Takht Patna Sahib to be given the Gold treatment

Patna: The birthplace of Sri Guru Gobind Singh the Takht Sri Harmandirji at Patna Saheb will soon be as fascinating as the Golden Temple in Amritsar. The reason? This shrine will also be wrapped in gold.

A number of UK-based NRI Sikh devotees in collaboration with others here have decided to take steps to improve the infrastructure at the gurdwara well before the 350th Prakash Parv in 2017 when devotees from across the world are expected to converge here.

The walls of the gurdwara especially the place where the Guru Granth sahib is kept could soon be wrapped in gold.

Artists from Amritsar and Iran will be called in to do the interiors. Over 7kg of gold will be needed for the interiors, sources said and added several doors will also be enveloped in gold - all involving an expenditure of Rs. 500 to 600 crore.

Interior sanctum of Takht Patna Sahib

Work is on to construct 500 air conditioned and 5,000 general rooms for Sikh devotees after acquiring land near Kangan Ghat and Maini Sangat. Baba Mohinder Singh of the UK has made available funds for the construction of 100 airconditioned rooms in Guru Durbar while another UK-based devotee has donated money for the construction of 100 rooms in Bare Ki Gali. Mumbai's Iqbal Singh and Surjeet Singh have also given donations for the construction of 100 rooms for 'sevadars'.

State tourism minister Sunil Kumar Pinto and urban development minister Prem Kumar have assured the prabandhak committee members that the roads of Patna City area would be widened, water supply and sewerage and drainage system would be improved and street lights would be installed before the Prakash Parv.

Dailybhaskar.com | May 02, 2013

Mullocks Sikh and Punjab artefacts sale May 2013

A wide selection   of Punjab and Sikh related artifacts are set to be auctioned on May 21st May by British Auction House Mullocks.

The highlight of the sale is an early watercolor of Baba Deep Singh Ji fighting Afghan forces, dating from the 1880s, it's expected to fetch 400 - 600 GBP. According to the Auction house the painting came from the collection of General Roberts who served in India during the late 19th century.

 Sikh painting of Baba Deep Singh c1880

Other Highlights includes a historic painting of Maharajah Ranjit Singh with his Sikhs - early photographic views of the Golden Temple in Amritsar, portraits of Maharajah Ranjit Singh and Duleep Singh, historical documents  and books.

There are several artefacts related to Maharaja Duleep Singh, the deposed King of the Sikhs. This includes photos and a dinner set belonging to him.

Maharajah Duleep Singh Portrait 1860 Miniature portrait 

BATTLE OF SARAGARHI letters

This most rare find comes from the collection of the late Byron Edgar Farwell (1921-1999) the esteemed American military historian and biographer. The handwritten letter is by a member of the Tirah Field Force J.A.Lindsay stationed at Fort Lockhart, Samana, in 1897, who arrived at the bloody scene of the Battle of Saragarhi and describes the deaths of the 21 Sikhs of the 4th Battalion. The letter written to a colleague a few weeks after this famous battle where 21 Sikhs fought against 10,000 Afghan tribesman, is marked 

‘Please Read only Yourself’ – will give you some idea of what is going on at the front' he states ‘Saragarhi is an awful sight which 21 Sikhs behaved so admirably...and the place is anything but sanitary as of course not much burying could be done.

Tanjore School Watercolour of an Akali with Lady. Another rare painting is that of a Aklai Nihang. A finely executed early 19th century Tanjore painting heightened in gold of a Sikh warrior holding a bow standing with a female companion c1805-10. The panting is of the highest quality from the South Indian School and exceptionally large in size. A similar painting from the same series is in the Victoria & Albert Museum.

Mullocks Auctioneer Richard West-Wood Brookes  said " This is without  a doubt one of the most important sales relating to the Punjab and the Sikh Empire in recent times"
Please visit http://www.mullocksauctions.co.uk/ to view the full catalog

The sale takes place in Ludlow Shropshire (United Kingdom)  on the 21st May

He wants to promote Sikh culture, heritage through his art

City-based paper artist Gurpreet Singh, creating art from varied items, moulding paper into exciting and interesting pieces of art for 11 years, has a whooping 13 international and seven national records to his credit.

The artist, an interior designer by profession, is probably among very few specialised paper artists in Punjab. He has created a miniature replica of the Golden Temple, Taj Mahal and the White House among others and has recently created a replica of the Great Wall of China to commemorate the May Day.

“It was a significant landmark and I wanted to commemorate the amount of labour put into constructing it,” said the artist.

This is not the first piece of perfection from the 31-year-old artist. Gurpreet’s earlier works include miniature models of Nankana Sahib, the smallest turban weighing seven grams and other symbols of Sikh heritage.

“My aim is to promote the culture and heritage of Sikhism through my art. I have displayed my work at various art exhibitions and festivals across the country and my works have been appreciated,” he says.

He feels that more should be done to promote the art. “There are some 115-odd paper artists in the world and most are from South Asia. The famous Chinese paper art is all about cutting the paper into various patterns but a lot of Indian artists specialise in creating things out of paper. This should be encouraged,” he says.

For his miniature version of the Golden Temple, Gurpreet has installed it with lights and live gurbani. “I am playing with the idea of putting electronic Gurbani and lightings so as to give it an authentic appeal,” he says. He wishes to display the replica at the upcoming museum inside the Darbar Saheb premises.

Tribune News service, Amritsar, May 3

The Sikhs of Nankana Sahib: Life Under the Shadow of Towering Hate

By Tahir Mehdi for www.dawn.com

Nankana is to Sikhs what Makkah is to Muslims. The birth place of their holy prophet, Baba Guru Nanak. There are relics of Sikhism all around as Baba had spent the early part of his life in this town situated in the middle of Rachna Doab. Each of these relics later became a place of worship and a pilgrimage point.

The young Nanak’s father gave him 20 rupees to start a business of his own but he instead donated it to the poor and the hungry; and to avoid the admonishment from his father, hid under a collection of vann bushes which latter became Gurudawar Tamboo Sahab. Tamboo in Punjabi means a protective roof-like cover.

I stayed under the same cover on my second night out with my friend Kalyan Singh who is a lecturer of Punjabi at the Government College, Gujranwala. Punjabi is sacred to Sikhs as it is the language of their holy book, Granth Sahab. But the lingua franca of the 200 plus Sikh families here is Pashto as almost all of them have migrated from tribal areas and Pakhtunkhwa. Nankana Sahab is their last hope. They are trying to take refuge under this tamboo of which barely a piece is left.

Spending some time with them, I realised that all of their time references are very different from the rest of us, and that is a sorry tale in itself. If you ask some to narrate his or her life story, it will go like this, “After the 1971 Indo-Pak war, my sister’s family migrated from Peshawar, at the demolishing of the Babri mosque in 1992, many of the brothers also quit and my parents finally moved out after the 9/11.”

Sadly, they are not yet short of new time markers of the same kind. I met Sher Singh here who migrated from Dera Bugti some five years ago, after the armed conflict there made it impossible for them to survive.

This tiny community living under the shadow of the walls of Gurudwaras faces grave problems. Gurudwaras are sacred for Sikhs but for the most Muslims of Nankana, they are real estate, profitable plots of land. There are businesses and residences settled all over the occupied land and the promotion of religious intolerance makes simple business sense for these occupants.

No politician is ready to take up the issue. The Sikh votes are too few and the community too insecure and vulnerable to take any political sides. Their depoliticisation is enhanced by their disenfranchisement which is a result of the difficulties that they face in getting an identity card.

There are some legal complications related to their migration from tribal areas; they themselves do not enjoy the status equivalent to that of fully settled areas. But most of the time, it is the ‘cautious’ attitude of the officers that makes simple services like securing a B form, that makes your children legal citizens, from the local office of NADRA a life time of effort. Nobody wants to take risks or, to be blunt, no officer wants to be quizzed by the intelligence agencies, when it is so much easier to just shoo away a non-Muslim.


Kalyan Singh who is pursuing his doctorate at tge Punjab University had bruises on his hands and face the day I met him. He told me that while in a government office today, he was shoved and pushed to the ground by a stranger for nothing. “It happens many a times, people misbehave with us in public for the fun of it,” he told me with a grim face. I am afraid that some must do it for a sawab as well.

And if you think that I am being a cynic, I have concrete evidence to prove you wrong.

A massive mosque is under construction just next to Gurudwara Janam Asthan. Its minaret is so tall that it could not be constructed the way minarets of most mosques are. So, it has a special design that enables the maulanas to snarl at this minuscule community from the heights of their hateful selves. The mosque is designed to dwarf the Gurudwara. A further element of insult, that is cast in concrete is that the prayer compound of the mosque is constructed on an unusually high platform, that is higher than the highest point of the prayer hall of the Gurudwara. So that the Muslims can remain a floor above. Does that make them nearer to God?

The eateries in the entire bazaar that is frequented by the local Sikhs either plainly refuse to serve them or have separate cups and glasses for them. Kalyan Singh who has spent almost his entire here can even tell you which rehri wala will serve him and which won’t.

The more debilitating of their problems are again about the documentation of their citizenship status. There are cases when a child was not able to sit for their matriculation the matric exam for want of a B form.

The two glasses in front are reserved for Sikhs while the cups are for Muslims.


Most Sikh children study in a school that is set up especially by their community but they admit children of other faiths as well. It is headed by a Muslim educationist and the teachers are Muslims too. The school teaches the subject of Islamiyat to all children as no alternative to this subject exists in the government prescribed syllabi.

Just when I was struggling to invent hope in this hopeless environment, I found it. A tale of two friends – may it blossom for ever. Meet Mahnoor and Balvinder Kaur:

My account will not be complete unless I share with you a shred of the past that I found at the foot rest of Gurudwara Tamboo Sahab. A meek indication of what it used to be in the good old times. I am not sharing with you the recording of the talk I had with him, just to avoid some unwarranted reactions.

He called himself a dervish who has come to pay a tribute to Baba Guru Nanak and was not ready to differentiate on the basis that Baba was not a Muslim. “He was an Allah-wala of a very high stature. That’s all I know,” he concluded.

The Kavi Durbar of Guru Gobind Singh

The Kavi Durbar of Guru Gobind Singh

A insight into rare manuscripts scribed in the Court of Guru Gobind Singh

The Kavi Durbar of Guru Gobind Singh by Gurinder Singh Mann (Editor of Sikh Nugget)

An insight into the Sikhs of Burma

 Bobby Singh Bansal with Burmese Sikhs

By Bobby Singh Bansal

From the huge success ‘The Sikhs of Kabul’ has attained since the past year, it has been difficult choosing a topic to make into a documentary based on factual material. So I decided to pick a location which was least visited by foreigners and the media in general. I contemplated in repeating the success of my last film with a subject that was primarily similar to the theme of my last film.

So after months of planning we decided to visit Myanmar or Burma as it was known earlier, having finally obtained our visas we travelled to Myanmar with a crew of 6 from India and Thailand arriving in the capital city of Yangon, formerly known as Rangoon. This has been a country totally isolated from the rest of the world. Only a few years ago there was mass unrest against four decades of military rule adverse to any political change. The military regime controlled the country with an iron fist and its democratic leader of the opposition party Aung San Suu Kyi is the chairperson of the National League for Democracy (NLD) in Burma. In the 1990 general election, the NLD won 59% of the national votes and 81% of the seats in Parliament. She had however, already been detained under house arrest before the elections. She remained under house arrest in Burma for almost 15 of the 21 years from 20 July 1989 until her most recent release on 13 November 2010 becoming one of the world's most prominent political prisoners.

My objective of being in Myanmar was to meet up with the Indian Sikh community who have been living here since the 1880’s when the British had annexed Upper Burma in 1885 to the British Indian Empire. The deposed Burmese King Thibaw was later exiled to India where he later died in 1916. Our first glimpse of this amazing place was finding just how clean and pollution free this city was compared to cities in the neighbouring countries. Our guide Chotu Ram, a Burmese Sikh who resembled more of a Chinese looking man wearing traditional Burmese attire greeted us at our hotel and wasted no time in taking us to one of Myanmar’s leading attractions – the famous 2500 year old historical Shwe Dagon Pagoda.

This was the site where thousands of anti-government protestors would converge to hold their mass rallies against the military junta back in 2007. Foreigners are restricted in entering this scared site but our determined Sikh guide managed to obtain permission to enter this heritage site and we managed to film inside the temple complex comprising of numerous adjoining Buddhist temples with their carved innate design made out of gold, it surely was an awesome experience for us.


Burmese Gurdwara(r)
Despite the heat the walk around the marble floor was unbearable but we persevered and continued as the views every few yards were just amazing. The following day we headed to the main Sikh temple or gurdwara built in 1897 by the Sikhs employed in the British Indian army. There are apparently four Sikh temples in Yangon but the one we visited was the oldest, although much smaller in size to the one visited in Afghanistan this one had recently been refurbished by the local Sikh community at a considerable cost. Here the Sikh community are thriving unlike in Afghanistan where they are struggling for survival. I was somewhat relieved that this minority community residing in a tolerant Buddhist nation are revered by the locals who mingle amongst the Sikhs in such cordial manners.

 Here the Sikhs are a success, although small in numbers yet most prominent in the field of transport, trade and commerce. Young Sikh children all maintain the tradition of retaining their long hair unlike in the western world where a majority of Sikhs have become clean shaven adapting themselves of becoming the so called modern Sikhs.  The Sikh temple hold Punjabi classes each day for four hours for the children who are all well versed in Punjabi yet speak mainly in Burmese amongst themselves. We were given a most gracious welcome by the members of the Sikh community, whose appearances are far from the usual looking Sikhs we have back in London or India. Their features are somewhat oriental looking, with their turbans tied up in a round fashion and not pointed at the front as was mine. The striking feature of their attire is that all the Sikh males wear a lungi or dhoti, it’s the national dress of the Burmese I guess as everyone wears it. It is quite odd to see six foot tall Sikhs compared to the local Burmese males who are so much smaller in height all wearing lunghis with their dark complexions. The Sikh women all wear the traditional Burmese dress made out of Silk or cotton seldom did I witness any women wearing a colourful bright Punjabi suit as they do back in India or England.


I recall from history that the last Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar was exiled here by the British after the infamous rebellion back in 1857. I was eager to visit his shrine and to retrace the historical journey to his last resting place not far from our hotel. The attendant was very kind to translate some of the poetry that the Mughal Emperor had written while in exile and even took us to the tomb where he laid buried. He lifted the Silk sheet from the tomb which revealed the original structure of the tomb built by the British, it was a surreal moment. Apparently the attendant told me that his ancestors had served the Mughal Emperor since his arrival in 1857, his son would take over the care of the shrine after his death. After a few days in Yangon we took the overnight bus to Mandalay the former historical capital of Upper Burma. The journey took 10 hours but to our amazement the bus was very comfortable like being on the National Express in England. This was the place where the British conquered the country in 1885 after the 3rd Anglo-Burmese war ended. The city is laid out on a grid system marked with a huge fortress in the centre which is square in plan and surrounded by water on all four sides.

Shrine of Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar 

Each side of the fort is about three kilometres long and every 400 years is a watchtower in the shape of a small pagoda which is quite impressive. Inside the fort is the Royal palace where King Thibaw resided before his exile to India in 1886. Not much of the historical artefacts or treasures exist from that period, having filmed inside the palace we were disappointed with the emptiness of the palace although a huge statue of King Thibaw was present with his queen Supayalat. However, we headed to Mandalay Hill overlooking the city having inspiring views of the fort. We met the Sikhs of Mandalay where they mainly reside in the locality of Theyeze adjacent to the Sikh temple. Several Sikh families live here amongst the local Burmese, many running small businesses and shops. Our host in Mandalay was Mr Sukhdev Singh, a resident of Yangon who was visiting his family and is also the President of the religious council of Sikhs of Myanmar. As my camera crew had become tired of consuming rice since our arrival I urged my host whether ‘roti’ or ‘chappatis’ could be available, to our delight he had already arranged lunch at the home of a local Sikh family.

Our last day in Mandalay was completed by a visit to the historical Irrawaddy River which bisects the country from north to south. We managed to arrange a local boat which took us far out to the river where with my host Mr Sukhdev Singh we took a nostalgic trip back to the 1940’s when during WW2 the Japanese Army had advanced into Burma from Malaya. As we know thousands of Indians had enlisted into the British Indian Army and had fought Japanese soldiers in the jungles of this hostile region. In 1942 Sikh soldiers from the 7th Indian Army Division fought Japanese soldiers from advancing into the Indian territory of Kohima along the Irrawaddy River where many lost their lives. It was a poignant moment for me and members of my camera crew talking about those dark moments of WW2. Those who perished were Sikh soldiers barely in their twenties but they withstood the Japanese onslaught and saved the British Indian Empire from humiliation and defeat.

I expected Myanmar to be a country like India or Bangladesh, full of chaos and red tape but how wrong I was my overall view of this stunning country is that it is far developed as I initially imagined. It’s a striking country full of golden pagodas and palm trees, people are so cordial and the hospitality of the Sikh community made our visit indeed so comfortable, it makes me proud knowing they are accepted with respect as the Burmese Sikhs of Myanmar. My documentary is still in post-production and should be ready next month to be submitted to various film festivals globally with the title  ‘The Road to Mandalay – the Burmese Sikhs’.

Bobby Singh Bansal is writer of ‘The Lion’s Firanghis – Europeans at the Court of Lahore’ which charts the careers of former soldiers and mercenaries of the French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte to Punjab in India he has received 6 international awards since its publication in 2010. As a new filmmaker his documentary ‘The Sikhs of Kabul’ has been shown at various film festivals such as at the Punjabi Film Festival in Toronto, Sikh Arts Film Festival in New York, Iceland Documentary Film Festival and other prestigious film festivals in Vancouver, Qatar, New Delhi, London, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Barcelona and also at the 26th Australian Sikh Games in Melbourne and Perth – Australia