When Bha­gat Pu­ran  Singh biopic –Eh Janam Tumhare Lekhe was screened at the Re­vival of Sikhi sem­i­nar of the In­ter­na­tional Sikh Con­fer­ence in Jakarta early this month, the young and old learnt about the sem­i­nal work of the leg­endary ac­tivist.

Feel­ings of love, emo­tion, re­mem­brance and re­spect rent the air when Bha­gat Pu­ran Singh biopic –Eh Janam Tumhare Lekhe was screened at the Re­vival of Sikhi sem­i­nar of the In­ter­na­tional Sikh Con­fer­ence in Jakarta early this month. 

Nos­tal­gic feel­ings are para­mount amongst Di­as­pora Sikhs when­ever they meet a Sikh from home­land Pun­jab and it is fur­ther more so when the 1947 gen­er­a­tion gets an op­por­tu­nity to live through their old life through in­ter­ac­tion with peo­ple of their age or see a doc­u­men­tary or movie of those times.  

The well-made docu-movie is a trib­ute to the dif­fi­cult path trav­elled by Bha­gat Pu­ran Singh serv­ing hu­man­ity with­out any dis­tinc­tion of caste, creed, re­li­gion and gen­der. The movie mak­ers de­scribe the Bhai Ghanaiya of our times as “Bha­gat Pu­ran Singh, a hum­ble and sim­ple man, chooses a life full of dif­fi­cul­ties in or­der to self­lessly serve hu­man­ity and later be­comes a great writer, en­vi­ron­men­tal­ist and phil­an­thropist.”

Screened in Pun­jabi with Eng­lish sub­ti­tles, the young and the old were aghast at the hu­man­i­tar­ian work done by Bha­gat Pu­ran Singh. The young­sters vowed that when­ever they get an op­por­tu­nity to visit Am­rit­sar, they will visit Dar­bar Sahib as well as Pin­gal­wara.

“Bha­gat Pu­ran Singh was a hum­ble and sim­ple man, who chose a life full of dif­fi­cul­ties in or­der to self­lessly serve hu­man­ity and who later be­comes a great writer, en­vi­ron­men­tal­ist and phil­an­thropist.”

Sig­nif­i­cantly, in awe and a lit­tle pain, the el­derly in the au­di­ence shrieked when the mass mi­gra­tion scenes of Sikhs mov­ing from West Pun­jab (now in Pak­istan) to East Pun­jab (the In­dian Pun­jab) were beamed in the serene at­mos­phere of the Gur­d­wara Sahib in Jakarta. In tears, ladies wanted to have re­peat screen­ing for a wider au­di­ence in Medan and other parts of In­done­sia.

 If you like our sto­ries, do fol­low WSN on Face­book.