All but 27, Harvin­dar Singh was a dy­namic ed­u­ca­tion coun­sel­lor and ac­tivist, as­pir­ing to be a leader, who en­vi­sioned to ame­lio­rate the con­di­tions of Sik­li­gars through ed­u­ca­tion and train­ing, passed away fight­ing a rare kid­ney ail­ment. WSN ed­i­tor, who cham­pi­ons the cause of Sik­li­gar ed­u­ca­tion and with whom he was in­ti­mately as­so­ci­ated, shares his life and pays trib­ute to the young man which would in­spire Sik­li­gars to come out of their shells.

8 years ago, a diminu­tive Samma Kaur came knock­ing to my tem­po­rary res­i­dence in Delhi where I and my wife were camp­ing with my son prepar­ing for his med­ical en­trance. She brought along a shy boy along and said, “I have raised him with great dif­fi­culty, snatch­ing money from my hus­band Mulka­raj Singh for this boy’s ed­u­ca­tion. Now I am giv­ing him to you, to teach him, to train him, to make him a good hu­man be­ing and to carry on his ed­u­ca­tion.” I as­sured her that if he and she give me the op­por­tu­nity and the trust, I would do my best. I did all I could for Harvin­dar Singh.

The First Long steps:

Within one month, he was pro­fi­cient in Eng­lish typ­ing. He tran­scribed the en­tire book, The Sik­li­gars of Pun­jab by Sher Singh Sher, learn­ing MS Word and he never looked back. He went on to be­come the first Bach­e­lor in So­cial Work, coached and trained by A Lit­tle Hap­pi­ness Foun­da­tion – an or­gan­i­sa­tion formed by me and Gurmeet Singh. Harvin­dar Singh and I dreamt of hav­ing an army of so­cial work­ers who would work for the Sik­li­gars and other poor Sikhs. He was the first ed­u­ca­tion coun­sel­lor of the A Lit­tle Hap­pi­ness Foun­da­tion. It will not be wrong to say that ALHF was built on his shoul­ders.

“Dr.Harkesh Singh Sandhu from Cal­i­for­nia, who knew him well, dur­ing his med­ical drive trips to Al­war, Delhi and Pun­jab, said, “It is re­ally very sad. We have to ac­cept God’s will. The Sa­haita Pari­var joins me in ex­press­ing sor­row with the fam­ily.”Dr. Ra­jin­der Singh from Lud­hi­ana and Supreet Kaur Manik­tala from Malaysia en­dorsed all steps to be taken by ALHF to per­pet­u­ate his mem­ory.”

He was not al­ways like this. Dur­ing his child­hood days, like all Sik­li­gar chil­dren, he used to run away from stud­ies to play cricket, spend his en­tire day as a way­ward child. His mother how­ever, never re­lented and con­tin­ued her de­ter­mi­na­tion to make his ed­u­ca­tion. He was, how­ever, a quiet thinker. When he saw mean­ing in what we started in Al­war, he never looked back. He hosted Saman­deep Kaur Brar, who came as a vol­un­teer from Canada and stayed for three months in his house. Her deep com­mit­ment and as­so­ci­a­tion trans­formed him into a re­spon­si­ble per­son.

The Fam­ily:

Harvin­dar Singh’s fa­ther had gone as far as Iraq in search of work and spent two years there. His grand­fa­ther, Srain Singh since de­ceased, used to very fondly say, “He is yours, take good care.” Grand­mother Bindi Kaur, nearly 90 years, fully ac­tive, tak­ing care of the house, tidy­ing up things and fill­ing-in wa­ter as wa­ter is in short sup­ply for the house­hold needs, did not ever rel­ish the im­por­tance of ed­u­ca­tion but was al­ways full of love for Harvin­dar Singh. Since the chil­dren have known her, this grand old lady of the house is al­ways at work. When they set­tled in Al­war, decades back, she used to walk nearly 15 kilo­me­tres every day to fetch fire­wood for the house. Harvin­dar Singh wanted to make a doc­u­men­tary of her life, which will now be done by his sis­ter Ravin­der Kaur. He was al­ways wor­ried of his younger brother Ra­jen­der Singh who did not go to school.

The stead­fast lov­ing Harvin­dar Singh:

Un­mind­ful of the mon­e­tary sit­u­a­tion of his fam­ily, ig­nor­ing the harsh win­ter and heat con­di­tions in Al­war, Agra, Pan­wari and Delhi, he slogged on day and night. He was the back­bone of the three-year res­i­den­tial train­ing and em­pow­er­ment pro­gram of the ALHF in Tarn Taran and Ja­land­har. Al­ways will­ing to learn, he was de­ter­mined to add the suf­fix “Dr” be­fore his name by com­plet­ing his doc­toral stud­ies in so­cial work.

“ Get well soon. You have a lot of work to do. You are my di­a­mond. You were born to do Sewa.”
Samma Kaur, mother of Harvin­dar Singh

Whether he was at home or else­where, he loved his fam­ily and ex­tended fam­ily a lot. Fond of pho­tog­ra­phy, he used to take pic­tures with a flare as can be seen in this pic­ture of his sis­ter and cousins.  Nearer home, he can­celled the en­gage­ment of his sis­ter Ravin­der Kaur and first cousin Narinder Kaur to en­sure that they par­tic­i­pate in the ALHF res­i­den­tial train­ing pro­gram. He was de­ter­mined to give ex­em­plary ed­u­ca­tion to the three daugh­ters of his more-than-a-brother, his first cousin Gurmel Singh.

As he went along, he roped in more and more Sik­li­gars into the ed­u­ca­tion pro­gramme of the or­gan­i­sa­tion -far and wide. He spent hours with every fam­ily con­vinc­ing them the value of ed­u­ca­tion. Many of the youth lead­ers painstak­ingly trained by ALHF de­serted him and ALHF, some for their pe­cu­niary ends and some out of jeal­ousy.

He was all em­brac­ing, he never re­tal­i­ated. In my eight years of as­so­ci­a­tion, I saw him an­gry once and that too when some­one made a very per­sonal snide against him and his fam­ily.

Trib­utes Ga­lore:

Wher­ever he went he en­deared to those he in­ter­acted with. On Face­book, we have trib­utes to him in Tamil lan­guage from friends in Chen­nai, Coim­bat­ore and Tirupur. Two stal­warts -one a busi­ness per­son Sub­ash Bose and an­other politi­cian Ben­jamin Franklin, wrote, “we have lost a brother.” Many who did not meet in life but knew about his life and work, like Harmeet Singh and Sarab­jit Singh from New York, Ra­j­pal Singh from Cal­i­for­nia and Taran­jit Singh from Mum­bai said, “We are very sad.  We will do every­thing to sup­port his fam­ily and per­pet­u­ate his mem­ory.”Harsaran Singh from Pud­ducherry with whom he spoke only on the phone said, “I only spoke to him once. I think he was a great soul.”

““I have lost a brother and friend. Nei­ther the Sik­li­gars nor I will get any­one like him for a long time to come.”
Har­jin­der Singh from Al­war”

His col­leagues, sup­port­ers and friends Har­jin­der Singh, Parveen Kaur, Harpreet Kaur, Seema Kaur, Suman Ban­oth, Har­jeet Singh, Ravi Singh, Ka­mal­jeet Singh, Jasvin­der Singh could not say more than, “We do not be­lieve that he is not with us. We learnt a lot from him. There is no match of him in the whole Sik­li­gar Samaj. Even our el­derly does not have that kind of mind and be­hav­iour. He was a huge ex­am­ple for Sik­li­gars and teenagers. Dur­ing our as­so­ci­a­tion with him, he never made us feel alone. There was not a day when we did not de­rive strength from him.”

Har­jin­der Singh from Al­war spent years to­gether in the small dingy room in Agra, with skele­ton sup­port to run the cen­tres of Guru Nanak Na­gar, Bain­pur and Pun­wari, said, “I have lost a brother and friend. Nei­ther the Sik­li­gars nor I will get any­one like him for a long time to come.”

Sufi singer and ed­u­ca­tion ac­tivist from Lud­hi­ana -Jas­meet Kaur loved Harvin­dar Singh and his fam­ily. Al­ways in the fore to fur­ther the cause of Sik­li­gar ed­u­ca­tion, she has promised to en­sure that wom­en­folk of Sik­li­gars be­come bold and take on chal­lenges of life and bring out a turn­around. Jas­meet Kaur handed over the first lap­top to Harvin­dar Singh in Delhi which fur­ther strength­ened his re­solve to work zeal­ously for Sik­li­gar ed­u­ca­tion. 

Dr.Harkesh Singh Sandhu from Cal­i­for­nia, who knew him well, dur­ing his med­ical drive trips to Al­war, Delhi and Pun­jab, said, “It is re­ally very sad. We have to ac­cept God’s will. The Sa­haita Pari­var joins me in ex­press­ing sor­row with the fam­ily.”Dr. Ra­jin­der Singh from Lud­hi­ana and Supreet Kaur Manik­tala from Malaysia en­dorsed all steps to be taken by ALHF to per­pet­u­ate his mem­ory.

Gur­dip Singh Thind, who met him briefly dur­ing his visit to Tarn Taran in a mes­sage from Lon­don said, “Let us live in Gu­ru’s grace. Harvin­dar Singh was a truly good worker.”

Kul­want Singh from Mum­bai and Ra­jin­der Singh from Chen­nai, who were deeply aware of his work had this to say, “He was a gem of the Sik­li­gar com­mu­nity. It will take us a long time to build an­other Harvin­dar Singh” My fa­ther Waryam Singh and Mum­bai res­i­dent Sukhdev Singh ex­pressed deep sor­row at the loss.

Dur­ing the last 10 months that he was fight­ing for life, in and out of the PGI hos­pi­tal in Chandi­garh, we re­ceived sup­port from all quar­ters, from peo­ple known and un­known. Dur­ing this pe­riod, we also learnt who are the fair-weather friends who pay lip ser­vice to the Sik­li­gar cause and who are the gen­uine friends of the com­mu­nity.

Viet­namese stu­dent Trang who had come to serve as a vol­un­teer, could not hold back her tears and said, “He was such a nice in­di­vid­ual. I just can­not be­lieve it. At the air­port, he so lov­ingly as­sisted me in every­thing. I just feel him around.”

School prin­ci­pals-Brij Raj Singh of Agra Glory, Manoj Ya­dav of Sri Ram Chan­dra School, Bain­pur and Dulic­hand of Sri Ram Adarsh Vidya Mandir Pun­wari, Sub­ash Ji of Sri Gau­r­is­hankar Jr. High School, Kas­ganj, were all in grief as they rec­ol­lected his in­ter­ac­tion and reg­u­lar in­ter­ven­tion on be­half of the Sik­li­gar stu­dents of the area. The Sik­li­gar Sikhs of these ar­eas would al­ways rem­i­nisce the hard work done by him to per­suade their chil­dren to take to school.

Harvin­dar Singh Fam­ily and the No­vem­ber 1984 Pogrom:

Years back, while pre­sent­ing the mono­graph on Sik­li­gar Sikhs, with the able as­sis­tance of Harvin­dar Singh at the sem­i­nar or­gan­ised by the In­sti­tute of Sikh Stud­ies, I wrote, “While the Sikhs com­mem­o­rate twenty-five years of the anti-Sikh pogrom this week, rem­i­nisc­ing 1984, I came across un­prece­dented pain, an­guish and suf­fer­ing of the Sik­li­gar Sikhs. The death and de­struc­tion of Sik­li­gar Sikhs as a class of Sikhs at­tacked dur­ing No­vem­ber 1984 needs a more thor­ough and de­tailed study and analy­sis and I am do­ing so. I have found that all those Sik­li­gars, who were able to pre­sent a pic­ture of strength and por­tray them­selves as strong weapon-keep­ing Sikhs, were able to pro­tect them­selves, whereas oth­ers, steeped in poverty and vis­i­bly vul­ner­a­ble in their set­tle­ments, were bru­tally at­tacked and killed in Delhi, Ra­jasthan, Mad­hya Pradesh and even in cer­tain parts of Ma­ha­rash­tra, though the num­bers in all other ar­eas ex­cept Delhi was small.”

When a large num­ber of Sik­li­gar Sikhs were at­tacked and killed in a well-planned mas­sacre in Block A of Sul­tan­puri, the oth­ers fled and went to Al­war, their orig­i­nal base of the for­ties, in the first week of No­vem­ber 1984.

I was able to say this au­thor­i­ta­tively be­cause I delved deep into the Sik­li­gar Sikh lives in Delhi. Harvin­dar Singh lost the fol­low­ing rel­a­tives to the pogrom in No­vem­ber 1984. Bas­ant Singh (ma­ter­nal grand­fa­ther), Bal­bir Singh (ma­ter­nal un­cle), Dharam Singh (ma­ter­nal un­cle), Prem Singh (ma­ter­nal un­cle), Sunil Singh (ma­ter­nal un­cle), Balkar Singh (ma­ter­nal un­cle) and Sur­jeet Singh (ma­ter­nal un­cle). Every time Harvin­dar Singh vis­ited Delhi, he made it a point to visit each of these and as­sure them that he would do every­thing for the ed­u­ca­tion of their chil­dren and oth­ers sim­i­larly af­fected.

Un­bear­able, un­fil­l­able loss:

To me Harvin­dar Singh was my man Fri­day. I nur­tured him bit by bit, tu­tored him, men­tored him more than my own chil­dren -as they had made their ca­reer de­ci­sions, leav­ing me free to work for the poor­est of the poor. He im­bibed every­thing, al­most un­ques­tion­ably and some­times seek­ing ex­pla­na­tions, but never chal­leng­ing. In his loss, my back­bone has been bro­ken. My or­gan­i­sa­tion has been or­phaned. When I met him last, dis­traught at the poor re­sponse from Sik­li­gars, de­spite our her­culean ef­forts, in a fit of anger, I said, “I think I need to close down every­thing.” In pain, but lis­ten­ing, he said, “Please get me cured soon. Put me back on my feet. I want to work. I want ALHF to be strong and pow­er­ful to at­tain the dream of ed­u­ca­tion for all Sik­li­gars.” I could not say much. I only fondly ca­ressed his fore­head whilst leav­ing him and said, “You will get well, do not worry. We have a long way to go.”

Alas! It was not to be.  In the wee hours of the morn­ing of 6 Au­gust, at around 3 am, he peace­fully passed away, af­ter fight­ing for life for nearly 10 months, strug­gling against a rare kid­ney ail­ment called HUS, for which there is no cure known to med­ical sci­ence.

His mother Samma Kaur who did not leave him un­at­tended for a sin­gle day for the last 10 months, along­side his first cousin Gurmel Singh, re­peated ad nau­seam, “Get well soon. You have a lot of work to do. You are my di­a­mond. You were born to do Sewa.” It will re­main one of my biggest re­grets in life that I could not to­tally ful­fil the promise I made to his mother 8 years ago.

How­ever, the jour­ney con­tin­ues. His sis­ter Ravin­der Kaur, fight­ing tears with brav­ery and grit, soon af­ter his fu­neral, came up to me. For a mo­ment, I won­dered what she would say. To my ut­ter shock and dis­be­lief, she said, “Veerji, please do not close the cen­tre in Lud­hi­ana. We have to build the Sik­li­gar Sikhs Learn­ing Cen­tre and Acad­emy there. It was a dream of my brother and I am with you in en­sur­ing that the cen­tre be­comes a re­al­ity. I will work hard, col­lect every penny re­quired and help ful­fil not only my broth­er’s dream but the dream of all Sikl­gars to come out of their own petty world through ed­u­ca­tion and train­ing.”

The ALHF Trib­ute:

ALHF will in­sti­tute a Harvin­dar Singh Memo­r­ial schol­ar­ship fund. Out of this fund, schol­ar­ships will be given to one good poor Sikh stu­dent -boy and one girl every year.

ALHF-Harvin­dar Singh Train­ing In­sti­tute will be set up in his home­town Al­war with his sis­ter Ravin­der Kaur and first cousin Narinder Kaur to be the pi­o­neers to be as­sisted by oth­ers trained by ALHF to pitch in.

At the pro­posed ALHF acad­emy in Lud­hi­ana, we will build a li­brary in his name.

Epi­taph:

Not known to many, he loved writ­ing po­etry. The fam­ily is now scur­ry­ing old dairies to look for his writ­ing. His first cousin Sarita Kaur from Delhi, who was also con­vinced by her to take the ed­u­ca­tion road to suc­cess, who ad­mired him a lot, re­called a few lines:

Main voh soch hoon, jo sochay se bhi sochi nahi jaongi
Tum jo so­choge, us soch mein bhi main sochi nahi jaongi
Tum jitni bhi koshish kar lo mu­jhe gi­rane ki
Main hame­sha hi tumhe aage aur sirf aage hi nazar aaongi.

Trans­lated thus:
I am that thought you can­not think
What you think, I am far be­yond that thought
How­so­ever much you try to ground me
You will find me al­ways in the fore­front!