For one week, Sikhs were happy and cheer­ful thanks to the words and im­ages of Har­jit Singh Saj­jan on his maiden visit to home­land Pun­jab and In­dia as the De­fence Min­is­ter of Canada.            

Humil­ity per­son­i­fied, suave, gen­tle, fo­cussed, de­ter­mined, God-fear­ing, cos­mopoli­tan, re­spect­ful son, lov­ing hus­band, a dot­ing fa­ther, pro­gres­sive, in­clu­sive, a pure Pun­jabi at heart -dur­ing his 7 days in Pun­jab and In­dia -Har­jit Singh Saj­jan hum­bled us all and made us very happy with his amaz­ing qual­i­ties of be­ing a good Sikh and a per­fect Cana­dian -an ideal com­bi­na­tion to be called a Sikh-Cana­dian. He may have left the shores of In­dia but peo­ple and politi­cians are still feel­ing the im­pact.

Since Or­wellian 1984, Sikhs in Pun­jab and around the world, have had very few com­mu­nity-level oc­ca­sions to be happy and cheer­ful. For 7 days, Har­jit Singh Saj­jan spread hap­pi­ness to Sikhs across the world. We were over­awed with joy.  His im­age of tak­ing the salute from the In­dian sol­diers on the ram­parts of the South Block in Delhi, with his merit badges on his chest, look­ing to be a ded­i­cated fol­lower of the mar­tial race of Sikhs, shall re­main em­bed­ded in Sikh minds and hearts for a very long time to come.

I can re­call less than a hand­ful of times when we have laughed or been cheer­ful at such a mass level. To my mind, prior to the visit of Har­jit Singh Saj­jan, one such oc­ca­sion was the adop­tion of the true Nanakshahi Cal­en­dar of an­other Sikh-Cana­dian Pal Singh Pure­wal by the Sikh na­tion in 2003.

Trav­el­ling from New Delhi to Am­rit­sar to Bam­beli to Chandi­garh to Mum­bai, Har­jit Singh Saj­jan fully lived up to his name –Saj­jan -a true friend, wher­ever he went. His cheer­ful im­age, looks, man­ner­ism, truly em­pathis­ing face with chil­dren at Pin­gal­wara, Am­rit­sar and the Unique home, Ja­land­har, his to-the-point pre­sen­ta­tion in sem­i­nars in Delhi, Chandi­garh and Mum­bai, his han­dling of the ef­fer­ves­cent Pun­jab me­dia, his truth­ful re­sponses to the in­ter­na­tional me­dia in Delhi, his in­ter­ac­tion with In­dia on bi­lat­eral is­sues and his han­dling and up­dat­ing of his Face­book page in Eng­lish and French -oh, we loved it all! He was a Saj­jan of God be­ing a Saj­jan to all!

His state­ment to Pun­jabi Daily Ajit, which ex­ten­sively and re­mark­ably cov­ered his visit that, “what­ever I am to­day is be­cause of the Grace of God, the Gu­rus and the en­vi­ron­ment and op­por­tu­nity pro­vided by Canada and Cana­di­ans”, sums up the per­son­al­ity of this great son of Pun­jab who as a child ac­com­pa­nied his par­ents -fa­ther Kun­dan Singh and mother Vidya Kaur, to leave the soil of Pun­jab, to re­turn back this time as the De­fence Min­is­ter of Canada, earn­ing a liv­ing and tra­vers­ing through the hur­dles of life in a far-off land, which now has many more like him who have risen to zenith of their glory in so­cial and pub­lic life. A pub­lic fig­ure in her own right, he is bliss­fully as­sisted by his doc­tor-wife Kuljit Kaur.

Is­n’t it amaz­ing that af­ter Ma­haraja Ran­jit Singh’s gen­er­alis­simo Hari Singh Nalwa who ruled over Kan­da­har and many other parts of Afghanistan, where moth­ers used to tell their chil­dren –Hari Aara­gle -sleep oth­er­wise Hari Singh will come, it was the dec­o­rated Cana­dian Army Lieu­tenant Colonel Har­jit Singh Saj­jan PC OMM MSM CD MP, who served 3 times in Afghanistan on the mil­i­tary in­tel­li­gence side with al­lied forces un­der the com­mand of a US gen­eral for which he was ho­n­oured with the Or­der of Mer­i­to­ri­ous Ser­vice by the gov­ern­ment of Canada for re­duc­ing the im­pact of the Tal­iban.  He also served in Bosnia and Herze­gov­ina af­ter which he joined the Van­cou­ver Po­lice de­part­ment too and spe­cial­ized in neu­tral­is­ing drug gangs. Upon re­turn from Afghanistan, he took over com­mand of the British Co­lum­bia Reg­i­ment (Duke of Con­naugh­t’s Own). We were sim­ply over­whelmed when he re­ceived the gun-salute from the same reg­i­ment of the Cana­dian army which had mis­tak­enly stopped the el­derly Sikhs who wanted to de­scend on Cana­dian soil for a bet­ter life af­ter com­plet­ing the dan­ger­ous jour­ney by sea from In­dia on the Ka­m­a­gata Maru. On that day, when he re­ceived the ho­n­ours, af­ter a cen­tury, his­tory came full cir­cle for the Sikhs.  

Way back on 7 Oc­to­ber 1974, speak­ing to the youth of the All Canada Sikh Fed­er­a­tion, Sir­dar Ka­pur Singh -the philoso­pher-politi­cian, Sikh na­tional pro­fes­sor of Sikhism, in his speech, said that the mo­saic-pat­tern of Cana­dian so­ci­ety comes clos­est to the ideals of com­mu­nity liv­ing as en­shrined in Sikh teach­ings and in his pre­cise words, “..while as Cana­dian cit­i­zens, the Sikhs may look for­ward to a hope­ful and bright fu­ture, in In­dia, their his­tor­i­cal home­land, they now face the ba­sic prob­lem of their iden­tity and ex­is­tence, since the con­trol of their own his­tory has been snatched out of their hands and their his­tor­i­cal po­ten­tial has been sub­merged and throt­tled.” How prophetic! How true as the progress of Sikh-Cana­di­ans un­folds be­fore the Sikh world and the world at large! With as many as 21 mem­bers of Pun­jabi her­itage, out of which 18 are Sikhs, at the fed­eral level and many more at the provin­cial level, the Sikhs have never had it so good. Thank you, Canada, and a huge com­pli­ment to all those who made it with grit, de­ter­mi­na­tion and faith.

For some­one like Har­jit Singh Saj­jan and his ilk, there is no con­tra­dic­tion in serv­ing their coun­tries and be­ing sup­port­ers of Sikh na­tion­al­ism, free speech, re­spect­ing dis­sent, if un­der­stood in the right per­spec­tive.   As I un­der­stand, the true in­tent of Sikh na­tion­al­ism goes be­yond the lim­its of a ge­o­graph­i­cal area. Thinkers, politi­cians and the­o­rists want­ing to know the Sikh mind, hon­estly need to un­der­stand that there is no con­tra­dic­tion in be­ing a Sikh na­tion­al­ist and at the same time serv­ing the coun­try which has be­come their home or for that mat­ter serv­ing In­dia too. The re­li­gio-po­lit­i­cal na­ture of Sikhism en­joins upon a Sikh to be true to his faith, true to the dic­tum of the Gu­rus in let­ter and spirit and true to his work -in this case be­ing the pro­tec­tor of the rights of the peo­ple of Canada and de­fender of the in­ter­ests of the coun­try at the high­est level of be­ing the De­fence Min­is­ter.  This trait was ably con­sid­ered and rec­og­nized by Malala Yousufzai-ad­mired dash­ing, dar­ing and hand­some Prime Min­is­ter of Canada -Justin Trudeau who fol­lowed the foot­steps of his fa­ther Pierre Trudeau who cham­pi­oned the cause of equal­ity for all, en­shrined in the Cana­dian Char­ter of Rights and Free­doms which is en­vied by many coun­tries in­clud­ing In­dia who boast equal­ity but pro­vide only se­man­tics.

Trudeau­ma­nia gripped Canada when Pierre Trudeau was elected the fif­teenth Prime Min­is­ter of Canada.  Saj­jan­ma­nia gripped Pun­jab and the Sikhs dur­ing the one week that Saj­jan de­scended on his home­land and the warmth still lingers on. Un­ques­tion­ably there was even more joy than when he and four other Sikh stal­warts were elected to the Cana­dian Par­lia­ment.  The day he was nom­i­nated to take job as the De­fence Min­is­ter of Canada, I could not help but make the com­par­i­son of how Ma­haraja Ran­jit Singh had French and Ital­ian gen­er­als in his army and how a Sikh is to­day lead­ing the army of an­other coun­try!

Har­jit Singh Saj­jan is our mod­ern-day Sant Sipahi -a Saint-sol­dier! I cer­tainly would like to call him so! And you?