Rec­og­niz­ing the im­por­tance of the oc­ca­sion and to demon­strate our work, skill and ex­per­tise the Pan­jab Dig­i­tal Li­brary, at the call of the Bi­har gov­ern­ment hosted the Em­peror-Prophet Ex­hi­bi­tion com­mem­o­rat­ing the 350th birth an­niver­sary of Guru Gob­ind Singh Sahib.

Weav­ing all the writ­ings with man­u­scripts, paint­ings, ar­ti­facts, pic­tures of be­long­ings, his­tor­i­cal places, and other para­pher­na­lia such as coins, with multi-lin­gual texts in Eng­lish, Pan­jabi and Hindi, Em­peror Prophet Guru Gob­ind Singh Sahib ex­hi­bi­tion was in­au­gu­rated on 30th De­cem­ber by Bi­har Min­is­ter of Art and cul­ture Shri Shiv Chan­der Ram. With un­lim­ited faith and a lim­ited team of Inni Kaur for po­etry and aes­thet­ics, Harinder Singh for re­search and lin­guis­tics, Dalveer Singh and Taran­pal Singh for de­sign and lay­out, in the abound­ing faith of the Om­nipres­ence of Guru Sahib, the ex­hi­bi­tion was pre­sented be­fore a di­verse au­di­ence of Sikhs and non-Sikhs, Pan­jabis and non-Pan­jabis.Not be­ing bound by chrono­log­i­cal his­tor­i­cal events, pop­u­lar philo­soph­i­cal in­sights, stan­dards of art or aes­thet­ics, or con­tem­po­rary psy­chol­ogy, the ex­hi­bi­tion looked be­yond in­tel­lec­tual and mys­ti­cal ex­pla­na­tion of the Gu­ru’s life.

The team worked on three sources: Guru Granth Sahib, con­tem­po­rary writ­ings, and peo­ple who ac­tu­ally un­der­stood the Guru. The quo­ta­tions  ranged from those of Bhai Nand Lal Goy­a’s di­vine vi­bra­tions in Zindg­i­nama, Joti Bi­gas, and Gan­j­nama – orig­i­nally all writ­ten in Per­sian as well as Rahit­nama and Tankhah­nama – both writ­ten in Pan­jabi.Writ­ings of Bhai Vir Singh, Babu Firozdin Sharaf, Pu­ran Singh, Chan­der Sain Sena­p­ati, Bhai Ji­van Singh Jaita and Al­lah Yaar Khan Jogi and many more were se­lected to pro­vide con­text and con­ti­nu­ity.

Close to 100,000 peo­ple, mostly non-Sikhs, vis­ited in the first five days, watch­ing the ex­hibits with awe, ea­ger­ness and un­bi­ased de­vo­tion. When I told one of the cu­ra­tors of the Bi­har Mu­seum that the peo­ple of Bi­har do not know much about Guru Gob­ind Singh, she quipped, “so is the case with the Sikhs too!” Dur­ing the course of the ex­hi­bi­tion, I re­al­ized, she was right!

By the time we com­pleted, it was over 60 min­utes. But he was not in any hurry; he spent an­other 20 min­utes out­side the ex­hi­bi­tion hall where we had dis­played pic­tures of about 60 Gur­d­waras from across the world.

He was look­ing for pic­ture of Dera Sahib, La­hore where he had vis­ited once. Later he re­leased a book Guru Gob­ind Singh Sahib and Sikhism in Bi­har. He gra­ciously signed and pre­sented the first copy to me.

Pan­jab Dig­i­tal Li­brary has been do­ing ex­hi­bi­tions across the world but the Bi­haris sur­prised us! All the peo­ple we met, be at the ex­hi­bi­tion, on the road or any­where else, we felt we met those peo­ple whose fore­fa­thers and fore­moth­ers had seen the Em­peror-Prophet and served the Guru Sahib. We met peo­ple who were thanked by Guru Tegh­ba­hadar Sahib for tak­ing care of Gob­ind Rai!

Thank you, Bi­har!

Davin­der Pal Singh,
The au­thor is co-founder and Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor of Pan­jab Dig­i­tal Li­brary