri village of Sangrur district, he grew up in an orphanage with his brother and later served the royal family of Patiala, taking care of the cars of Maharaja Bhupinder Singh. “The royal family records would have some details on him,” said PDL head Davinder Pal Singh.

Baptised as Dhanna Singh at Nanded in his thirties, he quit royal service to feed his hunger for travel. A devout Sikh, he bicycled to every gurdwara in India, starting in the 1920s with a trip to Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Bengal and Assam. Newspapers published the accounts of what he saw.

From Wazirabad, he came to Gujarat on the April 6, 1932. His first photograph is of Takht Damdama Sahib (dedicated to the sixth Guru), where he stopped on his way from Kashmir; the second of a Gurdwara in the northeast of Gujarat linked to Guru Hargobind Sahib ji; and the third of Shaheedi Gurdwara Fatehsar, north of Gujarat, where Singh reports that “the Sikhs saved 17,000 Hindus from the cruel Muslim forces” — the entry translated by Mannat, a volunteer at PDL.

“Dhanna Singh wished the world to see these places too. So he bought a camera, an expensive proposition in those times, and learnt photography before starting his next journey — across undivided Punjab, Jammu and Kashmir and what is now Pakistan,” said digital libray head Davinder Pal. Visiting various Sikh shrines and historical places, the pilgrim took several hundred photos, which he captioned, dated and signed meticulously, as his gift to posterity.

He called himself “cycle yatru” and he appeared in pictures with his ride twice in the 1935 edition of ‘Phulwari’, a popular magazine of that time, which recounts one of his trips to the hills. The same year, it reported that Singh, who had logged 25,000 miles on his bicycle by then, had been killed by a freak gunshot.

The Sikh Encyclopaedia reports that while travelling to the North Western Frontier Province (NWFP), he halted at Hasokhel village near Mir Ali in Bannu district, now in Pakistan. “It was a common practice for the people in that disturbed area to keep loaded weapons by their side at night. Next morning, as the host was unloading his gun, it went off, killing Dhanna Singh on the spot.

His earlier travel notes were safe in the custody of one Seva Singh, son of the late mistri Gurbaksh Singh of Patiala, but his photographs were lost, until a family, which wishes to remain anonymous, brought these to the languages department in Patiala. The family said he had left the works with a friend for safekeeping before setting out on the final picture pilgrimage.

~ Source: DailySikhUpdates

A good part of the Sikh history lies in what is today the modern Pakistan. Kartapur is an example. Guru Nanak, the first Sikhs Guru, had spent some 18 years here. It lies only a few miles from the Dera Baba Nanak, the town now in the modern-day Punjab on the Indian side.

But not many have been able to visit the sites connected to the early days of the Sikh faith. Travel to Pakistan is still restricted, especially for those holding Indian passports.

A soon-to-be-launched book, Lost Heritage – The Sikh Legacy in Pakistan, aims to plug the gap.

Come December 2015, Amardeep Singh, a Singapore-based author and photographer, plans to roll out the book. It contains over 50,000 words, interspersed with 523 photographs, to present the diverse remnants of the community across the country.

“Seven decades after the searing partition of 1947, the Sikh community remains deprived of its glorious heritage, wrenched from it and now virtually inaccessible to most,” he tells Asia Samachar in an email interview.

When asked how did the idea come about to write the book, Amardeep said that he did not embark on writing a book. “Mine was just a travel to the remote areas of Pakistan to satisfy my curiosity.

But the journey to give life to the book had been full of challenges.

A 500 page book, with over 50,000 words, interspersed with 523 photographs and 14 maps, is a humongous task to be completed in one years’ time. While this specific aspect was challenging enough but it was under my direct control, so manageable.

“The biggest hurdle emerged to be to get the book published and I hadn’t comprehended this would be such a challenge. Publishers viewed this as commercially unviable and hence no one was forthcoming to undertake it,” he said.

For him, the project was a life time’s labour of love, which he was unwilling to compromise. At times it felt that the project would not see the light at the end of the tunnel but he maintained my focus, strongly believing that if there is value in this work then it will find its way.

~ Source: asiasamachar.com

Darshan Singh Rudel, 57, a French national, earlier known as Michael Rudel, had converted to the Sikh faith and married a Sikh woman. Now settled at Nurpur Bedi in Ropar district, Rudel is doing organic farming for the past 17 years. This french man renounced his citizenship for embracing the Sikh faith.

Rudel had requested a French court in 1995 for changing his name from Michael Rudel to Darshan Singh Rudel, which was declined. Thereafter, he renounced French citizenship and became a UK national, which had issued him a passport in his new name — Darshan Singh Rudel.

In 1997, he became an amritdhari (baptized) Sikh at Anandpur Sahib – the place of birth of Khalsa — and married Malvinder Kaur, who teaches English at a college in Nangal. The couple is living at Nurpur Bedi since then. He strictly follows the tenets of Sikhi and has even written outside his house that “drunkards are not allowed to enter.”

Darshan Singh, a dedicated Sikh missionary with profound knowledge of “gurbani” and “gurmat”, said that Sikhs were known for their honesty, integrity, hard work and bravery. But today the virtues are evaporating in the present environment of Punjab .

Harvesting wheat at his fields, Rudel states, “Politicians in Punjab are confined to making money and fighting each other. They don’t focus on larger social issues of the state and have almost forgotten the concept of ‘sarbat da bhala’ (welfare of all).

Today, Punjabis have stopped working in farms, become drug addicts and distanced themselves from hard work and have become money-centric.”

“Youth from Punjab, once considered a nursery for defence forces since British era, have stopped joining the Army,” he stated.

Rudel uses only organic methods at his farm.

~ Source: DailySikhUpdate

When Britain remembers those fallen in service of their country in November, this year’s ceremony will be particularly poignant, writes Telford & Wrekin Council leader Kuldip Sahota.

Seventy years since the end of the Second World War, and a century after some of the bloodiest battles in the First World War, the nation will unite to remember the millions who gave their lives in service of Britain.

It is important also that we should also remember the contribution by the British Indian Army, and the Sikhs in particular, in both conflicts.

Although Sikhs are only two percent of the Indian population today and may have been even less at the turn of the 20th century, they formed well over 20 per cent of the British Indian Army.

Even today, Sikhs number only 20 million in Indian in a population of some 1.2 billion, yet they represent well over 12 per cent of India’s armed forces.

During the First World War, one in seven Sikhs of fighting age volunteered to serve in the British army and were, along with Gurkhas, regarded as a warrior or martial race by the British.
They served in all the major theatres of war: The Somme, Flanders, Ypres, East Africa, Palestine, Gallipoli, Middle East, Mesopotamia and so on.

After the bloody battle of Neuve Chapelle in 1915, the Sikh regiments had lost 80 per cent of their men and three regiments stood at only 16 per cent of their original composition. In Gallipoli, 14th Sikh regiment lost 371 officers and men in mere minutes.

The Sikhs did not wear hard helmets as were the standard issue for Army regiments. Instead they chose to remain true to their faith and wore their turbans with pride, just as I and thousands of my fellow Sikhs do today in all spheres of life.

In the trenches and deserts, the Sikh battle-cry, ‘Bole So Nihal, Sat Sri Akal’ (Victory belongs to those who recite the name of God with a true heart) was heard on all battlefronts.

As well as their standard issue British rifle, they all retained and used their traditional weapons such as swords and daggers for close combat fighting. Known for their martial prowess and never-say-die attitude, Sikhs would win gallantry awards across the Empire.

Close to 1.5 million Indians served in what was the largest volunteer army ever assembled.

Every sixth British soldier serving was from the Indian sub-continent, making the BIA as large as all the forces from the rest of the British Empire combined – including Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa.

My grandfather Baba Labh Singh was in the British Army and I have tried to find out more about his service record, but this is difficult.

When he died in the 1960s, I was boy of 11 or 12 and we all lived in the same house. He used to hallucinate that he was experiencing gas attacks and he would gather up his bed sheets at night and run round the house shouting, ‘run away, run away, gas is coming’.

A few months later he died from natural causes. His Army record shows he served in Mesopotamia, now Iraq, but he must have also served early in the war on the Western Front where he must have experienced the horror of gas attacks.

So when the Second World War broke out, Sikh soldiers were once again at the forefront and made up a disproportionate number of the forces that India gave to the war effort. Sikh men helped to swell the BIA from 189,000 at the start of the war to more than 2.5 million by the end of the war.

They served in Middle East, Burma, Greece, the North African desert and Italy. They fought and stopped the Japanese advance through Burma and into India. Not only were they in the Army, they also served in the Navy and Royal Air Force – remember Mr Singh from the 1960s film Squadron 633.

My uncle served in Burma and won a medal for his bravery in Rangoon and he lived to tell us his tales. Growing up in India in the late 1950s and early 1960s, almost every Sikh family in our village would talk about their loss in the Second World War and how they were affected by it.

When after the war British industry needed unskilled labour, Sikhs who had served in the British Army were given priority visas to come to Britain. This explains why Sikhs make up a disproportionally high number of people originally from India now living in the UK.

Most worked in the West Midlands foundries where the work was hard, heavy and dirty and from which they did not shy away.

That generation has now retired or have passed away and their children and grandchildren now live in times of greater tolerance, pride and status than their forefathers.

As I sit here and write this article I feel that in a small way I am giving a voice to all those Sikhs who gave their loyalty and life voluntarily to the British Empire – and now the British have accepted their children and grandchildren as their equal.

~ Source: shropshirestar.com

The grave of Pvt. Buckam Singh (Bukkan on headstone) discovered after almost 90 years. The only military grave in Canada of the Sikh soldier from the World Wars. There is no cross like on Christian military graves and a mention of his birthplace in Punjab at the bottom.

The story of one of the first Sikh Canadian WWI soldiers has been uncovered with the discovery of his Victory medal. Learn about the tale of a once forgotten war hero and early Canadian pioneer.

Buckam Singh came to B.C. from Punjab in 1907 at age 14 and eventually moved to Toronto in 1912/1913. He enlisted with the Canadian Expeditionary Force in the spring of 1915. He’s one of the earliest known Sikhs living in Ontario at the time as well as one of only 9 Sikhs that we know of that served with Canadian troops in WWI.

Private Buckam Singh served with the 20th Canadian Infantry Battalion in the battlefields of Flanders during 1916. Here this brave hero was wounded twice in two separate battles. One of the interesting discoveries included the fact that after being shot Private Buckam Singh received treatment at a hospital run by one of Canada’s most famous soldier poets the Doctor Lt. Colonel John McCrae.

While recovering from his wounds in England Private Buckam Singh contracted tuberculosis and spent his final days in a Kitchener Ontario military hospital, dying at age 25 in 1919. His grave in Kitchener Ontario is the only known WWI Sikh Canadian Soldier’s military grave in Canada. While he never got to see his family again and died forgotten almost 100 years ago, his heroic story is now being reclaimed and celebrated every year.

Source- SikhMuseum.com

While his fellow students are intensely focused on earning good grades and getting ahead, Gurujot Singh is thinking about how he can improve people’s lives a few continents away.

The 17-year-old North Park Secondary School student conceptualized a phone app that would offer virtual financial services to India’s poor and presented his idea at the J7 Summit in Germany last May.

The summit is an opportunity for young people aged 14 to 18 to meet with other youth delegates from G7 countries and talk about issues such as fair trade, health, the fight against poverty and women’s rights.

Miriam Mirza, Gurujot Singh’s teacher praises him and says ‘There’s something about him that people know he’s going places and he’s going to take everybody with him.’

“It’s probably the most amazing thing I’ve done,” Singh said. “She really supported the idea of micro-financing and talked about how it’s the future because not everybody in those countries has those resources, but people in developed countries have an abundance so it’s about taking that abundance and sharing it with the rest of the world.”

He is called “all-around amazing guy’ by his teachers. Singh told CBC News he’d like to apply the concepts he’s learning in one of his courses on the world stage.

“I’m taking an economic course and it’s talking about equity and scarcity, and how people in developing countries don’t have the same resources as people in developed countries,” he said. “I have family in India and they don’t get the same benefits as we do so I wanted to provide these benefits to them.”

“He’s a genius when it comes to computer programming, he has incredible business sense, he’s heavily involved in our social justice club and he’s one of the happiest kids I’ve ever met,” Brown told CBC.

“There’s something about him that people know he’s going places and he’s going to take everybody with him,” she said.

Singh, who’d like to pursue economics and law in university, says he plans on working on his app “for his entire life.”

“At the end of the day, it’s about our footprint,” he said. “It’s what we do to make a difference in the world. When we want to be remembered, it’s not because you had a great job — it’s because you made an impact on everyone else in the world.”

~ Source: CBC News

Studies reveal that Punjabis, will be the second biggest group after the Chinese by 2031 in Vancouver. And Sikhism will become the second biggest religion in the Greater Vancouver area in the next decades.

But Surrey city on the outskirts of Vancouver is already a ‘Punjabi city’. Some call it the Southall of Canada as more than 40 percent of its population is of Punjabi origin. Surrey reported more than 94,000 speakers of Punjabi in the last year’s census which pegged the city’s population at about 500,000.

“In that sense, the city has become the largest Punjabi settlement outside Punjab,” says Indo-Canadian community leader Balwant Sanghera, who heads the Punjabi Language Education Association (PLEA) of Canada. At the other end of Canada in Toronto, which is the country’s biggest city, the ethno-demographics are set to change even faster.

~ Source: NewsEastWest