Sikh leader, All In­dia Sikh Stu­dents Fed­er­a­tion stal­wart, a for­mer min­is­ter of Pun­jab, for­mer Sec­re­tary of SGPC, or­a­tor par ex­cel­lence, ac­tivist and ide­o­logue Man­jit Singh Cal­cutta passes away in Am­rit­sar, end­ing an era which pro­duced Pan­thic lead­ers the kind of which are not eas­ily found nowa­days.

Cur­tains fall on a life ded­i­cated to the Panth span­ning six decades and more with the demise of vet­eran Sikh leader and ide­o­logue Man­jit Singh Cal­cutta. 

Start­ing Sikh pub­lic life as a youth ac­tivist of the All In­dia Sikh Stu­dents Fed­er­a­tion (AISSF), Man­jit Singh Cal­cutta dom­i­nated the Sikh re­li­gio-po­lit­i­cal scene with his ex­cel­lent or­a­tory skills, deep knowl­edge of Sikh his­tory, a com­mit­ment to re­ju­ve­na­tion of the Sikh spirit amongst Sikh youth and a new ori­en­ta­tion to Akali pol­i­tics. Hop­ping from one Gur­mat Train­ing Camp to an­other across the coun­try, he was a very pop­u­lar speaker amongst the Gur­mat Train­ing Camp par­tic­i­pants.

A close as­so­ci­ate of vet­eran Akali leader Gur­cha­ran Singh Tohra, he was the sec­re­tary of the Shi­ro­mani Gur­d­wara Par­band­hak Com­mit­tee for two tenures, dur­ing which pe­riod he made sub­stan­tial con­tri­bu­tion. 

As he had ide­o­log­i­cal clar­ity, he of­ten courted con­tro­versy as the es­tab­lished Sikh lead­er­ship and the me­dia found it dif­fi­cult to com­pre­hend and di­gest his views.

He was a dear friend of all AISSF stal­warts and was known as a lov­ing fed­er­a­tionist.  Sur­jit Singh Min­has, Dr. San­tokh Singh, Makhan Singh and late Prof. Dalip Singh were his dear­est col­leagues.  A fam­ily friend of Paramjit Singh Sar­nas, he was om­nipresent in his sup­port dur­ing any Delhi poll. 

Never to mince words, he stuck to a Pan­thic view point in the face of di­ver­gent views. A staunch critic of the Badal Dal and es­pe­cially of the Badal fam­ily, he tried to do every­thing to dis­lodge Badals from power within the SGPC and the Pun­jab gov­ern­ment, par­tic­u­larly af­ter the Dal re­lin­quished the Pan­thic agenda. In his en­thu­si­asm to dis­lodge the Badals, he would go to the ex­tent of sup­port­ing the Con­gress dur­ing polls. He was once a min­is­ter in the Badal cab­i­net.

He was a strong de­fen­dant of the orig­i­nal Nanakshahi cal­en­dar and would strongly crit­i­cise the Akal Takht Jathedar and oth­ers who had di­luted the cal­en­dar and changed its course back to Bikrami.

This writer has had affin­ity with him and in re­cent years had spent hours dis­cussing the case of the Sikh na­tion.  As a stu­dent par­tic­i­pant, I had the priv­i­lege to lis­ten to his lec­tures on Sikhism, dur­ing Gur­mat Train­ing camps. His words, his im­mac­u­late de­liv­ery and his mas­tery of facts ring in my ears and those of hun­dreds of oth­ers who had the op­por­tu­nity to lis­ten to him.

I spoke to him some three weeks back, prior to his hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tion, re­gard­ing SGPC af­fairs and he said, “No one is lis­ten­ing. A new re­li­gio-po­lit­i­cal rev­o­lu­tion is re­quired for course cor­rec­tion, up­heaval and Chardikala of the Sikh na­tion.” He wanted me to come to Am­rit­sar to dis­cuss mea­sures that could be taken to put Sikhs on course. Alas! It was not to be.

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May Akalpu­rakh Shower His Choic­est bless­ings!