Sar­darni In­der­jit Kaur re­cently passed away in Chandi­garh at the ripe age of 99 years. Wife of il­lus­tri­ous sa­vant-scholar Gi­ani Gur­dit Singh, she was a per­son of in­nu­mer­able ca­pac­i­ties and abil­i­ties. On her 98th birth­day on Sep­tem­ber 1, 2021, a Festschrift ho­n­our­ing her life and times was launched vir­tu­ally by Sahit Parkashan, Chandi­garh.  Re­cently, they pub­lished the sec­ond edi­tion of the same. World Sikh News pub­lishes the ed­i­to­r­ial note of her se­nior jour­nal­ist son Roopin­der Singh, which gives a bird’s eye view of her life and also ex­presses grat­i­tude to all those who made her life fruit­ful, mean­ing­ful and joy­ful.

SHE IS A WOMAN EX­TRA­OR­DI­NAIRE. In­der­jit Kaur Sandhu has led a full and ful­fill­ing life. In her jour­ney, she has been a stu­dent, teacher, Prin­ci­pal, Vice-Chan­cel­lor and Chair­per­son, but to my mind, her most es­sen­tial and im­me­di­ate role is that of Mama, as my brother Ravin­der and I called her.

She was the first woman Vice-Chan­cel­lor of a uni­ver­sity in North In­dia, one of the three women VCs in the world in 1975. Staff Se­lec­tion Com­mis­sion, New Delhi, also had her as its first woman chair­per­son. As I spent over six decades watch­ing her nav­i­gate a male-cen­tric world with rare grace and aplomb, I grew to ad­mire her. In this, I am far from alone. Her col­leagues, stu­dents and many oth­ers who came in con­tact with her, of­ten spoke of how their life changed for the bet­ter, at some point or the other, af­ter her in­ter­ven­tion.

The book –An In­spir­ing Jour­ney is a col­lec­tion of the ac­counts of some of her clos­est as­so­ci­ates. I am grate­ful to Mrs Gur­sha­ran Kaur, who has kindly writ­ten the Fore­word. She is al­ways gra­cious; once again, she has been gen­er­ous. Since I lived at home for a sig­nif­i­cant part of my life, many of my friends knew my par­ents well. They, too, have con­tributed ar­ti­cles to this festschrift.

Bibi In­der­jit Kaur flanked by her two sons-Roopin­der Singh and Ravin­der Singh on her 97th birth­day

Mama was ed­u­cated in Pa­tiala and La­hore. Her love for the Pun­jabi lan­guage and cul­ture led her to be in the first batch of stu­dents who earned an MA de­gree in Pun­jabi. She would marry Gi­ani Gur­dit Singh, a lead­ing Pun­jabi jour­nal­ist and au­thor, and be­come Vice-Chan­cel­lor of one of the rare uni­ver­si­ties named af­ter a lan­guage, Pun­jabi Uni­ver­sity, Pa­tiala. It is only fit­ting that a sig­nif­i­cant part of the vol­ume com­prises ar­ti­cles writ­ten in Pun­jabi, which gives them a unique flavour.

An­gad and Ravneet stand be­hind their grand­par­ents. Ravin­der, Mona and Roopin­der bring up the rear.

At 98, she has weath­ered many a cri­sis but kept her in­domitable spirit alive. She has shown re­mark­able for­bear­ance as this book evolved. The jour­ney was chal­leng­ing-de­lays, glitches, loss of data, and above all, my in­abil­ity to de­vote the nec­es­sary chunk of time-all con­tributed to the de­lay in pub­lish­ing the book.

In­vi­ta­tions for con­tri­bu­tions were sent in 2011 and many of the ar­ti­cles were writ­ten soon there­after. They have not been re­vised. Some of the pieces, how­ever, were.  The writ­ers were re­quested to se­lect the lan­guage they wanted to ex­press them­selves in. These have not been re­vised. Some of the pieces, how­ever, were com­mis­sioned re­cently. They all cap­ture the flavour of my moth­er’s life through var­i­ous stages. The book is heav­ily il­lus­trated with pic­tures. They will un­doubt­edly reignite many mem­o­ries among read­ers. Birth­days were sig­nif­i­cant events for the fam­ily, and we have many shots that re­flect the time. I have en­deav­oured to give de­tailed cap­tions, and, in sub­se­quent edi­tions, I will make every en­deav­our to cor­rect them, if nec­es­sary.

Un­for­tu­nately, dur­ing the time it took to pro­duce the book we lost em­i­nent peo­ple who had writ­ten for the book-his­to­rian Pro­fes­sor Kir­pal Singh; for­mer Reg­is­trar, Pun­jabi Uni­ver­sity, Pa­tiala, Tirath Singh; the well-known au­thor, Sahitya Akademi Award-win­ner Dr Dalip Kaur Ti­wana; jour­nal­ist Ni­ran­jan Singh Sathi; and writer-critic Dr Kuldip Singh Dhir.

Cap­tur­ing the essence of In­der­jit Kaur is dif­fi­cult. Do­or­dar­shan Ja­land­har en­deav­oured to do so in its Dhian Pun­jab Dian episode in 2009. The BBC re­cently (Au­gust 2020) fea­tured her in a se­ries of 10 most in­flu­en­tial women in In­dia for a web se­ries that ran in Hindi, Pun­jabi, Gu­jarati, Marathi, Tamil and Tel­ugu. In this vol­ume, we see her through the eyes of those who mat­tered so much to her.

As we look at the ac­com­plished women of to­day, Mamma and I see how well women have done, a far cry from the time when she started her ed­u­ca­tion in Pa­tiala in the 1920s. Even as we cel­e­brate the ac­com­plish­ments of women in fields that did not even ex­ist when my mother started her jour­ney as a pro­fes­sional, I still think that en­sur­ing that her mem­ory stays alive is es­sen­tial. This vol­ume is an en­deav­our in that di­rec­tion.

At the in­au­gu­ra­tion of Sri Guru Granth Sahib Vidya Kendra, Mehrauli, Delhi, Bibi In­der­jit Kaur, Gi­ani Gur­dit Singh Ji and oth­ers

My grate­ful­ness to the con­trib­u­tors knows no bounds. Through their ac­counts, the im­age I had of my mother was greatly en­riched and be­came multi-di­men­sional. They have also shown pa­tience even as the book took a long time to come to fruition. My wife, Jaspreet, gave me the nec­es­sary sup­port and in­puts as the book went along. R M Singh has al­ways risen to the oc­ca­sion to pro­vide cov­ers, and he out­did him­self this time. His sketch por­trait has been widely used and ap­pre­ci­ated.

We launched the book on Sep­tem­ber 1, 2021. The shadow of the Covid pan­demic en­sured that it was a hy­brid event, largely on­line. The speaker at the zoom meet­ing in­cluded Sar­dar Tar­lochan Singh, Ex-MP, Dr Arvind, Vice-chan­cel­lor Pun­jabi Uni­ver­sity Pa­tiala, who brought in a per­sonal note in his ad­dress, as did an­other pre­de­ces­sor, Dr S.S. Boparai IAS, Ex-vice chan­cel­lor of the uni­ver­sity. Dr Nikky Gurinder Kaur Singh, Craw­ford Prof. and Chair of the de­part­ment of re­li­gious stud­ies at Colby Col­lege recorded her mes­sage from main. MI.USA, Dr. Nee­lam Maan Singh Choud­hary, the em­i­nent. The­ater Di­rec­tor, was with us in Chandi­garh, as was Dr Ranjt Powar. The edited launch video is on Face­book st https://​fb.watch/​7N­h2BVvv90/

Bibi In­der­jit Kaur be­ing greeted by her col­leagues af­ter tak­ing over Prin­ci­pal, Gov­ern­ment Col­lege for Women, Pa­tiala

The book and the event re­ceived ex­ten­sive cov­er­age in the med­ical and we ran out of copies of the First Edi­tion. We are now pre­sent­ing the Sec­ond edi­tion. It has a new ar­ti­cle in Pun­jabi, by Prof. Gurinder Singh Mann of the Global In­sti­tute for Sikh Stud­ies, New York. Also in­cluded in this edi­tion is the mes­sage we re­ceived from Cap­tain Amarinder Singh and se­lec­tions from the me­dia cov­er­age. The flip­book ver­sion of the book (http://​fliphtml5.com/​home­page/​bxrmw) has been read ex­ten­sively, point­ing at chang­ing pref­er­ences and needs of the post-pan­demic world.

Birth­day Time: from right to left -Bibi In­der­jit Kaur with Har­cha­ran Kaur, Tejin­der Kaur and stand­ing from right to left -Roopin­der Singh, Jatin­der Singh and Jaspreet 

I am deeply grate­ful to my dear friends who took out the time and went through var­i­ous it­er­a­tions as the book pro­gressed; to the de­sign­ers who gave it a for­mat that evolved; the com­puter spe­cial­ists who sorted out prob­lems that seemed in­sur­mount­able at the time, and the fi­nal pre-press ex­pert who has pre­pared the book for us.

Above all, nat­u­rally, I am grate­ful to God, who gave me par­ents whose mul­ti­fac­eted lives and ac­com­plish­ments are for the world to see. I am so glad that my labour of love, the trib­ute to my mother is res­onat­ing with read­ers.