As Aus­tralia opens its heart to Sikhs, amidst mem­bers of Par­lia­ment, with par­tic­i­pa­tion of var­i­ous Sikh bod­ies, Sikh schol­ars from across the globe and ac­tivists from Aus­tralia, the Aus­tralian Fed­eral Par­lia­ment re­ver­ber­ated with the Shabads of Guru Nanak sung on Sikh mu­si­cal in­stru­ments and shared His uni­ver­sal mes­sage on the oc­ca­sion of the 550^th birth an­niver­sary cel­e­bra­tions of the founder of Sikh faith, beau­ti­fully or­gan­ised in Sikh style and tra­di­tion by the Aus­tralian Sikh Coun­cil in the evening of 22 Oc­to­ber. 

THE FIRST-EVER IN­VESTI­TURE OF GURU GRANTH SAHIB –the Holy Scrip­ture and the eter­nal Guru of the Sikhs at the Aus­tralian Par­lia­ment House, with scores of Sikhs and friends of Sikhs was a his­toric oc­ca­sion which will be re­mem­bered for years to come by the Sikh com­mu­nity, not only in Aus­tralia but across the Sikh world.

Set­ting the tone for the evening, Sikh mu­sic vo­cal­ist Bi­mal Singh of the Gur­mat Sangeet Acad­emy Mel­bourne per­formed a beau­ti­ful melody of tra­di­tional Sikh mu­sic on clas­si­cal in­stru­ments Taus and Rabab with Dayabir Singh and Him­mat Singh join­ing him to play Shabads of Guru Nanak from Guru Granth Sahib, en­thralling the au­di­ence.

Dwelling on the need for a 1Force-1Ness par­a­digm for life as cre­ated by Guru Nanak to ad­dress the is­sues of po­lit­i­cal paral­y­sis, so­cial jus­tice, and ris­ing ex­trem­ism, keynote speaker Harinder Singh, of US-based Sikh Re­search In­sti­tute said, ‘Guru Nanak pro­claims the biggest weapon you can carry with you is knowl­edge,’  In the same vein he ap­plauded Aus­tralia for its Nu­mero Uno rank­ing in the United Na­tions Ed­u­ca­tion In­dex and em­pha­sized how it sets an ex­am­ple for Sikhs and other coun­tries to fol­low.

The leader of the La­bor party An­thony Al­banese said that ‘Sikh val­ues are La­bor val­ues.’ Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans Adam Bandt, War­ren Entsch and Bob Kat­ter shared per­sonal anec­dotes from their in­ter­ac­tion with mem­bers of the Sikh com­mu­nity and all seemed thrilled to be in the com­pany of Sikhs. They were par­tic­u­larly im­pressed by the con­tri­bu­tion of Sikhs to Aus­tralian so­ci­ety and were en­am­oured of the Sikh val­ues of free­dom, equal­ity, com­pas­sion and hard work.

Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans AM Ben Mor­ton, Ju­lian Leeser, Tanya Plibersek, Chris Bowen, Ju­lian Hill, Tim Watts, Tony Zap­pia, Anne Aly, Joanne Ryan, Dean Smith and oth­ers also joined the Sikhs in the cel­e­bra­tions.

Trac­ing the his­tory and con­tri­bu­tion of Sikhs in Aus­tralia, Tarun­preet Singh of Aus­tralian Sikh Her­itage cov­ered the 180 years of Sikh pres­ence through his im­mac­u­late pre­sen­ta­tion.

“Guru Nanak’s rev­o­lu­tion­ary and pro­gres­sive ideas of gen­der equal­ity and wom­en’s em­pow­er­ment were way ahead of the times,” said Jatin­der Kaur, Di­rec­tor of JK Di­ver­sity Con­sul­tants.

The Aus­tralian Sikh Coun­cil, which ini­ti­ated this pro­gram ex­pressed grat­i­tude to Akalpu­rakh for the un­prece­dented pub­lic and po­lit­i­cal out­reach made pos­si­ble through this func­tion and have an­nounced its com­mit­ment to con­tinue its Sikh ad­vo­cacy work across Aus­tralia which has wit­nessed a huge growth of Sikh pop­u­la­tion in the last decade and is now the third des­ti­na­tion for Sikhs, af­ter US and Canada.