Launch of SNSM Global Sikhs – Punjabi Flood Disaster Relief Fund at GS Sentul – Photo: Supplied
By Asia Samachar Team | MALAYSIA |
A Malaysian Sikh organisation has kick-started efforts to assist the Punjab flood victims, joining the Sikh communities from around the world who are doing likewise.
Sikh Naujawan Sabha Malaysia (SNSM) has launched a relief fund to assist victims as flooding has affected some 600 villages in Punjab, India. It also plans to dispatch a small team of volunteers to Punjab.
“It has always been a challenge on how the funds will be channeled and to whom. In view of this, SNSM has decided to adopt a village or two which are in dire need of funds and will personally deliver to the relevant parties in the villages,” SNSM jathedar Dr Jasbir Singh said in an appeal letter.
The SNSM Global Sikhs – Punjabi Flood Disaster Relief Fund was set up in the aftermath of flood water rising up to six feet and destroying everything from homes to livelihood.
“There is no scarcity of food, medicine or clothing but many are in dire need of money to rebuild their homes and to sustain their daily living,” he said.
A number of Sikh organisations, gurdwaras and individuals came forward with cash donations towards the fund at an event at Gurdwara Sahib Sentul in Kuala Lumpur on Wednesday (28 Aug).
ASIA SAMACHAR is an online newspaper for Sikhs / Punjabis in Southeast Asia and beyond.Facebook | WhatsApp +6017-335-1399 | Email: editor@asiasamachar.com | Twitter | Instagram | Obituary announcements, click here |
Portsmouth Sikhs are all set to plant trees as the UK community prepares to celebrate Guru Nanak’s 550th birthday celebrated in November.
They will plant 550 trees on the A27 flyover roundabout at the top of Eastern Road this autumn, joining a movement inspired by US-based EcoSikh to plant 1 million trees to mark the major Sikh religious marker.
“And the group EcoSikh is aiming to plant a million trees this year in 1,820 locations. We thought it would be a good idea for us to also plant 550 trees,’ CS Chadha, the education officer for the Punjabi Educational Social Cultural and Religious Organisation in Portsmouth, told Portsmouth News.
“We felt that this area of very dense traffic so it would also benefit from this to improve air quality and pollution management.”
The trees planted will be a mix of hawthorn, dogwood, wild cherry, silver birch, rowan and hazel.
On 25 Aug, Sikhs in Myanmar planted 550 tree saplings near a famous Buddhist temple in Nay Pyi Daw. Sikh communities globally have taken up tree planting as part of their celebration of Guru Nanak’s upcoming 550th birthday.
‘Read full story, ‘More than 500 trees to be planted on a Portsmouth roundabout to mark an important Sikh event’, here.
ASIA SAMACHAR is an online newspaper for Sikhs / Punjabis in Southeast Asia and beyond.Facebook | WhatsApp +6017-335-1399 | Email: editor@asiasamachar.com | Twitter | Instagram | Obituary announcements, click here |
PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT | MALAYSIA | SCHOLARSHIP |
Good news for Malaysian Indians from the B40 category to pursue a fully sponsored course of study after SPM. Monthly allowance will be given throughout the course.
Malaysian Indian Transformation Unit (Mitra), together with The Tun Hussein Onn National Eye Hospital (THONEH), have agreed to sponsor 30 Indians under the B40 category, to be enrolled in the Ophthalmic Technician. It is a two-year programme.
Registration ends on 13 September 2019.
Contact person: Mr Nadarajah (Lecturer, National Institute of Ophthalmic Sciences, the academic arm of THONEH). HP: 017 980 1107. Email: nadaeye@gmail.com
NOTE:Asia Samachar has confirmed the validity of the announcement. But you are advised to do your own checks before taking any further steps.
ASIA SAMACHAR is an online newspaper for Sikhs / Punjabis in Southeast Asia and beyond.Facebook | WhatsApp +6017-335-1399 | Email: editor@asiasamachar.com | Twitter | Instagram | Obituary announcements, click here |
Gobind Singh Deo (left) holding a poster for the Gurmukhi road signage proposal. With him is Mahinder Singh Dulku – Photo: Buletin Mutiara
By Asia Samachar Team | MALAYSIA |
Malaysia may finally have a road sign sign in Gurmukhi, the official script of the Punjabi language on the Indian side of Punjab. And Penang is about to lead the way.
Penang state executive councillor Jagdeep Singh Deo has proposed that Gurmukhi characters be included on the Jalan Gurdwara road signage.
Jagdeep, who is the state local government, housing, town and country planning committee chairman, said the road would be most suitable place in Penang to have a signage in Gurmukhi characters as the oldest Sikh Gurdwara in the state is located there.
“In Penang, we embrace diversity and when we took over the government in 2008, we made a decision to identify certain road names in Penang to be not only written in Bahasa Malaysia but also in other languages,” he told a press conference yesterday (27 Aug 2019), reports Buletin Mutiara.
“To date, some 40 roads in Penang, which had been identified, have multilingual signages. They comprise 57 road signages in Chinese, 12 in Tamil and 21 in Jawi characters.
“I hope that the state government will support and approve my request on behalf of the Sikh community in Penang. If this happens, then Penang will be having its first road name written in the Gurmukhi characters.”
There a number of Jalan Gurdwara around the nation, including in Ipoh. Bentong,a Pahang town about 60km from Kuala Lumpur, got the road name last year.
Wadda Gurdwara Sahib’s Conservation and Restoration Committee chairman Mahinder Singh Dulku commended Jagdeep for his proposal and said it was very significant to the Sikh community.
“I hope the Penang mayor (Datuk Yew Tung Seang) will give his full support to the appeal by YB Jagdeep. It is apt that the ‘Jalan Gurdwara’ is written in Gurmukhi so as to identify the contribution of the Sikhs in the country.
“This is will be the first in history where the Gurmukhi letters will be displayed at the streets of Penang,” the report quoted said Mahinder.
ASIA SAMACHAR is an online newspaper for Sikhs / Punjabis in Southeast Asia and beyond.Facebook | WhatsApp +6017-335-1399 | Email: editor@asiasamachar.com | Twitter | Instagram | Obituary announcements, click here |
One wonders whether the Indian Government has considered the military implications of the retention of Kashmir in India. With half or more of the population hostile, it would have to maintain an army of occupation. – British civil servant, William Barton, 1949
The state of Jammu and Kashmir (and Ladakh) has been stripped of its special status enshrined to Articles 370 and 35A of the Indian Constitution. The Kashmiri people were completely cut out and not consulted in the process. The state is now like any other Indian state controlled by Delhi.
As I watched the legislative proceedings in the Indian Parliament and the celebrations in the country that followed, I was reminded of what William Barton wrote in 1949. This mountainous part of the Indian subcontinent is now the most militarised zone in the world with three nuclear powers, India, Pakistan and China surrounding it. Indian states around this area, including Punjab, no longer feel safe. However, it can be argued that, militarily, not much has changed.
The historical background is that the Anglo-Sikh Treaty of Lahore in 1846 gave the kingdom of Jammu and Kashmir to the Dogra Gulab Singh in return for his betrayal of the Khalsa Raj. The last Maharaja of the Dogra dynasty, Hari Singh, handed over the region regardless of the Muslim majority to India on 26 October 1947. In 1949, William Barton (quoted above) wrote about Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) activities in Jammu and Kashmir and the wholesale expulsion of Moslems from the Jammu province.
In 1952, the founder and president of Bhartiya Jan Sangh, Syama Prasad Mukherjee, announced his commitment to the annexation of Jammu and Kashmir. In August 2019, with the annexation of Jammu and Kashmir, the longstanding dream of Bhartiya Jan Sangh, RSS/BJP has been realised. The danger is that this dream can rapidly turn out to be a worse nightmare than before.
The Kashmiri separatist movement against Indian rule has been growing for over 30 years. Demographically, in 1941, nearly 80 percent of the population of the state of Jammu and Kashmir was Muslim. Today, of the14.5 million population of Indian Jammu and Kashmir, 68.3% are Muslims, 28.4% Hindus, 1.9% Sikh and 0.9% Buddhists in addition so hill tribes.
The BJP-led Indian Government believes that by stripping the state of autonomy after 70 years, a historical blunder has been corrected. That a long term objective of the Sangh Parivar has been achieved. The government says that the absorption of Kashmir into Indian will bring development to the region.
In the meantime, National Conference President Farooq Abdullah has told the Indian Government that fiddling with the special status of Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh is unconstitutional and de-limitation and trifurcation of the state would be aggression against people of the state.
This means that by this move India has antagonised even moderate Kashmiri Muslims who, otherwise, would have either preferred to stay with India or asked for an independent state. This military occupation will continue to drain Indian military and economic resources at an increasing rate, stunt the growth of the region while the nuclear threat continues to hang over the whole region. The impression gained by impartial observers is that this has been a strategically bad move by India.
Gurmukh Singh OBE, a retired UK senior civil servant, chairs the Advisory Board of The Sikh Missionary Society UK. Email: sewauk2005@yahoo.co.uk. The article first appeared at The Panjab Times, UK. See here.
* This is the opinion of the writer, organisation or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Asia Samachar.
ASIA SAMACHAR is an online newspaper for Sikhs / Punjabis in Southeast Asia and beyond.Facebook | WhatsApp +6017-335-1399 | Email: editor@asiasamachar.com | Twitter | Instagram | Obituary announcements, click here |
Path Da Bhog: 31 August 2019 (Saturday), 7am-12pm, at Wadda Gurdwara Penang
Please treat this as a personal invitation.
Contact: Shamsher Singh 012 4035515
Papa,
“In life, we loved you dearly, in death we love you still. In our hearts, you hold a place, no one else will fill”
| Entry: 28 Aug 2019 | Source: Family
[ASIA SAMACHAR is an online newspaper for Sikhs / Punjabis in Asia. How to reach us: Facebook message or WhatsApp +6017-335-1399. Our email: editor@asiasamachar.com. For obituary announcements, click here]
What better way than painting the earth green to celebrate Guru Nanak’s 550th birthday.
Myanmar Sikhs planted 550 tree saplings near a famous Buddhist temple in Nay Pyi Daw, yesterday (25 Aug 2019).
Three Myanmar union ministers attended the event to celebrate 550th birthday of Guru Nanak, the founder of the Sikh faith.
“The government had allocated a land beside the famous Mahar Bodi Temple. Sikh will be coming all over Myanmar,” an organiser told Asia Samachar.
At the same event, the Sikh community donated 5.5millon Kyats to Thatta Thattaha Maha Bawdi Pagoda May Pwy Taw and the same amount to the victims of the recent flooding.
The donations were received by Minister of Religious Affairs Thura U Aung Ko and Minister for Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement minister Dr Wim Myat Aye, respectively.
Also present was Forestry Minister U Owm Wim.
The Indian embassy to Myanmar was represented by its ambassador Saurabh Kumar and navy attache Capt Manmeet Singh.
This is one of the bigger events outlined to celebrate the major milestone in the Sikh calendar.
All Myanmar Sikh Religious Councilsecretary Bhupinder Singh also spoke at the event.
Friends and family gathered for a teary farewell before his cremation on Saturday – Photo: Today. Right: Profile photo from Amritpal’s Facebook pageAmitpal Singh Bajaj and wife Bandhna Kaur Bajaj and their son Veer Singh – Photo: Supplied by family
By Ng Jun Sen | TODAY | SINGAPORE |
SINGAPORE — Days after her husband Amitpal Singh Bajaj, 34, died following an early morning altercation in Phuket with a Norwegian man in their hotel room, Ms Bandhna Kaur Bajaj is still reliving the horror of the traumatic incident.
“Since I came back (from Thailand), every morning I would get startled when it gets noisy outside the house, and my son will grip my hand tighter, because we are so afraid that someone will break in and hurt us,” said Ms Bandhna, 34, to TODAY in an interview on Saturday (Aug 24) at her Katong home.
Her husband, a British national who worked as an app developer, was cremated at Mandai Crematorium on Saturday. More than 100 relatives and friends turned up at their home to sing hymns in a teary farewell.
Friends from Britain and India turned up as well to pay their last respects to the man who was known in the international Sikh community as a singer of devotional Sikh hymns.
The fatal fight at the five-star Centara Grand Hotel between Amitpal and Norwegian Roger Bullman, 54, who stayed in an adjacent room, came about in the wee hours of the morning on Wednesday.
As for her plans, all she hopes for now is to be able to heal and support her son as a single mother, though she believes it would not be possible to fill the void left behind by Amitpal.
“Everybody — my brother, my cousins, my father — has told me that they will be like father figures to Veer. But no matter how much love they give him, they can’t replace him.”
Describing how her late husband would sing hymns to Veer daily to help him sleep, she said her son now has difficulty sleeping, looking around the room for his “dada”.
“A mother can do so much for her son, but a father’s love is different. If there is a Father’s Day in future, how will he feel? That is the space that I cannot ever fill,” she said.
Read full story, ‘S’porean woman hopes truth will come to light, as friends and family pay last respects to husband killed in Phuket fight’ (Today, 24 Aug 2019), here.
