On Baisakhi Day this year, un­der the se­wadar­ship of  trans­port ty­coon, so­cial and re­li­gious ac­tivist Ra­jin­der Singh Bhasin, the Sri Guru Nanak Sat Sangh Sabha, Chen­nai cel­e­brated 70 years of its foun­da­tion day. Em­i­nent per­son­al­ity and writer Uja­gar Singh traces the ori­gins of the Gur­d­wara for­ma­tion, par­tic­u­larly the role of South-East Asian Sikhs, who used Chen­nai, then Madras as the gate­way to the world.  

On the aus­pi­cious day of Baisakhi, in the early hours of 13 April 1952, Hardyal Singh of Sin­ga­pore in the au­gust pres­ence of stal­warts of the com­mu­nity in Chen­nai in­clud­ing army of­fi­cers, busi­nessper­sons, cricket leg­ends, trans­porters, fur­ni­ture mak­ers and steel rolling mill own­ers laid the foun­da­tion stone of Sri Guru Nanak Sat­sangh Sabha at Theagraya Na­gar on the Gopathi Narayan Chetty Road in then Madras, now Chen­nai city in true Gur­mat tra­di­tion of cut­ting the earth af­ter Ar­das.

Oral his­tory tells us that the San­gat num­bered nearly two thou­sand five hun­dred and many of them trav­elled from Pan­jab from Ja­land­har, Lud­hi­ana, Hoshiarpur, Moga, Delhi and other towns like Ja­balpur, Bhubane­spur and Bokaro, Bom­bay, Hy­der­abad, Vi­jayawada, Ban­ga­lore, Coim­bat­ore and Cal­cutta to grace the oc­ca­sion.

Fur­ther­more, na­tive Tamils, Tel­u­gus, Sind­his, Gu­jaratis and Bi­haris were also pre­sent on the oc­ca­sion.

In those days, the gov­ern­ments at Bom­bay and Cal­cutta Pres­i­den­cies were not very friendly or favourable to the Pan­jabis. Yet some of the pushy men willy-nilly man­aged to em­bark from these towns in­clud­ing from Chit­tagong, now in Bangladesh par­tic­u­larly those who went to Burma -now Myan­mar and In­done­sia.

In con­trast, the gov­ern­ments and the lo­cal peo­ple of Madras had been more warm and help­ful to these ad­ven­tur­ers and for this rea­son, a large num­ber of Sikhs and Pan­jabis pre­ferred Madras. It was a com­mon prac­tice to see a large num­ber of them ar­riv­ing every year. Upon ar­rival, they had to be shel­tered by the Gur­d­wara and the Pun­jab As­so­ci­a­tion for as many as 3 to 5 months as it was dif­fi­cult to get a con­firmed seat on the next ship to go to dis­tant for­eign shores, as the ships were few and far be­tween.  Then, air travel was pro­hib­i­tively ex­pen­sive.

Ar­chi­tect T. N. Sub­ra­ma­ni­an’s con­nec­tion to Chen­nai Gur­d­wara
My fa­ther, the then Chief En­gi­neer for Pa­tiala Con­struc­tion Com­pany Pri­vate Lim­ited was asked by Ma­haraja Pa­tiala to go to Madras to de­sign the Gur­d­wara there. I hap­pily share the copy of the let­ter ad­dressed by Sar­dar B. S. Gulerya, Gen­eral Sec­re­tary, Guru Nanak Sat Sangh Sabha, Madras on 8th June 1950 to my fa­ther late Shri. T. N. Sub­ra­man­ian. I will be happy to con­nect with the Sikhs of Chen­nai some­day soon. Sat Sri Akaal. —Ravi Sub­ra­man­ian

Their first des­ti­na­tions in­vari­ably were Sin­ga­pore and Penang in Malaya -now part of Malaysia, pri­mar­ily be­cause our sim­ple folks were hard-work­ing, du­ti­ful, in­tel­li­gent, dar­ing, and in­dus­tri­ous peo­ple as com­pared to the lo­cal labour then avail­able.

Sikhs earned the trust of their em­ploy­ers and found jobs in the Po­lice, Army, Civil guards, fac­to­ries and ship­ping com­pa­nies.

The Gur­d­waras in Sin­ga­pore and Penang played a sig­nif­i­cant role in procur­ing de­cent well-paid jobs for the em­i­grants of Pun­jab and guar­an­tee­ing the trust­wor­thi­ness of their folks.

Uja­gar Singh is a for­mer IAS of­fi­cer, In­ter­na­tional Pres­i­dent of the  World Spir­i­tual and Re­search Foun­da­tion and le­gal ad­vi­sor to the In­ter­na­tional Acad­emy of Ac­cred­ited Ar­bi­tra­tors, Hague at its Chen­nai branch.