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Good morning, waheguru ji ka khalsa, waheguru ji ki fateh

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Good morning, waheguru ji ka khalsa, waheguru ji ki fatehGood morning, waheguru ji ka khalsa, waheguru ji ki fateh Talk by Mr. Harbinder Singh Good morning, waheguru ji ka khalsa, waheguru ji ki fateh. Thank you for taking the time to be here. Thank you for inviting me. I have to say normally when I’m asked to at...

Good morning, waheguru ji ka khalsa, waheguru ji ki fateh
Good morning, waheguru ji ka khalsa, waheguru ji ki fateh Talk by Mr. Harbinder Singh Good morning, waheguru ji ka khalsa, waheguru ji ki fateh. Thank you for taking the time to be here. Thank you for inviting me. I have to say normally when I’m asked to attend any Sikh events, I’m lucky if they give me 48 hours notice. In this instance we had 2 months notice. It was done very formally, very properly, so, and that’s good because A: that’s the way we should operate but B: it means we can do justice to the presentation rather than waking up in the morning and thinking what you’re going to do. I normally have a mixed audience in terms of age group so I’m actually going to depart from some of my presentation. So those of you youngsters who have my attention span, it might be a bit too much. What I’m going to talk to you about today is a project that we started off. These dates are important so, remember them. A project that we started off in 1993. Why 1993 because 1893 was the year in which this chap, Maharaja Duleep Singh, the last ruler of the Sikh Kingdom died. What many people didn’t realise then and some people still don’t realise now, that he actually died in this country, well he’s buried in this country. Actually he died in Paris, but his body was brought back within a few days. Now, why is it that the last ruler of the Sikhs, the son of the Lion of the Punjab should lie buried in a Christian graveyard, in Suffolk? Why is it that he should die in Paris? Paris is where the Princes and the Princesses of the whole world go to enjoy themselves. They go to wine and dine. But the last Maharaja of the Sikhs went to Paris not to enjoy the lifestyle but to die. Why is it that somebody, who’s Kingdom, when he came to the throne, at the age of 9, whose Kingdom was bigger than the whole of Britain, Scotland, Wales, England, Northern Ireland, should die virtually penniless and broken and ill and sick, without any of his family around him, in a shabby hotel room, in Paris? Why is it that somebody who gave to Queen Victoria, the largest, and most expensive, diamond in the world, should die with just a few pounds in his bank account? Now, we felt that it was necessary to look into his life for many reasons but the two main reasons. First, that he was the first Sikh to settle in this country. But more importantly, if you look at his life from his birth to his death, it reflects, it 1 mirrors what the Sikh nation went through in that period and what it’s going through now, because I’m one of these people who thinks and firmly believes that from the time that the British set foot in Punjab until today, until you being here today, the school being here today, all of that has been directly influenced and decided and determined by decisions taken by the British, in Westminster. And that’s why it was important not to tell the British in this country just about our faith and the five K’s and our Guru’s and Vaisakhi but there’s actually a bigger story that for reasons which are good or bad, the fate of you, your fathers, your grandfathers, your great-grandfathers has been decided whether we like it or not, by the British. And that’s important because it’s their actions that decided that influenced our being here. We’re not here some sort of illegal immigrants who happen to get off a boat because we liked the sort of England, we’re here because our Kingdom was overtaken by them. It happened to be the last part of India that the British conquered. Why was it the last part? Because it was the strongest part. The Sikh armies could not be defeated by the British. So they waited until Ranjit Singh was dead and as soon as he was dead, they started their conspiracies to take his Kingdom over. And in 1854, they did that. The treaty of annexation which is when the British took over the whole of the Sikh Kingdom, it was called then the Kingdom of Lahore is the moment that decided the fate of the Sikhs. But what does that mean to you here today and to the Anglo Sikh Heritage Project? Let me put it another way. Imagine the average life of an elder, your grandfather or father being 80 years. Let’s just agree that it’s 80 years. Well, Ranjit Singh came to the Kingdom, came to the throne of the Sikh Kingdom in 1801, so if you add on 2 generations, 160 years, then by any statutory imagination, your great-great-grandfather, which isn’t so far away, 3 generations, could conceivably be around when Ranjit Singh was on the throne of Punjab. So, we’re not talking ancient history, we’re not talking the Romans, we’re not talking the Greeks, we’re not talking Stone Age here. This is, in terms of modern history, this is very, very recent. This is just before Queen Victoria. And Duleep Singh’s life, in this country would be centred around Queen Victoria. But even though it’s only 3 generations away, or 3 generations old, that element 2 of our history, I think is totally forgotten. We know up to 1699, and then things go vague until about maybe 1922 Jalian Wala Bagh, etc, etc. and then 1947 and we have a big vacuum in the middle. People like Duleep Singh have almost been rubbed out of Sikh History and one of our tasks is to revive interest in his life. Not because he was a religious figure, he was anything but a religious figure. But what he is, is a very, very historical figure of immense historical importance and the reason he is of historical importance is as I said earlier that if you take his life from his birth right to his death everything that happened in his life, the highs, the lows, the tragedies, the battles, the warfare, the conspiracies, all of that actually was not happening to him, it was happening to the Sikhs because it was the Sikh nation that suffered as a result of what happened to him. Now, the British took over many parts of India, they took over Bengal, they took over Maharashtra, they took over Rissa, and in every one of those states, the rulers were brought to this country, they were educated, some of them were converted, and they were all allowed to go back to India, every single one of the, you can check this. Every single one of them went back to his people. But there was one ruler who was not allowed to return. For 22 years he was separated from his mother, imagine that, imagine any of you being separated from your mother for even 22 months. For 22 years he was separated from his mother, because they knew that his mother, Maharani Jinda with her strong personality, a dislike of the British would perhaps make him a rebel. And that’s what did happen. When they met after 22 years, that’s exactly what happened. If you look at the life of Duleep Singh, until the time that he is reunited with his mother, he’s actually fairly calm, he’s settled down, he’s become part of British society, he’s a favourite of Queen Victoria, he stays at Buckingham Palace, he goes to Windsor Castle and then overnight, after he meets his mother he decides that he actually doesn’t want any of that, he doesn’t want a seat in the House of Lords, he doesn’t want to have an audience with Queen Victoria and Windsor Castle. What he wants is to return to his people and to return to his faith and then from that minute onwards, he’s described as the Rebel Prince. This is the person who says to the British authorities, you stole my Kingdom, you stole the Kohinoor, you deprived me from my family through your 3 conspiracies, but I want to return, I want to go back to Sikhi and he did. He did go back to the Sikh faith, but he failed to go back to Punjab. The important thing is why was he prevented from going to Punjab, when every other Maharaja of Baroda, of Gawalior, of Rissa went back to Punjab, why was Duleep Singh denied the right to go back? The reason is a very simple one, and actually the reason is one that we should take pride in, it’s nothing negative. The British knew that if there’s one nation, one faith, that is strong enough to resist and to throw them out of India, then it was the Sikhs. And they knew as soon as Duleep Singh went back and the Sikhs had a single identifiable leader, particularly one who was the son of Ranjit Singh, then there would be trouble. When the British fought the Sikhs in the Anglo Sikh wars, they were the hardest battles that the British faced in the whole of their campaign in India and they write that. There was one battle, the Battle of Jalianwala when the British were convinced that they were defeated and they gave instructions to retreat. Sadly, due to betrayal by some of the Sikh commanders, the Sikhs lost that battle. But it wasn’t as a result of lack of bravery; it wasn’t as a lack of anything other good leadership. I know that all of you youngsters were all born here. You will probably never have that relationship with Punjab that your parents do. And that’s what the challenge is, how do we stay in Britain due two things, A: it’s plain to the British this whole story that we’re here because our Kingdom, our land, our nation was absorbed by them, was taken over by them aggressively. And how do we, those of you for whom Britain is home and not Punjab, how do you stay connected with the heritage of the Sikhs whilst here in Britain? And that really is what the trail is about. It’s an opportunity, look at it like a jigsaw or a detective story; it’s a matter of finding clues in order to arrive at the final picture. And I’ll give you an example. If you were to go, how many of you have ever heard of Trafalgar Square? How many of you have heard of the House of the Commons? Buckingham Palace? Windsor Castle? If you were to go to, now, millions of people visit those locations every year, Japanese, Americans, everybody, none of them realise that each of those locations, Tower of London, Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle, I’m just talking abut London, Trafalgar Square, Pall Mall, Limiters, each of those locations, and 4 I’m not even counting museums, just leave the museums to one side, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the British Library, British Museum, Imperial War Museum, National Army Museum, Wallace Collection, _________ Museum, I’m not even counting the museums, just these landmark sites, Houses of Commons, Trafalgar Square, all of these locations reflect Sikh History. There is something in them, or something happened in that building which is critical to the Sikhs. You go to Trafalgar Square, you stand bang in the centre of the column, you look to your left, there’s a column to General Havelock who in 1857 commanded the Sikh regiment at the time of the mutiny. You walk down, you look to your left and you have St. Martins in the field church, one of the most important churches around Westminster. When the Sikh regiment fought in World War I, in Gallipoli, a service of remembrance to the Sikh regiment because they suffered more than anybody else who’s held at that church St. Martins in the field. You walk down, past Downing Street to the House of Commons, you go into the Palace of Westminster, a stained glass window. A picture of a Sikh, which is the window of the Lawrence family who were governors of Punjab at the time of Britain. Windsor Castle, you go to the Royal Chapel, you go to the archives, Eton College, which is next to Windsor, it’s where Duleep Singh’s son studied. You go to Cambridge, go to Oxford, his son’s his daughter’s studied at ________, ___land, trinity, King’s College. So, wherever you go, you are surrounded by Sikh objects, but we, we walk past blindly. One of the biggest landmarks in London along the Thames, is the Royal Hospital Chelsea, and in the middle of this wonderful piece of architecture, is a column, which must be a hundred foot high, and everyday, I think about a million cars must pass that spot. None of them realise that that column, in the heart of Chelsea this is we’re not talking about you know somewhere obscure like Birmingham, in the heart of Chelsea, this column is to the Battle of Jalianwala and all the names on there of those British casualties who fought fighting the Sikhs. Next to them are 2 canons, Sikh canons from that battle. There’s one battle in 1897, it’s a very small battle, 21 Sikhs, in the North-West frontier, very, very hostile countries where the Taliban are fighting the British and the Americans now. There were 21 Sikhs from the Sikh regiment 5 against, and this is a British figure, not a Sikh figure, 11, 000 Afghans. And each of those Sikhs resisted that battle and fought that battle and they all died. Now, when news of that battle got back to the House of Commons and Houses of Parliament, for the first time since the Battle of Trafalgar, you all heard of the Battle of Trafalgar, Nelson and how he became a great British hero, for the first time since the Battle of Trafalgar, everybody in the House of Commons, everybody in the House of Lords stood up for 2 minutes silence to pay tribute to the Sikh regiment, it’s never happened before since the Battle of Trafalgar, never happened before. And the service of remembrance for those 21 Sikhs was held in Westminster Abbey. So I’m just picking London at the moment, we could go from the South of England all the way to Scotland and you are nowhere more than 50 or 60 miles away from a location or an object which was central to Sikh Heritage. I’m going to skip some of this presentation because it’s going to be quite heavy. This is just an example; these are some of the objects that surround us in this country: the golden throne of Ranjit Singh, one of the most expensive items in the Victoria and Albert Museum. The sword of Ranjit Singh which came here by Paris and early 1917 Chour and quite ironically this is a copy of the bible that was given by the British to Duleep Singh when they were converting him. Dr. Kanwaljit Kaur: Is it the one when they took the Kohinoor and gave this and said this is much better than the worldly riches. You give us the Kohinoor and you take this. Can I just ask? You know the battle you were talking, is it the one is that the Battle of Saragarhi. These are just some of the objects. These are some of the locations, now this is showing East Anglia, this is the grave of Duleep Singh, this is the church where he’s buried, that’s his son’s grave, that’s the statue of Duleep Singh and I think if th you’ll go and visit all of these locations. These you do go on this trip on the 15 are some of the institutions, some of the finest institutions in the UK, wherever you go Bradford, Leeds, Thetford, V&A, they’re full of Sikh History, full of Sikh documentation. This is just a small idea but you can go from Dover Castle all the 6 way up to Inverness. This map, they’re actually a few years old. We’ve found much, much more since then. I’ll just skip this because this is a bit, what I just wanted to move to before we can go onto questions, I’ll just show you a little clip which is much better than anything I will do. It’ll explain what we’re on about. In conclusion, what I want to say is this I suppose, in our Sikh History, Sikh Culture, it’s not something that it’s closed in a history book, a text book and you put it away and you take it out for a lesson. Sikh Heritage, Sikh History surrounds you in this country, surrounds you by where buildings as I’ve said Windsor Castle, Buckingham Palace Sandringham, Houses of Commons. It surrounds you with objects, Victoria and Albert Museum, the Kohinoor at the Tower of London, the sword of Ranjit Singh and you go to the British Library you’ll see some of the most wonderful handwritten manuscripts, Maharani Jinda’s Gutka, the most wonder calligraphy that you can imagine, you’ll see old editions of the Guru Granth Sahib and the Dasam Granth, handwritten going back to the 1800s. go to Royal Geographical Society you’ll see some of the earliest black and white photographs of Darbar Sahib, the earliest ever recorded map of Amritsar is at the Royal Geographical Society. You go to the Imperial War Museum and you’ll see the Victoria Cross of Prakash Singh and Giaan Singh. So, history is not something to be confined for the Sikhs to a pamphlet or a textbook. It’s around you and it’s not just objects and it’s not just buildings. Increasingly, way of finding individuals and tracing the lives of non-Sikhs who had a great role in discovering about Sikhs and about exposing them. One of the earliest people to translate Sikh scriptures Mc Olive, I read recently that within that when he died, 10 minutes earlier, he had been reciting the Jap Ji Sahib. We recently came across a guy Reverent C F Andrews, born in Newcastle, studied at Cambridge, went to India in 1904. He actually went with the task of converting people to Christianity, but when he came across the Sikhs, he stopped. And he says, he says in his book, he says that some of my most wonderful days in India was spent amongst the Sikhs and he says I will never find anyone with more warmth in their heart and more friendship in their soul. And he stood up for the Sikhs. He was actually 7 arrested by the British for standing up for the Sikhs and he saw the Sikhs being persecuted and beaten at the Guru Ka Bagh Morcha which was a campaign of the Sikhs for freedom of their Gurdwaras and he said that every time I saw a Sikh being struck by a truncheon and falling to the ground, I imagined that Christ, Jesus was being crucified every time. So we talk about interfaith I think that is what really interfaith is about. So all I want to say to you about, I’m repeating myself is that Sikh Heritage Sikh History isn’t something that you only learn in few hours every week in a RE or a History lesson. It surrounds you. People can go to Disneyland to discover to enjoy themselves. Take a tube, go to London, go to these institutions. Feel that sense of history. Look at these manuscripts, look at these old versions of the Guru Granth Sahib, look at the throne of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, look at the sword, because they’re not just objects, they are the living proofs of our history. And I’m going to end with a quote of another British writer, a guy called Yates Blanc and he wrote something many years ago at the turn of the century, but it’s important to you more than us, even more than us. And he said, ‘A remarkable people, the Sikhs, with their defining symbols and their ceremony of water stirred with steel. A people who will make history, who have made history and will surely make history again.’ It’s your job not only to remember that history, but to make it in the future. Thank You. If you walk around London at the moment you’ll find some buildings with a big blue plaque and it’ll say Winston Churchill lived here from 1930 or that ______________ visited here or _________, all the famous people, John Lennon stayed here. And what we’ve started to do now with some success is significant places, you go to Holland Park, and you walk Holland Park gate, you’ll see a plaque, the plaque which says Maharani Jinda died here. So, what we’re trying to do is to give Sikh History that same level of importance and recognition that other people have. We’re working to put one up where Shaheed Udam Singh died because that’s just as important. We’ve got a small plaque up, you go to British Library to the Wallace collection, you’ll see a plaque. You’ll see the Anglo Sikh Heritage plaque and that’s important because it means that at long 8 last, these institutions recognise that what they have it’s not just British that it’s of significance to the Sikhs. I’ll just go through these objects. This obviously is the throne of Ranjit Singh, now I’m not a historian and I’m not a creator but this is important not just because it’s beautiful that it’s made of gold, because it’s expensive, it’s beautiful for 2 other reasons, it’s important because the British deliberately took this from India from Punjab from the Sikhs because they wanted to destroy the element of the Sikh Kingdom and if you wanted to destroy the royal family as it is at the moment what the first thing you would do is take away their crowns take away their thrones and you’d start to destroy them. It’s also important because it says something about the character of Ranjit Singh. He actually never sat on that throne. It was made for him, it was give to him as a gift but his humility did not ever allow him to sit on it. He always sat on a simple chair. So it’s important but if you go to the V&A, go, go to Kensington, I’ve seen Japanese and Koreans looking at it. Why can’t Sikhs go look at it? I went to the Wallace collection two weeks ago, and this is a remarkable sword, and I saw an art student from Singapore sitting and drawing it in minute detail. And I thought, well, if it’s a piece of beauty to her then why aren’t there Sikh students sitting here as captivated by it as she is? For her it was just a piece of design and beauty but for us it’s a piece of history. I mentioned it earlier and I want to stress it again because the reason the Sikh Kingdom was dissolved, was finished was that it was seen as a threat to the British. The reason Duleep Singh was conveted is that his staying within Sikhism was seen as a threat to the British. I’ve seen this with my own eyes, when in 1854 they took all of the treasury of the Sikhs and they brought it to this country, I have seen with my own eyes the stock list, the list in which they said so many swords, so many shawls, so many tables, so many chairs and you look at this list and I couldn’t believe my eyes, there were three items, and against them was a bracket, and it said against this bracket, it said 2 swords and something else, I couldn’t make out the writing, it said, because these items belong to the Gurus of this warlike nation under no circumstances must they be reunited with them. Now some people will see that in a different light. I see it as actually something to be quite proud of that this nation, 9 the strongest nation on earth at that time, that controlled two thirds of the globe, they were still scared of the 2% of the Sikhs in the North of India. And it’s something that we should remember. All you can see here is maybe 2% of the objects around you. So, we want you to engage with the trail. This is just a very preliminary listing of what’s going to happen in September. For a whole 8 days throughout the country, there’s going to be something called the Anglo Sikh Heritage Week. No matter where you are, there will be something happening nearly everyday. From children workshops to workshops led by education specialists, people who are experts in Sikh armour, people who are experts in Sikh manuscripts to as I said children’s activity days, come and make, a copy of some of these items to very serious lectures, one of the lectures called Exit Wounds which is about the gaping wounds in the Sikhs that were left by the British when they left India to lecture on the life of Andrews. One lecture by a gentleman coming from India on the life of Hari Singh Nalwa, Sham Singh Attari, who was one of the greatest generals of Ranjit Singh. So there’s something for th to go to everybody. And I know that provisionally looking on Saturday the 15Thetford and see these see the museums, visit the graves, see the statue. We hope you’ll enjoy it so, not just on the Saturday, throughout that week, there’s a lot happening in London, come along. Q. What were the items that were bracketed in terms of belonging of our Gurus? Ans. Two swords and Kalgi of Guru Gobind Singh. Q. has there been any….. Ans. The trail goes cold after about 1902 and then there was an attempt in 1974 to research them but then there is lot of confusion and lot of mist descends upon the whole thing. Q. Has there been any other items that have been brought into England by people of the Raj and discovered? 10 Ans. Its only private collection, dying off these colonial families, it will come on the market, they are coming on the market. Q have you been able to identify any of these? We have identified some. Recently, there was a bust of Maharaja Duleep Singh, in 1911 it was valued at 12 pounds, when it sold 2 months ago, it was 1.7 million pounds. That just shows how these items are coming out of private collections and coming on the market. Q have you heard of any of our Guru’s belongings that are physically here, any specific items. Ans We know that the Kalgi, and I think there is more than one kalgi, its impossible that there’s only one kalgi, those are in British hands. Q One kalgi and… Ans. And two swords, there’s one copy of a Zafarnama somewhere. There’s a lot out there. There really is a lot out there. And we, I’m not blaming anybody, we’re all to blame, we’ve been very negligent of these issues. Our concern is, make a Gurdwara and filling that. Its no use doing that if your heritage is being brought by, you know there’s Saudi Arabian people willing to pay millions for the Kalgi. For them, it’s a beauty of the object; its spirituality means nothing to them and we’re now having to compete with these people. There are British manuscripts, because of the calligraphy and the age, to them it doesn’t matter if it’s the Dasam Granth or the Guru Granth Sahib or Sukhmani Sahib, to them it’s a piece of beauty and it’s a shame that we neglect these things. And we’re doing this at this moment in India; our manuscripts are just piled on top of each other. Here in the British Library, at least there’s climate control and you have to wear cotton gloves to stop your hands, the acid in your hands reacting with the paper and the ink but we have been very negligent. I think it’s just amazing that we, the one community that shouts more than any other about its heritage and Chardikala are the Sikhs, 11 but we’re also the one community that does the least to preserve it. Its just so ironic. Q how old was Duleep Singh when he came here or was brought here? Ans He came to the throne at the age of 9, he was about 12 when he came here, 12 to 13 Q Obviously he wasn’t a Sikh then. He converted into a… Ans If you read the stories of his early life, at a very early age when he was taken from the Kingdom, they started to convert him. And some British historians have written including Christine Campbell that actually what turned him against Sikhism was not just the British saying that Christianity is better, that what the first thing they did was physically separate him from any contact, away from Punjab. And some people condemn him, I’ve had these debates, they say forget him, don’t waste your time on him, he’s a Christian. I said look, give us Prince Andrew at the age of 4 and we’ll do the same. We will make him into a Nihang. But I didn’t touch on this, when he met his mother after 22 years, she was almost blind and you can read this in the Sikh History books, Sohan Singh Seetal, Dukhyae Maput, and he says this remarkable thing, he said, when they met after 22 years, she was blind, she recognised him slightly from his voice and then she went to touch his head, as they do to give their blessings and she found that he had no hair. And it were her words then, if you want to look at Duleep Singh’s life and find one defining moment when he turns, when he leaves behind the palaces and the thrones and tries to go back to Punjab, it’s the words of his mother, and what she said is, I lost my husband, I lost my palaces, I lost my Kingdom, but I could live with that, but today, I’ve lost Sikhi from my family and that hurts me more than anything else. And those were the words, and you can read this, look them up, those were the words that turned him back towards Sikhi. I’ve heard Prof. Darshan Singh, one of the greatest Kirtaneea in the Sikh panth, reciting this story on stage and starting to cry. He has to leave his harmonium and walk off the stage. Such a powerful story. I have the recording in Singapore. And you see 12 some photographs of his children, even though they were Christian, they were called Frederick and Albert, they had long hair till they were teenagers. But even when they got here, when they realised the influence she (Maharani Jinda) had, they separated them again. They could only meet after 2 weeks and somebody else had to be in the room. But she died here. Q how many years did she stay here? A few years only, she died very quickly. Ans. 4 or 5 years. Q can I just ask you to elaborate a little bit on the Kohinoor and the bible, could you elaborate on that? Ans. The Kohinoor, it was the largest Diamond that was identified in the world and it came into the hands of Maharaja Ranjit Singh through, I think it’s Shah Shuja who’s an Afghan ruler and Ranjit Singh came to his aid in battle against some other Pathans and it was given to him as a memento and in those days you wore it on your bicep as a sign of strength. All the pictures of Ranjit Singh show the Kohinoor on is bicep. The British were very clever, when they took over the Sikh Kingdom, under the official agreement, all they were supposed to take over was the treasury of the government, the state, the Sarkari Khalsa. But what Lord Dalhousie did, he also took Ranjit Singh’s personal toshakhana, and the sword of Guru Gobind Singh and the Kalgi, and the Kohinoor was in that. This was nothing other than robbery that’s all it was; it was nothing other than daylight robbery. And in order to bring it back and to present it to Queen Victoria the whole idea was to gain favour with her. And now the Kohinoor is being cut, I think into 18 pieces or something, and it’s in the Tower of London and it’s in what’s called the Queen Mother’s Tiara. She wears a Tiara on state occasions and it’s in there. It wasn’t just it’s physical size, although it was large, I mean there’s some historians say it was so bright that Maharaja Ranjit Singh would read from the Gutka from the reflected light. It wasn’t that, it was what it symbolised; it was a 13 symbol of power and sovereignty and that’s what the British wanted to deprive him of. Q what the British seem to say that it was presented to them by the Sikhs. Ans. This is what happened. It was taken, it was literally stolen, it was brought back in the waistcoat of Henry Lawrence who actually forgot about it at one stage. He was very lucky to find it and then what happened was, when Duleep Singh met Queen Victoria and he met her quite regularly and I have to say in her defence that she took a very kind and motherly attitude towards him. And unfortunately what she couldn’t do was stand up against the government. The constitution didn’t allow that. But when Duleep Singh realised that the Kohinoor… It actually happened, this is how it happened. Queen Victoria commissioned this portrait of him. This was done in what’s called Prince’s room of Buckingham Palace. Queen Victoria’s favourite photographer was this chap called Winterhalter and she commissioned him to do a portrait of Duleep Singh. During the course of that portrait, Duleep Singh mentioned that that is the Kohinoor and if you are going to have it I’d rather I presented it to you than you took it by some other means. And that’s then they symbolically bought it in on a cushion and he gave it to her in his own hand. It’s just to set the record straight and I think to make her conscience a little easier than it was before. Q where are Maharaja Duleep Singh’s descendants today? Ans. That is a good question because it’s a mystery. He was married twice, his first wife died. She was a half German and half Egyptian and then he married a British lady. He had 4 sons and I think 3 daughters. One of his sons died very early after a few days. He’s buried in Scotland, another one died in Monaco in South of France; he’s buried there and then there were two sons here, Frederick and Albert. Both studied at Cambridge, both served in World War I. One of them didn’t get married at all, Frederick didn’t marry, he died a bachelor. The other one married the daughter of the Earl of Coventry, the Earl of Warren. They had no children. None of Duleep Singh’s children had any descendants. And there are various conspiracy theories about this. Some say it’s just natural odds. There is 14 one story that keeps on cropping up and I haven’t made my mind up about it. It’s that Guru Gobind Singh forbid the Sikhs from creating any memorial to him and that Ranjit Singh persisted and when he was warned that the side effect of this could be that you will have no descendants or no dynasty of yours will be left. He said, well I will accept that punishment as long as there is something in the memory of my Guru. I said I haven’t decided about that but that’s one of the theories that keeps on cropping up. If I could just elaborate on that (Dr. Kanwaljit Kaur) because there’s something else that I want to move on to. Guru Arjan Dev Ji’s Shaheedi was in 1606 and as Bibi Ji’s said there’s been this debate going on was it a domestic issue with Chandu was it persecution. Well, in history, one of the best ways of settling rd party, a neutral opinion. Now, when Guru disputes or controversies is to get a 3 Arjan Dev Ji was martyred in Lahore in 1606, on that day, witnessing the martyrdom was a Roman Catholic Priest from Portugal. What a coincidence. And he wrote it in his diary. He calls Guru Ji a saint. He said ‘I saw the saint suffer intolerable pain.’ He was there, in Lahore, he saw it. He wrote it in his diary, he wrote a letter back from Lahore to Lisbon. In those days those letters were copied by hand by priests and a copy was sent back to the Vatican Library in Rome. Sadly, that priest, Frances Xavier died in a fire in Goa. But after quite a bit of searching and trouble, we found the actual copy of that letter in the Vatican Library. So, the reason I pick from that point is that if you really want to get a true spirit of Sikh History and the esteem in which the Sikhs have been held, then I would say forget Sikh sources for a minute, put them down, put them away, look at non-Sikh sources. Some of the most glorious words written about the Sikhs have been written by westerners, Andrews, Mc Olive, you name it. I’ll give you one example and I think I’ll finish with this and I think it’s a relevant example. Some years ago, and I can’t remember the year, there was a big campaign in this country to allow the Sikhs to wear the turban on a motorbike and not a helmet. Now, all of us, and I was very young then thought that this was a victory for the Sikhs by the Sikhs, and actually it wasn’t. I mean I’m not saying anything 15 to denigrate those who fought that battle and a lot of Sikhs did take that battle to the House of Commons, but we were very naïve in thinking that we had won the battle. And I’ll tell you why we were naïve because our population then was quite negligible, we didn’t have any Sikh counsellors, we had no mayors, we had no chief executives, we had no real influence, and then about in 1996, I came across this chap, who had commanded the Sikh regiment in Punjab and in Burma, and whose father and grandfather and great-grandfather had also commanded the Sikh regiment and he took me to a meeting at Whitehall and there, I saw the letters. If there were 20 letters written by Sikh organisations, there were 2000 letters written by British servicemen who had commanded the Sikhs, but they didn’t tell anybody, they didn’t put their picture on the front of Des Pardes, or didn’t publicise it, yet it was their experience of the Sikhs, that’s what won that battle for us. We delude ourselves if we think we had the power or the mopping power to win that battle. I mean, now we’re fighting battles, now we’re getting nowhere, how could we have fought it 25 years ago and won? It was the testament of those people and the reason they stood up for us is the impression that your forefathers had left with them. That’s what won those battles. Q Proactively what are you doing to preserve the Sikh Heritage? You, just recently referred to the items that are now coming up from the colonial people who are passing away? Are there fields out there where we can preserve them or we can give to the British Museum? Ans. We’ve got a number of initiatives, I won’t touch on them all, because we haven’t got time but in 1993, we commissioned the first ever audit of Sikh objects in this country that was done. It was done behind the scenes of two years; we engaged a professional curator who provided an authoritative list of what was known at any one stage, only 5% of what is here is known. 95% of what is on display, what the V&A has is never on display. It’s in archives. A lot of it is misclassified, it will say North-Indian, you can’t tell that it’s Sikh. So, one of the things that we’re doing now as from next year is for 3 years we are employing a researcher to go into these collections, a Sikh researcher who can tell that this is 16 a Sikh object. We had success with that last year. Even people like me were under the impression that Sikh coinage was minted at the time of Ranjit Singh’s Kingdom. When we put a researcher, a Sikh researcher into the coins department of the British Museum, and we found coins of the pre-misl period when Banda Singh Bahadur. But we knew they existed, but they’d never been identified and catalogued and photographed. We found them. What we did in finding that manuscript in Rome is one example. Increasingly, there are a lot of items in the family homes of colonial settlers. And we are in discussion with a number of them including 3 families of the governor generals of Punjab that whatever manuscripts they have are not put on the open market. So, in a small, very confined way, I think we’re trying to make a difference. We’ve put people into the National Army Museum to identify the records and the letters of the early Sikh pioneers, cavalry pioneers, there’s one young Sikh over here from India at the moment whose great-grandfather came over to be an orderly to Queen Victoria in her Diamond Jubilee. So we’ve tracked him down, we found his photographs, we found his medals. So, from a personal level to a sort of community level we’re trying to do whatever we can. There are battlefield, from the Battle of Ferosha in 1849, there are battle standards that the British took because they won the battle. They had been lying in a cathedral from that date to now and you touch them and they disintegrate. Yet whenever that British rd, wherever they are, Iraq, regiment, whatever it is, on that day in November 23 Afghanistan, Bosnia, they celebrate Ferosha day and we don’t. So, one of the things we’re doing is restoring those battle standards, they’re massive, they’re about 11 foot by 18 foot. You would hold them on a horse; from a distance your cavalry could be seen. So we’re restoring those. We’re working with a British legend so that in a year or two years time, wherever there’s a remembrance ceremony, and I don’t just mean in Whitehall where Inderjit Singh goes, Baden, Brighton, or Guildford or Wales or Scotland, wherever there’s a British remembrance ceremony, there’s a separate wreath laid for the Sikh regiment. 17 Q have you found in St. Paul’s Cathedral, there’s a column with the names of the soldiers and there’s some Sikh names? Ans. Yeah, that’s the PFR, Punjab front record. Q is there any project or bringing up a book which says which are the landmarks…? Ans. Well, a lot of it is on our website at the moment. But, what we’re also doing is working some of these key topics into Key Stage activities to go into the curriculum, commissioning an education pack. But we’re a voluntary organisation. I do this voluntarily when I can find time so it’s a struggle but now we are employing some full time. Well, the starting point, come along to the Sikh Heritage week, that’ll be your starting point. 18
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