>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, DC ^M00:00:03 ^M00:00:16 >> Jonathan Loar: All right, hello, everybody, welcome to today's lecture. I want to thank everyone for coming out. My name is Jonathan Loar, and I'm the South Asian reference librarian here in the Asian Division of the Library of Congress. And I just wanted to thank everybody for coming out. What we have is a fantastic lecture today, "The Sikh Legacy in Pakistan", by author Amardeep Singh. Today's talk is presented by the Asian Division of the Library of Congress, and the National Sikh Campaign. At the outset I'd like to first extend my thanks to Dr. Rajwant Singh of the National Sikh Campaign, for putting me in touch with Amardeep, and for also helping to promote today's event. Please be advised that today's program will be recorded, and later released as a webcast. So please turn off or silence your mobile phones and other devices. Also, please be advised that any questions you may ask at the end of the program will be recorded, and that the act of asking the question constitutes permission for us to record and broadcast later as a webcast. As a reminder, there will be time for questions after the talk. And we ask that you ask, you know, short questions about topics relevant to the presentation, as opposed to extended comments. Before we get started, I'd like to invite Dr. Qi Qiu, the Asian Division's head of Scholarly Services just to say a few words about the Asian Division and the Asian Reading Room at the Library of Congress. Dr. Qiu. ^M00:01:45 ^M00:01:54 >> Dr. Qi Qiu: Thank you, Jonathan. On behalf of the Asian Division, welcome to this afternoon's event. So if you are familiar with the Library of Congress or its Asian collections, you probably will know that here at the Library, the Asian Division operat, both physical and digital collections in Asian languages, and get research assistance from our subject specialists. The Asian Division was formerly founded in 1928 as the Division of Chinese Literature. So this year actually marks the 90th anniversary of the Asian Division. Even though it was named the "Division of Chinese Literature" when it was founded, it started collecting Chinese and Japanese materials, and received Mongolian and Tibetan materials as gifts in the late 19th century. So from the earliest, the gift of presentation to the United States by the emperor of China, the collections of the Asian Division have grown to represent one of the most comprehensive collections of the Asian languages in the world. That is more than four million physical items. So these items are in more than 130 languages, and include most subject fields, covering in the area ranging from the South Asian subcontinent, to Southeast Asia, to East Asia. So in the next few minutes, Dr. Loar will give a more detailed introduction of our South Asian collections. So users can access our collections at the Asian Reading Room, which is located in the Thomas Jefferson Building across the Independence Avenue on the fourth floor, room 150. So our reading room opens Monday to Friday from 8:30 to 5:00 p.m. So anyone who is 16 years or older can come to use the Library reading rooms. All you need to do is bring a photo ID and get a reader registration card. The registration card location is also on the first floor of the Jefferson Building. And of course, it's always a good idea to consult Library catalog and Asian Reading Room website before you come to the Library so that you can identify the materials that you will be looking at, and make better use of your time at the Library. So in addition to general books, we also have special collections and rare books in many Asian languages, and users need to make appointments with our librarians to use the rare items. And you can request appointments, request materials, and send research questions on the Asian Reading Room website at the link marked "ask librarian" [phonetic]. So "ask a librarian" is an important phrase for you to remember. And also, we subscribe to many electronic resources in Asian studies, and users can access them anywhere in the Library's campus. All this information will be included in the brochure available here. And we hope that it will not be your last trip to the Library of Congress, and we hope to see you again in our reading room at the Library. Thank you. ^M00:05:25 [Applause] ^M00:05:28 [ Background Sounds ] ^M00:05:35 >> Jonathan Loar: Thank you, Dr. Qiu. And in similar fashion, I'd like to give you the briefest of brief overviews of the South Asian collection that we have here at the Library of Congress. The South Asian collection, of course, contains materials from Ba, and over 68,000 titles on microphage. We have substantial holdings in many languages, including Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Tamil, Gugurati [phonetic], Punjabi, Telagus, Indian, Nepali, Rajistani [phonetic], and many more. For example, we have about 13,000 books on Punjabi alone. Much of the acquisition comes from our two overseas offices, one in New Delhi, established in 1962, and the other in Islamabad, established in 1965. Overall, the South Asian collection provides broad research coverage in most fields and disciplines, especially vernacular languages and literature, religion, philosophy, politics, history, and sociology. The collection is also very strong with regard to newspapers, journals, and government publications from South Asia. All of these materials -- and you'll see some examples here in the slide behind me, all of these materials are just like today's lecture, free and open to the public. To request materials from our collections, all you need is your reader registration card. But in the meantime, you can browse our collections with the online catalog at catalog.loc.gov and you can even limit your search by langBuilding, room 150, where you can access all of our materials in these South Asian languages. You can learn more about the South Asian collection on the website of the Asian Reading Room, and we also invite you to check out the Library of Congress Four Corners of the World blog, and International Collections Facebook page, both of which contain information on special items in our collections, as well as info on upcoming events and lectures, like today's lecture. Now I'd like to invite Dr. Rajwant Singh to say a few words, and to introduce today's speaker. Dr. Singh is cofounder of the National Sikh Campaign, president of Eco Sikh, and secretary of the Guru Gobind Singh Foundation in Rockville, Maryland, to name only a few of the organizations in which he serves. Please welcome Dr. Rajwant Singh. ^M00:08:08 [ Applause ] ^M00:08:14 [ Background Sounds ] ^M00:08:19 >> Dr. Rajwant Singh: Thank you, Jonathan, for this warm welcome. And we are extremely thrilled and excited to be here, and are trying to take the advantage of Amardeep's being here and enlightening us about this wonderful and very valuable treasure that our community has, but still not yet discovered. So we are very much thankful to the Library of Congress here and the Asian Division. And I had no knowledge that you have four million books on ancient languages, and 130 different languages from the Asian region. And this is something which we will want our kids and children of our community to be exposed to, and hopefully will develop some working relationship with the Asian Division here. And we are also very delighted to hear that there's 30,000 Punjabi books, which is an amazing collection that we should be taking advantage of. And so as we are moving towards the 550th anniversary of the birth of Gurnanik [phonetic] next year, hopefully we'll be planning some events with the Asian Division, hopefully in the next year. And so I want to thank, once again, Jonathan for working hard and really putting this thing together. And hopefully, we will continue this relationship. And I want to thank the chief of the Asian Division, Dr. Shao, for being here and, you know, opening the doors of the Library for our community, and for this lecture. And Amardeep has really done an amazing job of exposing all of us to something that we had no idea. And in his lecture, he will definitely give us a glimpse of the immense treasure that the community has left in Pakistan over 70 years, and really focused on restoring some of the most important religious shrines, but for Amardeep to really open up -- open our eyes to the legacy of the Sikh empire [inaudible] and all the warriors and the wonderful relationships that these warriors, and these kings, and the administrators had built with the local population in Pakistan and the northwest front. So that is -- really has excited the community throughout the world, and especially the Washington area. We have had two opportunities for him to speak at different [inaudible], and there are a lot of young people who are becoming interested in knowing more about this. And our hope is that from this phase, we go to the next phase of really preserving these monuments, and this work of art and work of history that we can keep this alive for coming generations. So Amardeep has -- was born in Goa Port [phonetic], India and has lived in India, Hong Kong, and Singapore, and has been educated at the Dunes School. And he pursued his electronics engineering at Manipal Institute of Technology, and masters in business administration at the University of Chicago. And while he was working for American Express, certainly, he developed this passion, which he has -- you know, he had the passion in photography, but now from the last three and a half years, he has dedicated his life to really working on the Sikh legacy in Pakistan. And he's written these two wonderful books. And those of who have not yet gotten them, we will be able to acquire them for you. Please give your name or contact information to myself. We can get them available to you. So we really want to -- on behalf of the community, we want to thank Amardeep for is wonderful wife is with us. Would you please stand up and be recognized? Please welcome her. [Applause] Amardeep would not have accomplished what he has done in the last three or four years without the support of his wonderful wife. So Amardeep, once again, thank you so much. And on behalf of the community, we welcome you. Please, we are here to listen to you. Thank you. ^M00:13:38 [ Applause ] ^M00:13:43 [ Background Sounds ] ^M00:14:00 >> Dr. Amardeep Singh: Thank you to the Asian Division of the Library of Congress, and to the National Sikh Campaign for having created this platform to allow me to share some of the insights from my two books, the one which is -- you're seeing on the screen, which is the first book on your right-hand side of the screen, which is "The Lost Heritage of the Sikh Legacy in Pakistan," and the second book, which is called "The Quest Continues: Lost Heritage of the Sikh Legacy in Pakistan". Both these books are a culmination -- in the short way I can say of a journey that I started in 2014 when I stepped into Pakistan for the first time. And it's taken me about three and a half years to document the remnants, both tangible and intangible, across Pakistan in 126 cities and villages. But actually, in true sense, I don't think this would have been possible in such a short span of time had I not unknowingly been preparing myself for the day the divine would choose me to step into the country and himself start showing me the places through a strange energy that was engulfing me. And connecting me to people which allowed me to kind of experience what I have experienced and written and chosen to write in these two books. Because I think these books are going to be a valuable work for posterity, because in seven decades, we've not had another publication as I see, and that's the reason why I decided when I went to Pakistan that I need to dedicate my few years of my life into documenting this what I had seen, because there are people who have deep pockets, they can serve through wealth. There are people who can serve through time. And I choose to serve through my time and my own research that I've done. So in many ways, the lot of opportunities that you give up when you take up such works, it's a career that I've sacrificed, but I'm glad that I've done it because it's a part that has not been credited [phonetic] on by anyone for seven decades. And a lot of people ask me how challenging this work has been, and I want to start with that itself, that, you know, challenges are abound. Multitudes of challenges have come on my way. But the sense is that works like these if they were easy, then theoretically you should be having many, many more publications like these available in the market. So if you take a monument like Taj Mahal, I mean, there are more than 10,000 books available. So why is it that for the Sikh legacy in Pakistan there are no more books available? And therein lies the answer to the question as to how challenging it is. It is not a bed of roses, but yet some strange energy has created the path for me. And for this, I want to thank the people of Pakistan, because they embraced me. I was simply a man with a passionate desire to understand something about our past, our roots. But if they wouldn't have embraced me, unknown people, the work would not have happened. I also want to thank the Pakistan government. We were hoping someone from the embassy would have been here today, but unfortunately they are not here. But I take it a point to actually thank them because it's my forefathers who left their heritage and the lands where they had churned [phonetic] it for years and centuries and they've left it in their custody. I think the Pakistan government from the unfortunate circumstances that developed in 1947 where the two nations got divided based on religious tug-of-war, a civil war that happened, and communities got uprooted from both sides. Ten million people moved in 1947; one million people died. But yet in seven decades, I think the government has started embracing these various footprints that are there. The heritage is too large to be embraced in totality. Much of it is lost. But even an effort that embraces a small magnitude of it, I think it's a step in the right direction. It's a change which can take a different form through publications like these as we create awareness around the world. Hopefully, a bigger change can happen. But I want to thank the Pakistan government for whatever they have embraced. It's small, but it's a good start. I want to thank them also for having embraced me and my pursuit for the creation of the second book, because the areas that I've gone in the second publication, the quest continues [inaudible] in Pakistan. I see very, very remote areas, and some of the [inaudible] and the areas in the Pakistan army controlled areas would not have been actually ever possible to experience had they not embraced me and open the gates. So for that, I want to thank them also. Now, before I start, I just want to actually put down a few -- I want to show you a small video here. Sorry; a small video here of me on the field, and then I'll get down to the -- ^M00:19:10 [ Music ] ^M00:19:16 [ Music and Foreign Language ] ^M00:19:32 [ Music ] ^M00:20:11 So why I'm showing this video is researching across the country where there is really no chartered path, and you don't know where these monuments are lying. For seven decades, they've been abandoned. We have history telling us some of the forts and some of the bigger structures, but really to go inside the interiors -- for instance, this is an unidentified monument. I have documented it in my book because the beautiful frescoes inside it -- and its state where it is standing today, about to fall apart, can raise a lot of emotion, and the frescoes convey a lot of valuable message as to how our forefathers were living. I thought it is important to document. But these are the unknown, unrecognized monuments wiped out from the history. I don't even know who made it, why it was made. Is there a history associated with it? I have no idea. And that man who was walking with me right in the beginning, he basically is that unknown -- I mean, the unknown Pakistani who became a very good friend of mine like that that had been 40, 50 people who have embraced me, and walked in the fields, in the forests, in the high hills, and the plains of Pakistan to make my work happen. So that's what I want to actually convey out of that. Works like this can be seen from any community's lens. Because when a turmoil happens, turmoil does not impact one community alone, and therefore we need to start by the recognition that not just the Sikhs, but all communities suffered in the violence that -- up to the civil war that erupted across the subcontinent in 1947. If I was to turn this lens and choose to do this work out of Muslim legacy, the story is the same. If I was to do it from a Hindu or [inaudible] legacy, the story is the same. And therefore, I say in this slide is Hindu, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Parsis, Jains, Buddhists, and I would say even the Atheists suffered. Because I don't know what is the belief system of a man who projects himself to be a believer of certain faith. You don't know inside his heart whether he really believes in the existence of God or no. And yet, the nation was divided on belief systems of God in the form of religion, and which resulted in the hypothesis that -- it's a big hypothesis that under the two-nation theory, two communities cannot live together. The Hindus and the Muslims cannot live together as British were leading the subcontinent. The assumption was the two communities cannot exist together. From a Sikh perspective, I have started believing that the Sikh community was a mere cucumber in the sandwich. The third community which was not even thought of, and which in this two-nation theory which emerged, it was not even put into the mix until the last moment, in the last few one or two years it came into the mix. And it's -- history had churned, primarily in the lands that became Pakistan. And this painful saga of all communities, which were divided in 1947 as British left the Indian subcontinent, is described well in the two-line poetry of Shah Daman [phonetic], who says, "[Foreign language]." Basically, what is means is that, "The red eyes, the bloodshot red eyes said all that both you and we wept." So we need to start from this baseline of understanding as I get into specific subject of the Sikh legacy in Pakistan. Now, what I want to put as a context, here as Dr. Rajwant just said, that the Sikh community's attention has primarily been focused on just religious aspects across Pakistan; not just the Sikh community, the entire world believes that the Sikh community's entire existence across Pakistan seven decades after Partition is basically the few good [inaudible], the Sikh temples of worship like [inaudible], the founder of Sikh was born, or where some stories attached with his life, like [inaudible], or the fifth guru's place plays like your -- the data side, and a few more Gurdwaras. The entire community's thinking is kind of restricted on this domain, not just the Sikh. The Muslims inside Pakistan also believe that this is their heritage, which we are maintaining very properly. Now, I must tell you my experience when I did this book, my feeling in giving the title was, "Yes, I could have just called it 'The Sikh Legacy in Pakistan', but sometimes you need to shake the system, with a positive intent. My intent is not here to kind of finger point and me versus you; that's not the intent. The intent is to document, let's accept what's happened, let's move forward positively. But yet sometimes you have to give a statement, and therefore I chose the name of this book -- the title is "The Sikh legacy in Pakistan", but I chose the name of the book as "Lost Heritage". And when I use the word "lost heritage", I have taken a long time to kind of build equity with the government in Pakistan that I don't mean wrong. But yet, the first reaction what I'm telling you is that even in Pakistan they believe that the heritage of Sikhs is basically [inaudible], these three, four, five, six Gurdwaras; and we have been maintaining it fine. But writing "Lost Heritage", the first reaction that I remember I got from the Pakistan government itself was, "Why are you calling it 'Lost Heritage'? We have maintained it." And that's where you then realize that, boy, how big a problem it is. Because when communities get locked out from the lands where their generations have churned the history, the history just evaporates; not from the minds of the community itself who churned that history in their land, but also the ones who own the responsibility to hold that history in that land. It just evaporates over a period of time. My forefathers were not so incompetent that they only made four or five Gurdwaras that the world knows Pakistan today as. My forefathers were not so incompetent that we as the community, as the descendant of that generation, should be only driven to go to these three or four Gurdwaras. There is so much more than the offer; we have simply forgotten. And therefore, I want to bring your attention to this slide where on the black outline you see the Indians appointment, which was the British India, as we know, in 1947 when they were leaving. Having come to Calcutta, they actually started moving. Sorry, allow me a minute; I just want to take my pointer out here. ^M00:26:52 [ Background Sounds ] ^M00:27:01 So having come into Calcutta in the 1700s, as the British started expanding with the help of Bengal army, the Pulbia [phonetic] soldiers, the [inaudible] regiments, they started expanding. They came to the Sutlej River, and they came to a halt out here; because the last standing kingdom, the independent kingdom at that time, was this yellow kingdom which was being ruled by the Getsing [phonetic], and its capital was Lahore [phonetic]. Now, the historical texts, and especially the British texts, have written this as the "Sikh Kingdom". The Sikhs record themselves like the [inaudible], the five portion volumes, five-volume portion with lots of day-to-day account to what was happening in the Getsing Kingdom in Lahore. It was a very detailed account, which has recently been translated into English by the [inaudible]. If you read that -- actually, there's no mention of Sikh Kingdom or the Sikh raj. There's nothing like that. It's simply referred to it as [inaudible]. The Khalsa is basically a Puritan concept. It's a concept which sees the world in a Puritan form, which actually allows to embrace all communities. It's a very secular concept, purity, right; and that's what this kingdom was termed as. British call it as a Sikh Kingdom because they saw [inaudible], the man who was ruling out of Lahore to be a man who was a believer of the Sikh faith, and therefore they call it. I question that because yes, it was truly a [inaudible] in terms of its purity and mindset, because there were implementing that. They had an army, which comprised of six Hindus, Muslims, Punjabis for the first time in 3,000 years after Pouris [phonetic] attacked -- Alexander attacked Punjab, it's the first time after 3,000 years that the Punjabis themselves rules, and a man of the soil formed the kingdom. And yes, prior to that, the history goes the [inaudible] formed the kingdom out of Lahore -- had taken over Lahore. But truly a big empire like that for the first time in the history of Punjab, a man of the soil, Ranjetsing [phonetic] formed it. And he pulled together people of all faith, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, rallied around him. In spite the differences of faith, they came together for one cause, and that was what we call as "Punjabieth" [phonetic]. And today that Punjabieth seems to be fragmented, thanks to 1947. His foreign minister signed a treaty with the British that decided that this was the line on the east side of the empire of the "Sikh Kingdom", which the British called, which the British will not cross. He signed the treaty with Afghanistan, which today is known as the "Duden [phonetic] Line". You know what, if history has to be rewritten, the man who really signed this treaty and who should be given the credit, it was Fakid Azizudine [phonetic], [inaudible] foreign minister, or Ranjit Singh himself, because this line was drawn by them running right through the Pashtun territory. But the British actually having recognized -- felt the need of recognizing the man who led the expedition the first [inaudible] war, which happened in Kabul going through [inaudible], was led by the man called Duden [phonetic]. So they called this as the "Duden Line", in recognition. But really this line was created by Fakid Azizudine, the foreign minister of Ranjit Singh. All I want to say is that this [inaudible] stretched from Ladakh, Kashmir, Baltistan, Kiberidia [phonetic]. The two nations today are fighting over Kashmir, India and Pakistan. Millions of people are -- thousands of lives have been lost since 1947 in this tug-of-war. But people have -- are not even aware today the man who brought the Ladakh, Baltistan, and Kashmir onto the map of India and Pakistan is Ranjit Singh; because if not for him, Kashmir today would be a part of Afghanistan, because the Iranians were ruling it for 110 years before he brought it into the [inaudible], and then the British took over the Punjab, and therefore it became a part of British India. All I want to say is that it would take this mighty empire, which was the last-standing empire of what became British India, and you lay it over the Pakistan and India, what you find is the line of -- the [inaudible] line runs to here, and after that it becomes the line of control dividing Kashmir. Eighty percent of that territory is today in Pakistan; and that's the one statement I want to make out of this slide. Eighty percent of that territory is in Pakistan, and 20% is in India. And therefore, the question that I'm asking again, "Were my forefathers so incompetent that they only made these two or three Gurdwaras?" Right? And therefore, as I stood at this grave while going up to Montserrat -- I'm sorry, this grave is at Montserrat while going to Kashmir [inaudible] at this graveyard -- on this grave behind these shrubs and the plants out here you see behind there's a plaque out up here on which is written in Urdu, "Ghulam Sarwar vald Makhan Singh." Ghulam Sarwar, a Muslim, who lives buried here whose father, a Sikh, Makhan Singh -- well whose father was Makhan Singh, a Sikh. Now, I don't need to know or I don't have any idea as to what happened with Ghulam Sarwar, why did he convert his faith and why is he lying buried here? But the point I'm trying to make out of this grave is that legacy is not religion; because this grave is also a part of my legacy. A Sikh's son is lying buried here, and therefore I see this as a part of my legacy, and the story needs to be documented. And that part when I saw this grave is what actually motivated me to embark on this journey to document in the form of a publication, because I did not go to Pakistan to write a book. I consider myself as an accidental author. I have been in the corporate world for about 25 years. I was the regional head for Asia Pacific for American Express for the revenue management. In 2014 for certain reasons, I left my job because I had been there for 25 years; I was looking for something else. But in the six months of the cooling down period that I was actually going through, I just thought that I need to go up to Kashmir to my father's place, because in 1947 when he was ousted because of the Kashmir problem which started after the Partition of 1947 of Punjab -- I don't call it as a Partition of India, I call it as a Partition of Punjab and Partition of Bengal, because that's what it was. The problem of Kashmir starts much later. The problem of Kashmir starts in October 1947 on the 21st of October, 1947 when Kashmir is attacked by the tribal. And what our forefathers -- my father, my aunt, my uncle used to tell us is that they never could go back to this part of Kashmir, which is in Pakistan, because they then were shifted and ousted, and rebuild their lives in [inaudible]. But he used to tell that on the morning of 21st October, 1947, our aunt and uncles got up to a huge war cry, which was Hindu [inaudible] or Sikh [inaudible]. That is a Persian word, "[Inaudible] the Hindus and behead the Sikhs." And on this bridge, about 300 people were rounded up, 306 were rounded up. And this is the first attack of Kashmir which happens [inaudible]. And they were shot on both the sides. And then many bodies fell. My mother-in-law's parents both died on this bridge in this unfortunate incident. There's a chapter in this first book called "Meeting Moody [phonetic]." Moody was [inaudible], a Sikh girl who now lives in [inaudible]. She's my distant aunt. And she lost both her parents; she was just four and a half years old, on this same bridge. And she has the impression so strong in her mind that even at the age of 75 years, she can recount everything that happened that day. Now, a four-and-a-half year old child recounting, that's amazing; because I can't recount what I actually -- what I may have experienced at the age of ten or 12. But here's a child -- here's an old woman who at the age of four-and-a- half years what she experiences, recounting it. And I wanted to go to this bridge basically to pick up the soil. I wanted to pass it down to our next generation, our two daughters, just to remind them that, "Wherever you go in this global village that we are living in today, don't forget your roots." And therefore, I decided in that six-month period that I was cooling down after my American Express career that I must go to Pakistan. All my vision was that I wanted to go into Pakistan. I didn't go to write a book. I just decided to head towards [inaudible]. I decided like every other Sikh that I must go and visit [inaudible]. But I also knew from the history books that a huge glorious chapter of my tradition actually happened in these lands. So I wanted to go and experience, "Are there some remnants there?" I had no idea whether I will find anything. And as I therefore embarked on this journey, on the 15th day of my journey, I got a 30-day visa to enter the first time. On the 15th day, I did reach [inaudible], and as I picked up the soil, something within me said, "Don't do this." Because passing to the next generation the soil, you might be passing down a memory which I don't want to pass down of hatred between communities. And therefore, I left it. And I think that I did the right thing because what I've done is more than the soil is to capture the experiences in these two books; that's more valuable than the soil. But when I saw the turning of the Jhelum River at the [inaudible] -- this is a town where my father was born, that u-turn symbolized that yes the communities did make a u-turn in 1947. Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs chose to look away from each other. And therefore, when I came back -- I had been to 36 cities and villages in 30 days, and I thought it was important to write this journey in the form of a picture travel log expressing all that I had experienced and telling a little bit of history, so that posterity can remember that seven decades after Partition, someone went and at that point of time he saw where the heritage was standing. ^M00:37:23 ^M00:37:24 Seventy percent of a heritage is finished is my estimate. It's my gut estimate. There's nothing to -- there's no detail to validate that; that's my gut estimate that 70% is finished. But yet, I felt that it was important to document it that we should have some remnants to remind our future generations that this is what it was seven decades after Partition. But you know what, sometimes journeys that seem to have ended actually are boiling to take another a shape, and that's exactly what was happening to me, because when I published this book, I was called at many forums around the world to talk about it. And as I kept on talking, I realized that having published a book, I had gone on a journey around the world speaking at about some 75 seminars around the world in about eight months. At that point, I felt the book needs to be left, I need to go back to my corporate world, and I need to start looking at my daily chores of earning a living. But you know what, as I took up a job deep inside me, something was disturbing me. And what was disturbing me was that I am in my journey of the first book had stood at Jamrud, right at the [inaudible] Pass where [inaudible] had made the fort of Jamrud, and thereafter no envision has happened from the Khyber Pass for a good 200-odd years. Now, is it because of Jamrud, or is this a matter of destiny, I don't know. But yet when the fort was made after that, the thousand years of envisions from the central Asian lands into the Indian subcontinent did stop. I could not go inside there, because [inaudible] died there, and yet I wanted to experience that place where his body was kept. And what was there inside that fort I could not experience it. Attock -- as I stood at the Attock River, I was reminded of that journey that Alexander Burnes did, because as the Treaty of Amritsar was signed between the British and the Ranjit Singh in 1809, saying both sides will respect each other, the British already started sending spies into Pakistan -- into Punjab. And the mission was basically to find out what is the power of this kingdom, can we do something, can we tomorrow take it over? And as those missions went, many of the spy missions submitted the reports -- of course, all of them submitted reports to Calcutta, to East India Company, but some wrote their personal travel logs. And I had read these travel logs. One of them was William Moorcroft in 1809 -- 1819 he went into Lahore. And then he went right up to Kashmir to Ladock [phonetic] from Lahore. But the most interesting one was where I'm talking about Attock, because Alexander Burnes had never stepped into India. Later on in the first Afghan war, he was hacked to death in Kabul. But he had never come to India. And he was given this mission that, "We want to find out can ships be taken inside Punjab. How can you take ships inside Punjab, and Punjab does not even touch the sea?" So he was put onto a ship and said, "Here are five hyper degree [phonetic] horses. Take them through the Arabian Sea, take it into the industrial world, and sail it upwards and see how deep can you dig the horse -- the ship inside in the industrial world, and see here it goes and docks?" And he sailed with high hyper-degree horses to gift it [inaudible] in Lahore. That was just a -- gifting was just an excuse to leave the secret mission. And he docked the ship at the Attock Fort, on the industry where -- and I was standing there, and that site looked familiar because when as a young kid, I read "The Journey of Alexander Burnes", that picture still imprinted in the mind. And when I was standing in the first journey wanting to go inside the Attock Fort, I could not go inside, because both Jamrud and Attock are under the control of the Pakistan army. Now, layers of generations and dynasties have actually played a role in Attock, like for instance the [inaudible] under the Sikh rule in Lahore, then the British -- now the Pakistanis are actually playing a role. But I wanted to go inside because I could see that picture. Alexander Burnes came and docked his ship here to prove that ships and the navy could be brought into Punjab. And if the British wanted to attack Punjab from both sides they could compress it by bringing in the navy, and from this side bringing in the army from [inaudible]. Nothing happened, actually, on that front. But Alexander Burnes wrote his travel log, how he took the horses to Lahore and gifted it to the Ranjit Singh, beautiful travel logs. And I in my mind after the first book in the nights I would see the dreams of Attock and Jamrud as a mission had been incomplete. As I looked at this picture of DGF Newhall [phonetic], which after the second annual sea coordinate [phonetic] in 1949-1851, DGF Newhall travels to the Tanamal [phonetic] Range, along the River Indus, and [inaudible] and looks down and marks where all the Sikh forts were. And this publication was published later on about 20 years later. And I'm wondering in 1947, the Sikh community was pretty much resident in these lands until 1947, after which they were ousted. And why is it that I can't find any book since the journey of 1851 of DGF Newhall until the time of 1947 when cameras has existed, why hasn't anyone from my community gone and simply taken a panoramic image of that same land and mark where the forts had once existed? These were marked forts, small forts. So the community today only associates [inaudible] with Jamrud, and does not know anything more about [inaudible] or his role that he played in 27 forts along the River Indus. There's documented evidence of that in the history. So we don't know. And I'm thinking this is valuable to be documented again, but I am struggling through as to how does one go back to Pakistan? I had experienced it, and I was wondering how does one go back, and how does one document this? But then when you start believing in something, strangely enough, the energies do come together. And I'm blessed because the Pakistan government themselves invited me for a seminar -- for a conference in Islamabad. And what I had done with my first book was wherever I went around the world, I'm accepting the fact that Partition has have happened, I cannot change it, Pakistan cannot change it, we cannot change it. What can we learn from this, what can we talk in terms of human values, and what can we actually bring about as a positive change is what I was trying to spread as a message. And I think the Pakistan establishment did appreciate that the person was not trying to make it a political pitch out of it, because there's enough of politics and much [inaudible] that's been happening for years and years. What do we go going forward? And I was invited to Islamabad to take part in a conference where -- when my first publication was -- I was not being invited to talk there, but I think they recognized that [inaudible] someone's done some work on Pakistan's heritage, and so they invited me. In my mind, I thought that this is the right opportunity to ask the Pakistan government that if you think I've done something all right, then please open the gates of Jamrud and Attock and show it to me. That is all that I had asked for, and if possible, please take me to the [inaudible] area to see that forts where they had existed are there still some remains lying there? That's all I envisioned for and asked. And as I landed in Pakistan, a beautiful energy by the government, and as well as the people started engulfing me once again. And I say this, the work is thanks to the people of Pakistan who have actually enabled this for me, because as they embraced me, the energy started engulfing me to a point I asked myself, "Do I go back, or do I continue with this?" And I think I made the right choice, because I could have easily gone back. There was a job waiting for me; I would have actually just been doing a nine to five, but I decided to just let the energy take me forward. And as it took me forward, I stayed there for another 50 days, of which 40 days I spent in the search traveling across Pakistan from Baltistan, to Kibor, to Punjab, to Sindh and Balochistan, and having realized after about 40 days of journey and 50 days in Pakistan that I'd been to 90 cities and villages this time. And when I came back, it was two humungous data that I had actually gotten, all for heritage -- a composite heritage of all of our communities together. I thought that this needs to be, again, documented because it has not been done. The future generation needs to know what had churned on these lands. And therefore, I didn't go back into the corporate world and started documenting it. I will share a few stories before I move on to what the -- a sense of the presentation is as to what has Amardeep learned out of his journeys across Pakistan. The -- I want to talk about the remains of a Sikh Gurdwara, a Gurdwara, a place of Sikh worship along -- near the river in this -- at a village called "Codfatikan" [phonetic]. Codfatikan -- this is the Gurdwara -- these are the remains. The walls have actually all broken down. The gate is just still standing there. I go inside there, and I'm appreciating the beautiful frescoes inside this [inaudible] here. And what I see is that our forefathers had a very secular pluralistic mindset; because on these frescoes, it was Punjabi that they would have left him. It was not faiths that they would have left him. It was a composite culture, of stories of the lands of Punjab, whether it be [inaudible], whether it be Than Singh himself, or if there -- at places, even [inaudible], you know? ^M00:47:19 ^M00:47:20 I think what they are trying to represent is what Punjab was representing as a cultural aspect. Faith and culture are two sides of a coin, because we cannot segregate the two things. And yes, you're freed and unorganized, thinking and religion takes a form over a period of time. But yet, cultural aspects cannot be ignored because faiths emerge from the foundation of cultures that churn in a particular land, and the stories that churn there. And I'm looking at these frescoes in a pretty sad state, because for seven decades the community is not there, they have not been maintained, they're nearly finishing off. And my first thought that comes to my mind is that the Sikh community is in a very sad state. And I coined a statement altogether, which I say it all the time when I go around the world, "The Sikh community lost it there, which is in Pakistan in the creation of 1947, and moving out of the country, but the Sikh government destroyed it here, which is in East Punjab. Because frescoes and monuments like this, there are none existing in East Punjab now. If our heritage, although in a sad state -- because we have -- we are not existing in these lands, and therefore no one can take care of it, if they're yet existing, they are existing in the last forms in the lands of Pakistan. In East Punjab, we have destroyed it all ourselves because we have a fancy for modernizing our structures with marble and gold, replacing frescoes. Replacing artworks with a preference of white marble and materialistic gold, we are leaning nothing for our next generation to delve into to the beautiful stories that these frescoes can read. There's nothing left. And someone in Delhi had asked me when I was presenting as to, "When will you do this work for the Sikh legacy in East Punjab?" And my answer was, "I will never probably do it." Because my soul finds itself flying in the stratosphere when I go to Pakistan, because these monuments take me to a different realm altogether. Only I know what I experienced in these lands. In East Punjab, I cannot feel that. I feel dead monuments. I feel the whiteness and the materialistic imprint of gold is leaving nothing for the next generation to really understand from where we emerged, and what value system our forefathers were trying to tell us to the art forms. But as I was standing here, invariably in my stories that you'll find in the book, one or the other old man, as we call as "Babas" [phonetic] will definitely appear. And a Baba appeared out here. And I've called this Gurdwara as "Sultan Tansing" [phonetic], but the Gurdwara actually is called as "Baba Tansing". In the Punjabi terminology, and especially in the Sikh terminology, the people whom we revere, the saints, and the elevated people as "Baba", the one who is the man with the wisdom. But in the Islamic tradition, a man with a power, be it spiritual power, or a materialistic power, or a power of military power is called a "sultan". So out here, the Baba Tansing Gurdwara, the villagers now call it a "Sultan Tansing". And I was standing out here, and a villager, this old man came in, and he started talking to me. He says "Salam" to me. And I said "Salam" to him also. And he told a few things. One thing he said was, "Every Friday, we still come to this Gurdwara we light a lamp." "Duma" [phonetic] is a Friday pass [phonetic]. And after that what he said is, "All the villagers come here and as a mark of respect for seven decades we've been lighting a lamp out here." Now, whatever the politics may have done, whatever the divisions may have been, the mans or the villages seeing voice of humanity is still wanting to associate with the fact that this was the largest monument of that village, and a tradition must be kept alive, and therefore they put a lamp out there. And as I'm looking at the various writings on the wall, at one place -- at most of the places where things are, our forefathers used to only use two languages. The more westwards you go, you will only find in the Sikh Gurdwaras, only Urdu and [inaudible]. There's to be no Hindi [inaudible] script. And as I'm looking at the Urdu and the Guruki [phonetic], at the Urdu places, there has been some black paint which has been put through. And I could read through that, that wherever "Baba Tansing" has been written, it's been blackened. But adjacent to that, wherever [inaudible] "Baba Tansing" is written, it's not been blackened. So I asked the Baba himself, the man of wisdom who was there, "Why have they blackened the places where in Urdu, 'Baba Tansing' is written? And his reply to me was beautiful. What he says is, "You know, the villagers say that he was indeed Baba Tansing for the Sikhs, but now he's our Sultan Tansing. It's yet the emotion for that man, emotion for that place, which is being held on, is the value that I want actually people to take away from these things, that humans do care; humans do care. But ill-fated well, I -- unfortunately the narratives -- you know, history is his story, whose story you want to listen to; it's always biased. And it always takes rising above to understand that sometimes history has to be understood. Most of the time, history needs to be laid out of biases to be really understood. Unfortunately, when I presented the Sikh legacy in Pakistan in terms of our two books in Delhi, one of the [inaudible] actually got them, and she made a very valid point because I was alluding to it. I said, "The Sikhs were basically a cucumber in the sandwich in the [inaudible] concept of Hindu and Sikhs. Hindus and Muslims cannot stay together. And what basically what happened was that our entire history, unfortunately, doesn't find prominence in the textbook in Pakistan, but our history does not even find prominence in the textbooks in India. It's just a passing mention of the Sikh gurus, and it finishes off; because I've studied history out there ,and I've seen the history books in Pakistan of the Punjabi University. And looking at that it pains me, because the history which basically churn on these lands has been forgotten, because probably in Pakistan, this was a non-Islamic era, and in India, it's a history that churned in the lands of Pakistan. So from both the sides, I see it's the unfortunate thing is that the Sikhs have lost the element of the history, and therefore we own the responsibility of owning the history ourselves; no one's going to protect it for us. We have to protect it ourselves. And therefore, when I looked at the Partition violence -- I must remind that Partition violence [inaudible] divided, which is unfortunate, because Punjab could not have been divided in any form or any way. There were multiple formulas being expressed, but yet what happened was on the blood of the common Punjabi, two nations were created. But Punjab was a composite culture where Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs had stayed together for centuries, and lived, coexisted together. But it was divided. But what people have forgotten is that Punjab was the last state to experience violence in the violence of India that divided the nation. The nation's violence did not start from Punjab. It started from as far away in the East in Calcutta in 1946 August. And it spread into [inaudible] in Bengal, it spread into [inaudible], Muslims got massacred. And as waves of Muslims moved towards Sindh, many passed through Punjab. Punjab was fine because Punjab was being ruled by a secular party of [inaudible] who had Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs collectively representing the Punjab government under the British regime. And Punjab did not face any problem until actually under pressure [inaudible] resigns on the 3rd of March 1947, resulting in a questioning by the Sikh and the Hindu leadership, and thereafter, a wave of genocide emerges in the villages around Rawalpindi. And this particular village, [inaudible], is documented to be the first village where the violence occurred. And this is the remains of the [inaudible]. And I wanted to go here to document this because what happened here was 75 women on the fifth of sixth day after being locked inside the [inaudible] came out and jumped inside this well. And I wanted to document this. And I went inside to Khalsa, and I was looking for the well. And this Baba, again, an old man of wisdom, strangely appears on the road. And I stopped the [inaudible] and I looked down at him and I got down and I went to him and I said, "Baba Salam." And he looks at me and he says, "Where have you come from?" And he was surprised. And he gave me a hug and I asked him, "Baba, tell me, where is that well where 75 women, history tells us, jumped inside on the seventh of eighth of March 1947?" He took out his spectacles, wiped his tear, and he says, "You know what, I was 18 years old and it happened in front of my eyes." What is the probability of walking on the streets and you stumble upon someone who has been a live witness to the entire event? ^M00:56:59 ^M00:57:00 And as I actually followed him, he took me to the place. And I felt that this well needs to be documented because the tragedy of Punjab, which resulted in displacing of communities and creating a drift among us for forever actually I had to document it. And I've done that in this book, because it's important for the next few generations. I again thank the Pakistan government that they enabled my trip inside the Jamrud Fort, and this time in the second book, I was standing on top of this bastion and looking on this side towards the Kibor Pass, and the two mountains coming and meeting. And what a picture it is I've taken in my second book of showing the mountains coming down. For one thousand years the [inaudible] had come there into the subcontinent. And when this fort was made in 50 days, thereafter, the history has not had any invasion. Because of this fort, or because of other reasons -- there could be many other factors, but history does also points that after this fort, construction at the Kibor there has been no further envision. As I walked up to this site of the bastion, the room where [inaudible] body was kept after he died battling the Afghan envision into Punjab, for three days he was kept in this room. On the other side yet in Urdu is written the incident which led to his death. And when I was growing up, I looked at this room falling apart, I requested the commander in the fort that, "Please, don't let this room go away." We don't know what happens with the history going forward or -- sorry, not with the history, with the boundaries, or with the passport regimes, or regional regimes, we don't know what the future has in store for us. But if this room falls apart, the sentiments associated with the Sikhs for this one room are so large, but tomorrow the tourism potential for Pakistan is so strong inside this that this can become the next wave to begin the Sikhs to show them their heritage in Pakistan. So don't let this go. I was promised by the commander that they will look into actually getting this room restored, but I hope they do. As I looked at this in [inaudible], this Gurdwara, I was reminded -- I was taken [inaudible] of the 92-year-old Baba inside the village in Kashmir, who tells me a beautiful story. He -- as I -- not -- I mean, he told not a story, but beautiful experiences. As I sat with him, I was having a cup of tea, 92-year-old man speaking very softly and he started reciting the first two verses of the [inaudible] composition of [inaudible] and he goes, "[Foreign language]." And I looked at him, I said, "Baba, how do you know this?" He says, "Sultan Singh [phonetic] was a great man. The man who led this Gurdwara and established mane," he said, "There should be a Khalsa school next to it." And I tell you in Pakistan I've been to many schools, the government schools, the Islamia [phonetic] schools, and it has made me reflect that the Sikhs in leading the lands gave up billions of dollars of educational investments. Because what the Baba had said is what many people have told me of the olden age, he says, "We used to aspire to go to Khalsa schools." The Khalsa schools had a brand name, and Sikhs have invested a lot of investments at that, and therefore if you go into many of these government schools and Islamia schools, and you will find -- and I've shown many of them, [foreign language] something in [foreign language] inside them. You don't have to look for them, because in seven decades a lot of it is finished now. But it made reflect what kind of investment we had to walk away from, because going into India, the Sikh community has tried to reestablish the Khalsa brand of schools and colleges. We have done it. But I ask myself this question, "Did I choose to join the Khalsa College?" When I got admission there in Delhi, I chose to decline it because the reputation is not too great. Sometimes when your umbilical cord is severed from ages of investments that you made to build a brand, and you are severed from it, you may not be able to create that impression once again. And that's the thing I experienced. But he tells me that, "We used to inspire to go to the Khalsa school." And he says, "I studied there." And he says, "I used to a lot of time in the Gurdwara." And then he said a very interesting statement, which made me reflect, Punjab was destined to be divided because of our own fault. There's a lot of positivity in these lands, because faiths had lived together for ages, and we used to live together for centuries. But he made a very interesting statement, which made me reflect. What he said was, "We used to --" Sultan Singh was a very great man because the longer -- the tradition of community kitchen used offer free food to everyone 365 days a year 24 hours. And then he makes a comment, he says, "We used to pick up sucalangar [phonetic]." "Sucalangar" means "dry rations". I know the reason why he said that; I just probed him further. I said, "If the food was being made, Baba, why would you pick up dried rations? Just pick up the food and eat it." And he smiles at me and he says in Punjabi, he says, "[Foreign language]." He says, "You know the antics of the religion, what it makes us do." Basically, what he was alluding to was on the Lahore station, there should be two parts of water as documented, one part used to be for Hindu, and the other for Muslims. And the water used to be filled from the same tap. What it means is that if you can't drink from the same part, if you can't eat from the same utensils, Punjab had a hairline fracture. In spite of all the positiveness, there was a hairline fracture, which was used to the advantage of the British when they were dealing and was creating into a communal mindset. And because of political motives and the reasons -- other political reasons it had led to a separation and severance of centuries of civilizations that have learned to exist together. But as I was leaving, he said a very, very -- very, very heart-touching thing to me. He says, "Will you go back to India?" And I said, "Sometimes, yes, I stay in Singapore I sometimes yes will." And he says, "Can you do a favor for me?" And I said, "Tell me." He says, "Can you go and appeal to the people, the Hindus and Sikhs of Alibage [phonetic], if they are there anywhere in India, that they must come back now?" In his saying that he had reflected a huge amount of emotion, because what he wanted to do was to bring about a closure. And I looked at him and I said, "Baba, how is this possible? The countries, and the nations, and the politics have divided us so deeply that there's no return on this." He says, "I understand. But if you can convey my message, I am about to die. But I would like to see the people with whom I grew, and I will return -- I know where the lands were, and I will return that land to them." I just smiled and walked away because it's not possible now. But the emotion of that man said a lot. I went up to Baltistan -- I want to make a small point out here, the remains of the Gurdwara in Baltistan, in Skardu, and the fort, which was taken and made a part of the Lahore Darbar [phonetic], the two battalions in 1840, which went from Lahore were led into Zorawar Singh and Mohiud-din-Shah. And the person whom they fought out here was Amit Shah [phonetic]. The point I'm trying to make out of these names is the following. These were not wars based on religion. People just get it wrong. I have done an article about Zorawar Singh 30 years in search of Zorawar Singh, because I've traveled strangely and unknowingly deep into Tibet and other areas of Ladakh, and in Pakistan where Zorawar Singh actually laid a footprint, right? He was an employee of the Darbar. And when I wrote an article about him, people turned around and said, "Was --" starting a tug-of-war on the Internet. And the question is whether Zorawar Singh was a Hindu, or a Sikh. And I'm looking at this tug-of-war -- basically it's tugs-of-war, because when I am a Sikh working for American Express, the leadership never asked me what my faith was. They paid me for my loyalty to the American Express Organization. And the organization here was the Lahore Darbar. And in respect to the fact that Mohiud-din-Shah was a Muslim, Zorawar Singh was a -- was probably a Hindu or Sikh, who knows his faith. And [inaudible] was a Sikh. They were all giving their loyalty to the kingdom, and not based on their faith. And yet, these two people who went inside with the battalions, Mohiud-din-Shah leading one battalion, and Zorawar Singh leading one battalion, fighting against the Amit Shah should be a reflection to show that this was not a time where the Punjabis were fighting on religion. Because a Muslim could stand on the other side and be fighting against another Muslim, because they were loyal to a territory, and not because of religions. That's the point I want to make out there. And I think this Baltistan, the documentation that I've given inside this book, interesting there. I find a very -- I went to the ministry corporation and I was showing some documents there that after this expedition of 1840 all the lands of Skardu were turned into the title-ship under Lahore Darbar of Khalsa Sarkar [phonetic], the government of Khalsa. And today, yet, when you take a lease title inside Skardu, the original title-ship of that land is held by Khalsa Sarkar; in the documents. And I've shown the picture of that. What I want to share here is the beloveds of Nanak, what the people have forgotten. And what Pakistan themselves does not know is that there are one million people in Sindh, in Balochistan, and in certain areas of Swat, Mardan, and other places, who are believers of Guru Nanak. Loosely, they're all called by everyone as "Hindus". But ask them who they are. They are opening more and more Gurdwaras in the format that the Sikhs of Punjab worship in. Similar kind of Gurdwaras, 200 of them I've seen actually -- I've not documented all of them, but about 200-plus Gurdwaras in Sindh and Balochistan had been opened up. These are the communities that are forgotten. If you look at the [inaudible], the writings of Gurnarniks verses [phonetic], and the ladies were sitting out here. They look very least like the Punjabi ladies or the Sikh ladies. But yet, their faiths are all about Gurnarnik and their attachment. ^M01:07:50 ^M01:07:51 This community of Nanak Panthis needs to be studied, needs to be brought to the limelight, because in India after the Partition, this community has amalgamated into the broader faiths of the land, and moved away from the association of Nanak. Is it because of we have not held them, or have they been loosely bounded into a religious boundary that they have found the ways to merge? But yet in Pakistan, one million such people are still existing. I have actually -- I say it openly that maybe the Pakistan government should ask the Sindhis and the Balochis what is their faith? Maybe an open-ended question will tell us what do they feel like. Because when I'm talking to them, they are telling me something very different. I asked [inaudible], who is the head priest of a Gurdwara, they don't want to have any temples. They believe in the grand side, the same practices as the Sikh community. They may not look like us in terms of our turban and beard, but they believe in all the elements of the faith. They have not graduated to the tradition of Khalsa, but yet they believe in all the elements of the faith. And I asked Banasree Lalgi [phonetic] a question for which he gave me very interesting answer. I asked him at the Langa [phonetic], I said, "Banasree Lalgi, "Can you tell me how many Hindus in Pakistan are believers of Guru Nanak?" And he looks at me and he says, "Amardeep, it's so unfortunate that you still don't consider us as Sikhs." So I say to the Pakistan government, "Let's ask them what they are." Because what Pakistan claims that there are 14,000 turban-wearing Sikhs is the definition that the world sees them as. I see there could be a one million number sitting there. And the game could change in Pakistan about what the Sikh faith is going through around the world. And I think they should start from there. Therefore, I believe the next phase of studies need to be done about these forgotten Nanak Panthis communities in Afghanistan, in Pakistan, and how they've evolved in India, because there's a huge story out here to be told to the world. I went to Quetta in Balochistan. I want to show you this group of Nanak Panthis. In the Gurdwara they have two [inaudible] lying out here. And all of them or none of them they want their -- all have their heads covered in the Sikh tradition. But there's only one turban-wearing Sikh out there. They're all people without Singh and [inaudible] as their last names, and the [inaudible] that they have there are two of them, one of them is in Gurmukhi, and one is in Urdu. The Urdu Ghansi [phonetic] have stopped getting printed in India. They don't exist anymore. In Pakistan, too, they are not being printed anymore, because the last Ghansi in Urdu that was printed was in Hyderabad in somewhere in mid 1950s. The demand suddenly died. Some of these far-off places the communities are still holding onto some of the Urdu script Ghansis, right? And when I went to the school in Quetta, the largest school out there called the "Special School" -- I thought it was a special needs school, but I was still wondering whether in Pakistan's special needs is such a big subject that you will have such a big premises for just special needs kids. I went there; and it was a Saturday, so I had requested to go inside, and the watchman said that, "Today is Saturday and you can't go inside because the school is closed." I had questioned him and I said, "Can you please call up the headmaster and request him that, "A Sikh has come from Singapore?" And he did that and the headmaster replied and he says, "Ask him to wait there; I'm coming down." And in 20 minutes he was there. He took me to his office. Inside his office, these black and white pictures on the wall -- this is one of the pictures taken from there. This shows the hockey team. Sixty percent of the team of pre-1947 were turban-wearing Sikhs. In the Indian subcontinents, Sikhs were known as the masters of hockey. And today, we've moved so far away from that sport; very few Sikhs who are playing hockey itself. And I am looking at this. The Hindu Sikhs Muslims sitting in this team, the names are below. And I asked Tokasab [phonetic], "Tokasab, can you tell me --" and he also has got the picture of the founder of the school on the wall. And I asked him, "Can you tell me, why is the school called "Special School," you know. And his answer is the most beautiful answer I heard. He says, "You know, the Sikhs made this huge Khalsa school, and in 1947 simply left it here and walked away. Isn't it such a beautiful special act that they gave it to us as a gift?" I didn't have anything to say. I said, "Sir, you are the man of hearts out here who's torn my heart," you know. And he had said a lot in that. Now, you know, I could go on and on with these stories, but I'm sure you'll read the book, you'll find these stories. In the interest of time, I want to tell you what has Amardeep learned out of these journeys, out of these frescoes, out of these artworks, which don't exist in India anymore, and do not motivate me to do these works in India. But Pakistan has these footprints, the communities, the artworks, the frescoes, and I feel an honor that the Pakistan government has permitted me to go inside and do these things, because the story needs to be told to the world. What was the story of the past, and what has Amardeep taken away? This can take hours and hours, and I can go on. You know, I've -- I talk for two hours in some places about the Sikh military legacy that I mentioned in Pakistan. I've talked about the Nanak Panthis themselves, the believers of Nanak in Pakistan. But today, I'm just going to give you a stratospheric view quickly of what is it that I've seen from a legacy perspective in Pakistan. And basically, the question that I get asked many times is, "Tell us how many Sikhs are living in Pakistan." Now, I say the long and the short answer of that is the following. The short answer is when the violence of 1947 happened, the Muslims got wiped out from East Punjab. As I said from the starting, "[Foreign language]." "All communities have cried in this." And therefore, if I was to do this work in East Punjab, I would say the Muslim story is the same as our story; because they got wiped out there, too. But when I look, my subject is [inaudible] in Pakistan, so therefore I'm going to look at that. So therefore, I've marked this red section here Punjab and Kashmir, the entire Sikh and Muslim population pretty much wiped out. As much would happen on this side of East Punjab. But this pocket of close to Pashabar [phonetic] and close to Afghanistan border, the Sikh community so wiped. Sikh community as we define as [inaudible], and turban, and beard, and so on and so forth, all the defined religious boundaries of the faith, the people following that -- the descendants of that today are 14 to 15 thousand in number. And they are living as respectable citizens. A lot of people ask me, you know, "Are not minorities facing challenges in Pakistan?" You know what I say, "Which country do minorities don't face challenges, or which countries does not have challenges; tell me." It exists even in the most developed nations like US and the other places that exist, right, we've got problems everywhere. But to say that a community is being persecuted, I think you are just jumping to conclusion. Don't jump to what the media is trying to tell you. Live there and understand people are surviving, people are living. 1947 was an aberration, an unfortunate aberration, which no one can correct; you and I cannot correct. But to say that everything is a [inaudible] in somewhere is not being fair. Right? And therefore, when I look at this group of people, they've moved everywhere in Pakistan, and they are living as respectable citizens. There was someone who said the other day, and he was making a wrong statement, I think in one of my forums someone that said, and I didn't correct them because it's not right to at that point say anything. But someone -- people have a belief that someone saying that Nanganaside [phonetic] is a place where the Sikh communities survive. No; Nanganaside is in Punjab here; and it's a red portion. Everyone was wiped out, just like Muslims got wiped out, out here. But today, the descendants of this population from here are living in Nanganaside, and there's a very large, vibrant Sikh community staying in Nanganaside, but they are not Punjabi Sikhs. They are Pashtun Sikhs from this region who speak Pashto as their default language at home. The problem with the Sikh community of Punjab is that they always want to equate Sikhs is equal to Punjabis. It is wrong, because Sikhs are also equal to Kashmirs; Sikhs are also equal to Afghanis; Sikhs are also equal to Pashtun people; Sikhs are also equal to Sindhis and Balochis. A cultural affiliation has nothing to do with the religion or the belief system of a person, and therefore, all the people that can tell you, except for one or two families whom I know, all the other in Nanganaside today are the descendants of this Pashtun Sikh community. But what I want to talk about is this blue area, back here close to Punjab and Kibor, [inaudible], and down here along the River Indus, 50 kilometers east of Indus, right up to Afghanistan border into Quetta and Balochistan is what I call as the "Nanakpanthis". "Panth", for those people who do not understand the Indian terminologies or -- "panth" is basically a community, "Nanak", the belief -- the founder of Sikh faith. The community that belongs to Nanak, the founder of the Sikh faith was a very, very large section of people, and many of them lived along the Indus. Most of them actually lived along the Indus belt. And this community, the ones who do not adopt the Sikh Khalsa traditions are formed of an organized Sikh traditions are the ones who are living along these pockets. And in their minds they think they are Sikhs. Now, in the last 25 years, here's what's happening in Pakistan. And I say this openly, that if there is anyplace that Sikhism is on rise, it's in Pakistan. It's a very bold statement I'm making, but I've seen it. ^M01:17:54 ^M01:17:55 It may be in small numbers, but it is on rise, because this community out here has opened over 200 Gurdwaras inside this. They are not historical Gurdwaras, but they have been opened. This community out here has no temples, no Hindu temples that they go to, but they only go to Gurdwaras, and they believe in [inaudible]. And therefore, I talk about [inaudible] discussion. It's a community that needs to be evaluated, studied, understood, because this community has dispersed in India and lost its roots. They are still surviving out here. One hundred of the community in Buner, which is lying here, in the last 20 years, 100% of the next generation of this community they are not Singhs and [inaudible], they are Lall, Kumper [phonetic], [inaudible]; 100% of them have embraced the Sikh form in the last 20 years. So this is what the community's footprint is; but 1947 what happened is the community got dispersed into the Gangetic belt. Now, civilizations historically survived and thrived along the riverbeds. Boundaries never used to exist. That's why we have the Niles civilization, or we have the Amazon civilization, we had the Indus civilization, we had the Gangetic civilization. The people of the Indus civilization, we the people of the five rivers, the five rivers which ran into the Indus were dispersed into the Gangetic belt. And as the dispersal happens, as one of the US-based studies says, "When communities get dispersed out of force, the first generation becomes quiet, the second generation becomes confused, the third generation remains confused, and some of them start asking questions as to what their roots are." We are going through that phase. It happened with the Jews also. It has happened with every other community. If you ask a Syrian seven decades from now what's happening there, and as they're getting displaced, it is the same answer you will get. And therefore, we, as we landed here, why do you think ten million or one-third of nearly Sikh communities moving out -- living outside of India? It's probably this was a stop gap arrangement, because we had lost our roots, and now it doesn't matter, the world is our roots. And we're going to make roots everywhere. So we are descendants of a displaced community who have not yet found our roots firmly, and yet we are planting. But as an outcome of that, the impact has been on our philosophy, our culture, our language, and our heritage; because we've lost it from our roots, the land where our roots were. And I want to briefly talk a little bit about that. Guru Nanak is typically shown in art forms in across East Punjab, Sindh, Balochistan, West Punjab, and Kashmir area, and Kabul, as a man sitting under the big canopy of a tree, and his Muslim companion, [inaudible] playing the rabab, and his Hindu companion, [inaudible], standing next to him. What he's saying is, I talk to both Hindus and Turkeys." He's not saying, "I talk to both Hindus and Muslims." This is a very fine thing out here. In the interest of time, I will not going to get into depth out here, but what I want to point out is in the [inaudible] where this is, the [inaudible] are saying, "Hindu [foreign language]." Hindu and Turak [phonetic] I'm talking to, these are two culture. Today, Hinduism is considered to be a religion, but the word "Hindu" as a religion was not even existing in the way it does. It only started happening in 1980 onwards when the Turuks came to the industrial world, and they looked at a civilization that lived on that side as the civilization of the Sindhu, and they could not say so and "Si", and they said "Hindu"; that was a civilization. And therefore, [inaudible] says this properly, "Hindu Turak". He's talking about two civilizations, he's not talking about two faiths. Because in the civilization of the east of Indus, the word "sopta" [phonetic], and the word -- "the weak", "sopta" in the Turkic civilization, in the Central Asia, in Afghanistan and other places becomes "hafta". "Sir" becomes a "her", "Sindhu" becomes a "Hindu". And therefore, the people on this side was Turkeys -- on this side on the West were Turkeys, and this side were the Sindhu people. And therefore, he's talking about Sindhu and Hindu -- Sindhu, the Hindu people and the Turkey, I'm telling both of them that humanity is what matters. And therefore, all his pictures were always about the three coming together. And in Pakistan in most of the monuments of the Sikh and Hindu era -- Sikhs and Hindus -- now there are Sikhs and Hindus, you'll find -- because it was a Punjabi population; you'll find this is very commonly put there. In the Sufi traditions, there are many Sufis who yet believe in Guru Nanak, though they may be Muslims and Sufis. They yet respect Guru Nanak in the Pakistan tradition. And therefore, when I talk about philosophies divided, I make this point, of the various -- when I said that a legacy is reduced to religion, this is how philosophies get divided, because today when the Sikhs go to Pakistan on a religious circuit, the Pakistanis themselves do not see beyond the Nanak side and Punjab side, as the treasurer and the [inaudible] of heritage that lies in Pakistan. The Sikhs themselves do not see beyond the Nanak side, Punjab side. It's a problem, because when we go to Pakistan -- I've asked this question to my community, "Tell me when you go to Lahore how many of you have gone as south to [inaudible] to see Baba Farid's [phonetic] place?" And there's virtually no one until late has raised his hand. In the Sixth Scripture, Baba Farid, the Sufi sain, his writings were given a place by Guru Nanak himself, because he went to [inaudible] to bring his writings. And when we bound the front of the Scripture, I actually give as much of respect to Baba Farid as I give to Danak [phonetic]. And if I can go to Guru Nanak's place in Nanganaside, I should also go to Baba Farid's place. But I don't. I did, but we as a community, we don't. And we prefer to go to all the other places like the market, shopping, eating, blah, blah, blah, but we don't want to go to these places. Sain Mian Mir's place, Guru Arjan Dev, the fifth guru, actually when he was laying the foundation stone of Golden Temple, what did he do as part of a very pluralistic message he invited the sain from Lahore, "Sain Mian, you need to come to [inaudible] and lay the first foundation stone of the Golden Temple of [inaudible]," which is the Mecca Medina of Sikhs. And yet, I ask this question, "How many of the Sikhs who go to Lahore even go to Sain Mian's place?" You may not go there to worship, we're not asking with worship, but as much as I can worship at my home, I don't need to go to [inaudible] to worship, because there is no place for pilgrimage in the Sikh philosophy. But yet, people do go because of their hearts being attached to those places. Something reminds them, "By my going to Baba Farid's place, or by my going to Sain Miam's place, I'm not worshiping there, something attaches and reminds me of the value systems of what my forefathers used to strive for." And therefore, how many of Muslims are going to Guru Nanak's place, a tradition of Punjabis, where we used to coexist amongst each other, today are divided. And it has been many times at [inaudible] Gurdwara in Lahore, where Guru [inaudible] was martyred, when the security people asked my friend, a Muslim friend, to show his identity card, and stopped him from going inside because he's a believer of Muslim faith, it pains me. And I've asked him so many times, "Why would you stop him to go inside?" He says, "It's for your security, sir." And I say, "You know what, if you have to give my security, put three layers of security out here, check them, but don't stop them from going inside because he create barriers. How do we come together as people?" So that's what has happened as our philosophies have gotten divided. I want to talk about some frescoes. Punjabis respected Guru Nanak. And therefore, I -- in comparative understanding of religions, one has to now go into the other faiths to understand, "How did they view my faith?" But when I ran into a lot of these frescoes inside the temples, which have also been equally lying abandoned, most of the temples you'll find these frescoes or the Sikh gurus, the Guru Nanak is sitting and the nine Sikh gurus along with him, and [inaudible]. Now, whatever did the other items and other things inside, the point I'm trying to simply reflect out here is the believers of that faith equally respected the Sikh tradition. And this has gotten fragmented, this has gotten finished off in East India; because we have gotten compartmentalized into who we are. We don't need to become the other faith. I know organized religions always have their own boundaries. But we don't need to forget that the others and your forefathers were respecting these visionary people, whic, because Punjab went to not one division, Punjab has gone through five divisions, once in the creation of 1947 of India and Pakistan. Thereafter India itself got divided into Chandigarh, into Himachal, into Haryana, and into Punjab. What we are left with Punjab is not what our forefathers had played in a turf, which ran from Chandigarh and beyond right up to Lakibar. That's the land where our forefathers return together across faiths. And this is what these frescoes tell us, that people of all faiths respected the Sikh religion also. ^M01:27:13 ^M01:27:14 >> Where is this from? >> Amardeep Singh: Oh, this one is from [inaudible] is a village. But you know what, how many of these do you want? My depository is filled with such pictures. >> Was all that at [inaudible]? >> Amardeep Singh: Pardon me, [foreign language]? >> Was all this at [inaudible]? >> Amardeep Singh: Of course, of course; there's always [phonetic]. >> It's symbolic. >> Amardeep Singh: It's symbolic, yes. You know, it takes -- it requires a different mind or a different attention to go into these art forms of that and even start looking at these all the way in the bad shape, to understand even these small things, if you're noticing a tree, I'm sure you put a more concentrated vision into this, you will find so many things coming out, as you will see in the next one, I'll tell you what I saw. Because you need a minute observation of these things to understand. If you just go to give a peripheral cursory glance, you will not understand most the things. So I went into the mausoleum of Hazrat Shah Shams Tabrez of Multan. Because the [inaudible] Multan, Multan was a land of Sufis. The Sufis sent him a bowl of milk, symbolizing that this place is filled with spiritual people; there's no place for anyone else. He kept a few jasmine petals, saying that the milk that did not spill; all can coexist. And the milk -- the bowl was sent back. Then after then he came inside Multan, and he went inside to this place of Hazrat Shah Shams Tabrez, and there is to be historical [inaudible] say that there should be Gurdwara close to this. Remembering Guru Nanak's visit, I could not find the remains of the Gurdwara, but what I found was as I entered, this Baba was sitting here. And he tells me after ages the Sikh has returned. And as I walked inside and went around on these fresco -- on these wall paintings and so on, so forth, what you look at it is out here. And I've given this in my first book, what you find is names written in Gurmukhi of Sikhs. Now, I came running back to this Baba, and I said, "You said after ages, the Sikh has come back. Who is writing these Gurmukhi names?" Because in Pakistan, no one's writing Gurmukhi names up here, right, and these are very old Scripture writings, right? So he says, "Oh, these were written before 1947." Now, what it means is because Guru Nanak came here, there was a crisscrossing. No one is saying that we are believing in the grave, or we are doing this and that; that [inaudible] theology and philosophy aspects. But simply as a mark of respect, sometimes traditions remind us of our leaders. Why do we follow our leaders' traditions; it's because it reminds us of what the message they were trying to convey. Right; and that's what to me this was reflective of that our forefathers had no barriers to go into this place to remember what Nanak was actually pursuing. And therefore, architectural message, I want to talk about the [inaudible] Gurdwara, there is place that can we restore as a collective fort, because the Pakistan government has moved a lot from the time in 1947 when only Nanganaside was operational, to today there are 24 historical Gurdwaras that are operational. Now, I'm not talking about the 200 Gurdwaras of Nanak Panthis that are seen in Baluchistan, who have community Gurdwaras of the people who are living there. But I'm talking about the historical Gurdwaras, they've renovated about 24 of them. But are they renovated in the way history and the heritage -- not the history, the heritage should be maintained; I think that's where the a question mark is, and I think that's a problem not just of Pakistan, that's a problem of the entire Punjabi community, I would say. Because I've been to the mausoleum of [inaudible]. I've been to Varishad's [phonetic] mausoleum, and I find that they have also been modernized to the last bit. The problem is of the culture, the people who don't understand what heritage maintenance is. You don't build on the heritage, you build around it. You preserve that grave. You build around it. You don't build on that grave a more modern grave. Right; I think that's the problem. So most of the Gurdwaras that our own Sikh people are coming in with pot loads of money to Pakistan, the Pakistan actually [inaudible] has been giving out contracts. I think the intent is that, "Oh, we want to help you. Please go ahead and maintain." But these people are not qualified to maintain, because in East Punjab, they've destroyed everything. And I keep telling after these two works in my brief discussion that I'm having with the Iraqi Trust Property Board [phonetic] in Pakistan so that this heritage belongs to Pakistan. My forefathers left it for you. As much as they say that this belongs to them and the people from the Sikh community who were coming in with pot loads of money to restore them, it also belongs to me equally. And I'm trying to tell you [inaudible] that don't give the contracts unless you've got rules of engagement, that don't let this heritage buildings be cut, and what do they do, marble and gold, because these are the last remains of Sikh heritage left anywhere in the world, and it's in Pakistan. It's your responsibility to maintain it. The question is, "When will it become our responsibility to maintain it?" I don't think we can restore everything. The question is, "Can the Sikh community come together across the world to say we will pick up two or three such monuments, and restore them in the manner our forefathers left it, as a last site of what our generations ahead can see that, "Here are the two, three monuments we left for you in the right way." Yes; so I think there's something for us to think. I think the Pakistan government will collaborate. But we need to come to the right plan. And this cannot be done just by Amardeep, because I'm a researcher, I'm a writer, I'm a -- I'm getting new thought, new things out to you all. The question is, "How do we rally around it as a cause?" Moral depictions; these monuments have moral depictions that go beyond faith. And moral depictions always convey a story. In the past -- in the Gurdwaras [inaudible], I've seen depictions of even things like Shravan Kumar. Now, Shravan Kumar may not look like a Sikh of totally like a turban-wearing and so on, so forth. But organized religion has got its own space, but the modern traditions could cut across faiths. Because Shravan Kumar is a beautiful story of a man of the Indian subcontinent. The story what is being said out here is that when his parents were very aged, they wanted to go around on a pilgrimage, and he offered his shoulder to put them into a basket and walk them across the continent to actually -- subcontinent to take them to these places of worship, because he respected them. The story is out here of how to respect your parents. It's nothing the religion. And these frescoes actually found a place. And therefore, I'm looking at this monument out here, which I talked about, the Banoliber [phonetic], the first copy of the [inaudible], which was written out here. The beautiful building from inside, when I look at it, from outside the frescoes have no restriction of any faith. Inside the restrictions of the faith are that it's only the Sikh guru's frescoes which are made. And in the center when the -- where the worship would happen, only words are written out here, words from the Scripture. Now, to me the message is that all are welcome, and therefore there's no restriction of faith, and the Sikh gurus are holding their hand and taking the center where only the word matters, only the message of the Grant, which is the word which matters. And therefore when I'm looking at all this, I'm standing in the Pakistan side in the village called "Ganda Singh". This is Ganda Singh Wala. It's a Sikh name. And I'm looking at the other side, the village on the other side of the water is Philosport [phonetic]. "Philosport" is an Islamic name, "Philos" [phonetic], and here is Ganda Singh. The irony is Punjab could have never been divided. And as I'm standing and looking at the irony of the two villages, Philosport and Ganda Singh, a Muslim village on that side and Ganda Singh out here, I've seen so many of them. Kilajivan Singh [phonetic] in Pakistan and [inaudible] on the other side in India. Right; Islamic name on that side, the Sikh name on this side. It reminds me that for the Punjabis, it is felt like the left their jackets in India and their trousers in Pakistan. Of course, they can't even dress up after that, right? And therefore, when I went to Jalan Gurdwara, I've looked at these boards out there, the Gurdwaras, and the Gurdwaras are absolutely empty, no service has happened for seven decades. But yet out here it is written out here, "[Foreign language]." The morning prayer of the Sikhs, which is sung in every temple, is yet waiting for that to happen. And therefore, I'm reminded of the "Sounds of Silence" of Simon and Garfunkel, you hear that "Sound of Silence", the song tonight, and it reminds you of this, sometimes the sounds of silence can be actually deafening, because nothing has happened in these monuments for seven decades. And yet, the program says, "When is it going to happen; it's waiting as to." I want to talk about the uniqueness of recognizing all human race as one, because when you look at the data side [phonetic] Gurdwara, what I found is a beautiful coming together the plurality or the coming together of the communities. A Sikh -- a Pashtuns Sikh is sitting on the [inaudible] reading the Grant. The descendants -- the Muslim descendants of Baba Nanak -- [inaudible], the two of them [inaudible] out here and Nanak Banti [phonetic] sitting out here from Sindh. To me, this was an all inclusiveness message, which was plummeted in the Sikh faith o come together, right? But today, it has come too hard that maybe these people will not get accepted by us. But in Pakistan, they are existing. And this is the beauty of the coexistence. And therefore, I want to -- in the [inaudible] of time, I'm not going to show the video of this one, but this is a Muslim community of descendants of [inaudible] best friend, who actually are yet doing the [inaudible] inside the data side Gurdwara for ten minutes every Sunday. And the interesting thing that they told me is that the irony of Partition is such that my forefathers used to do [inaudible] at the Golden Temple, and [inaudible]. And when Partition happened, we moved the site -- our father moved the site with the hope that we will go back. But the Partition line was so hard that they could never go back. And two of the ironies that we're seeing in these Gurdwaras out here, but there's not a single Sikh to hurt us [phonetic]. I mean, we are seeing the walls [phonetic] basically out here. Culture and art; I want to show this place, which is pretty much destroyed and finished because the communities are gone. This is a place which was of the Udases. The Nanak Bhanti [phonetic] tradition was very, very big. And the Udases tradition, I want to just make one point out here, because I've tried to go into the places of the others, because these don't exist in India. ^M01:37:36 ^M01:37:37 The Udasi tradition places have all been, again, plastered, and whitened, and turned into glittering places, and there's nothing of past left. Now, and Pakistan as I've gone inside these. Although it looks like a pretty bad state, it's in Pakistan's heritage. I think the Pakistan government should maintain this place [inaudible] beautiful frescoes inside it. There's a fresco here I found of what my forefathers -- today the Western world is talking about women's empowerment, and way back in 1600s, it shows of women going for hunt, and men were sitting and chilling with hawks sitting in their hands, right? So that's a women's empowerment, which was way, way ahead, right? And looking at these frescoes, all I can take away is 90% of these frescoes are about Sikh traditions, the Sikh gurus, the Sikh military traditions, the Sikh stories, and so, so forth. And when I look at them, I say, "You know what, yes, the Udasi tradition is not considered to be a part of the Sikh faith today, but somehow these people felt so close to us that they were drawing only the Sikh traditions in their art form. Why would someone draw the Sikh tradition if they were not actually close to us," is the question that I ask. I don't have the answers to these, but it's a question I ask. They believed in us, that's why they do it, right? And therefore, I'm just bringing this to an end with the last two slides. Amongst all these emotions, as close to the [inaudible], dividing India and Pakistan, I walked into the remains of this Gurdwara, made in the memory of the third Sikh guru. Most of it is -- all of it has fallen off [inaudible] land. Only one section of it is standing, and that, too, it's leaning. I call it as "The Leaning Tower of Punjab". And as I'm looking at it, I walked in and I touched it, after having photographed it. And as I touched it, it spoke to me. And I want to share with you what it spoke to me; because it's very relevant because it raised a question for me afterwards in my mind. It says to me, "Welcome back. Welcome back. Where were you for seven decades?" And I kept hearing it, and it says, "Where were you for seven decades, because when [inaudible] from Persia came, massacred your community, Amachob Dali [phonetic] came, massacred what you call as the 'First Holocaust' and the 'Second Holocaust' in the Sikh history, what is known as 'Pella Kalukala' and 'Second Kalukala' [phonetic]. Yet you stayed here. So what happened in 1947 that you simply chose to walk away? Did you not have a moral responsibility towards us?" Now, this is the monument that's asking. I know the history. So a lot of time, people start getting up and telling me, "Why have you walked away." I know the history, so let's not waste time on that, right? But the fact is the monument's emotion which says, "Why did you walk away?" And as I walked away, I asked myself this question, "Was there a solution where we could have coexisted on both the sides of the border?" I don't know the answer. But I know that the Sikhs were 18% of the greater Punjab's population. We were going to be -- we were a minority, we had a kingdom, we had an empire. We were a minority. We are still a minority everywhere in the world, and if the nation was being divided, we would have been a minority on both the sites. That wouldn't have changed. So could there have been a solution that we could have coexisted on both sides of the border? I don't know the answer, but it was a very important question that I still ponder upon. And I want to end on a positive note, because at Vaishali [phonetic] when I went in, this old man saw me, and he gives me a big hug; and this is the human emotion that you need to anchor on, works of monuments, works of tangible, intangible. There's enough to read on it and the human emotions interspersed. But at the end of the day, I believe in the human values. Because as I walked in, he gives me a big hug and he says in Punjabi and I've translated it, and he says, "[Foreign language]." What he's saying is, "By looking at you today, I'm reminded by my childhood friend, [inaudible]," whom he has not met for seven decades, Because the lines divided them. And as I was coming out from of Baba [inaudible] mausoleum, the great Sufi poet, who are not just the Muslims and the Sufis, if you are Sikhs, Hindus, everyone, [inaudible] and I was coming out this man limping on the other side of the road says to me, "[Foreign language]," "Welcome." And he comes rushing this side. This shop is not his, but he picks up the petals. And in that moment, a friend of my took this picture. And he showers those petals on me, and he says, "If I cut my finger, and if I cut your finger, does blood flow in yours, and does milk flow in mine?" And I want to end here, because this is about a human story and this human story applies to all communities. I have chosen to study it from a Sikh lens perspective. If I'm given a chance to do this from any other community's perspective, Hindu or Muslim, I think the story of Partition will be the same. Thank you very much. I'm happy to take any questions. I know we've got just now about ten minutes or so, so I can take a few questions if you want. ^M01:42:35 [ Applause ] ^M01:42:45 So in asking questions, again, as Jonathan said, by request let's not tell our comments, because time is little, okay? If there any questions, I'm happy to take them. >> So Amardeep, [inaudible]. >> Amardeep Singh: So I -- >> Sorry, can you please repeat that? >> Oh; how many years did you spend [inaudible]? >> Amardeep Singh: So as I said to you -- maybe you missed it in the beginning, you came late, I went into Pakistan in 2014 first. And by now, it's been three and a half years that I've spent in these two publications, which are these two text publications. Now, these are available and if you want, you can actually go to amazon.com and write for the books' names or you can go to lostheritagebook.com and order there, or if you go to Rajwant, he's sitting here, and you can tell him -- he's bringing in some books. He can actually arrange to have it -- give it to you. You can meet Rajwant afterwards. But to answer to your question is so these two books from the research to the completion for both the books has taken me three and a half years from the time I stepped into Pakistan in 2014. But actually, I tell you that it's a journey of over 30 years, because over 30 years, I did not know what I was doing; I was doing my job and I was just doing all kinds of spirituality studying, and faith studying, history studying, photography, writing for magazines. I think those all those skills came in handy the day my corporate career ended, not knowingly why it was ending, I was in a confused state, but the new door opened. And I think that's when now I can rationalize and say actually God was preparing me for 30 years. I think it's a very tough task to do if you just walk into the country today and think you can replicate this, because a lot of energies over a period of time actually come together. Yes? >> Okay. >> Amardeep Singh: Yes. >> Because three and a half years is not enough to do what you did. You know, so it's - >> Amardeep Singh: No, it's not. I'm running at a [inaudible] pace. I only know it's taking a toll on body, on my mind. I'm hitting a roadblock. There's a lot of challenges around. Each book is six years' PhD work. It can -- in an academic environment, it takes 12 years to 13 years to do it. But yet, we got it from three to three and a half years. Yes. >> [Inaudible]; I'm really touched [inaudible], then I'm going to ask you a question. [Foreign language] and he said, "How long you have been here?" [Inaudible]. So I said, "How about you?" He said, "I just came here." I said, "And welcome to the United States." So he was talking Punjabi, and I could figure out, because I'm from Pakistan. I said, "You are touched me, you know, he said that about ten years back I met a young lady, who was left as a orphan, you know, in Pakistan. Actually, her mother was left [inaudible]. And the reason I [inaudible], "That's wonderful." And then he showed me his [inaudible]. And I said, "Oh, that's wonderful," you know. He said, "I'm half Sikh." Well, I asked him, you know, "Very impressed." So he felt [inaudible] "Why, because I'm Sikh," because she belonged to a Sikh family. And he tells me, "That's why I go to Gurdwara." And I said, "That's wonderful." But I didn't ask him how they both manage, you know, because [inaudible]. And then he asked me a question that, "I have a son who only wants to marry a Sikh woman." So I felt -- I wanted to ask -- and this happened today, you know, so I want to ask you -- and you know, in your research over there, did you meet anybody who was himself Sikh descendant? >> Amardeep Singh: How many do you want me to [inaudible]? [Laughter] There's an entire communities living there who don't -- so there are -- as I said, there are one million people who are Sikhs themselves who are sitting there, who are proud Sikhs, in their mind they're Sikhs. There are 14,000 turban-wearing Sikhs whom we think of as Sikhs, and whom the Pakistani government counts as Sikhs. But the hearts of one million people are believers of Sikh faith. That's the Sikhs themselves. How many people do you want me to count? There are many -- people have mentioned whom I've met, had lunch with them, had stayed with them who have Sikh backgrounds, but had to change their faith, either of choice, either of the compulsion, either of the circumstances. My own distant aunt's story in the book, "Meeting Moody," who was just 20 is there. My own real aunt's two sons had lived as Christians inside [inaudible] for two years, because they were five and six years old and their parents were departed from -- were separated from them in the [inaudible] massacre, and then they were found after about three to four years. My book starts on that story. There are umpteen number of instances like this. The upheaval that happened was one million people died, ten million people moved. The cultures have shifted. The people from the Indus -- from the Gangetic belt were thrust into the Indus belt, and the people of the Indus belt thrust elsewhere. It's a hodgepodge that has happened. Languages, the issues that we're talking about, the people in the Gangetic belt don't understand the history and the faiths, how they intertwined in this beautiful land of Indus. We were never separate. The Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims, they were fractured, hairline fracture but knew how to live together for centuries. And that's why poetry are beautiful things. Scriptures reflect that, right? But yet, when partition happened, people who were not even knowing of this culture were thrust into this land, and therefore emerged a total confused state of mind on both sides of the border. We have to go back to humanity. Yes. ^M01:48:58 [ Inaudible Comment ] ^M01:49:03 Amardeep Singh: [Laughs] So the next steps basically, you know -- okay, the short answer to that would be I don't know. I have no idea. I am living in a creative space after my 25 years of corporate world where I wish to make five-year plan, ten-year plan, 20-year plan, and never achieve them anyway. And now, I make no plans and something happens. Right; so I don't know. But I am under immense internal turmoil, and I think the internal turmoil should be there, because if you don't have the internal turmoil, the creative space cannot generate anything. And Gurbani [phonetic] says this very well, "[Foreign language]," "Douk" [phonetic] is "Sadness becomes your medicine, the remedy, and happiness becomes your source of pulling you down, your disease," right? And I think the unhappiness is not the unhappiness from the world, but it's the state of my mind that I grapple with day in and day out, because my project seems to be coming to an end. And do I go on this path further? There are Nanak Panthis who are waiting to be called, and to be addressed, and to be studied. How do I do it; I don't know. Can I do it; I don't know. There is a world which requires financial commitment. There's a family that requires -- I don't know how to do it. But last time I was thrust into this by some unknown force, will it thrust me into it again? I just need to eat bread and butter; I don't need to become a wealthy man. But what I'm leaving here I know is the wealth for the future communities to come. >> Thank you Amardeep, thank [inaudible] organize this. Do you think the -- what Sikh has just kind of -- in the middle of [inaudible], right? And everything that you're doing, everything in the same timeframe of the last four, five, ten years there have been other projects as well going on related to Sikh, and preservation, and revival. Can that -- can the -- some of the effects of the -- what happened in '47, can they be reversed? >> Amardeep Singh: Of course. >> Since -- okay. >> Amardeep Singh: Okay, go ahead. >> The access can be better and access to [inaudible] -- >> Amardeep Singh: If you don't believe in something, nothing is going to happen. If I didn't believe that I could generate a research, just my own belief, nothing would have happened. I think everything stems from belief. So we have to believe that we can change the world for positivity, right? Then, things will start happening. As far as you saying that so much is happening around, yes, a lot is happening. But if I'm going to be very myopic on this subject oSikh legacy in Pakistan, sorry, I'm going to ask you, "What else has happened in seven decades, other than just maintaining the [inaudible], going around and around in circles, whitening them, putting gold, putting, you know, money inside it, giving more money to people to go and destroy more of our heritage, what else has happened? Nothing. It's taken you seven decades to generate anything on a legacy. Some Gurdwara books have been generated, but it's all Gurdwara centric, and legacy is not religion. So I don't think anything has happened as yet. Things can happen. What I think is that what we're leaving in the forms of these 1,000 pages is a dialogue initiator. It's the foundation of something on which both by the Pakistan people, and for the Sikhs, and for the Hindus, and for the Muslims that allows us to come together and say, "Oh, my God, we have forgotten this." I think my work should inspire a Muslim to get up and do the same thing in East Punjab. I think my work should inspire a [inaudible] Hindu for doing the same thing in Pakistan. And when we can do it altogether, it's not for Sikh, it's for a bigger picture about all coming together. But from a Sikh perspective, I hope these two works become the foundation of us to get -- build castles on them, but without having the data, you cannot do anything. I'll tell you I met the Iraqi Trust Property Board in February this time with the head of the Iraqi Trust Property Board he's looking at [inaudible] at my books that I gifted them, and he's asking a very interesting question and that -- and therein lies the answer of hope and what we can do. He's opening the book and he says, "Where is this place?" And I'm looking at him and I said, "Some of my forefathers left it in your custody. You tell me where is it." He called this man, "Get the register. See if this place is there." What I'm trying to say is people do jobs; bureaucrats do jobs. They are there for three to four years to do a job. First year they're trying to learn, second year they are trying to grapple, third year they are trying to look at the next exit plan; next job. Who's doing the job of maintaining and doing things? And then comes to our community with pot loads of money. They open the doors for us to actually go and preserve it. And the preservation is not heritage maintenance, and it's heritage destruction. So when he's asking a question, "Where is this place," I am happy he's asking the question, because now the data is lying on his table. And he tells the man, "Make a trip. Next fortnight, I want to go to Sindh and see [inaudible]. I want to see this place." Whether something happens or no, what is the momentum we can build, time will tell. Can I lead everything; no I'm one man right now. Can we come together and do something, I think we can. A lot can happen. I think the intent is there. The government has the intent. The question is, "How do we navigate through this? How do we not get stuck in our mud slingings and think of a bigger picture," because a lot needs to be done. >> Jonathan Loar: And I think we have time for just one more question. >> Amardeep Singh: Sure. I'll take hers. >> I was curious to hear what the response has been when you approached either [inaudible] in India, but specifically from the Indian government and Sikhs living in India; because I feel like how we are [inaudible] or at least my generation were born and raised in the States. We -- I'd like to think that we have a very secular view of Sikhs. But we feel like there was a disconnect between us and older generations or how to practiced in India now. So how has the response been? >> Amardeep Singh: Response to what? >> Response to this project about that our roots are in Pakistan. You know, there's so much that we, you know, have neglected, or we haven't been able to go back to. So -- >> Amardeep Singh: So I think response is the same everywhere. It's got nothing to do with India, Pakistan, or US, or UK, whatever Sikh communities, response is the same. The struggle for me as an individual has been the belief that I have in me that this needs to be done, and struggling to do it, to do it, and get it to a point where it is now, and now engaging with communities to bring them together. It has not been easy. But in that process, the question is maintenance of the monument is a far off vision. In the midterm, I'm only having dialogues with the Pakistan government. I'm having dialogues with very different people. But yet we are not able to come together as a cohesive force. But I believe somewhere it has to start. Because if you start, magnets will actually pull us together. But if you are doing the right thing, right things will come together. So as of right now, these are early days. We are not able to pull together to people to own a monument and preserve it. That's number one. The number two is a short-term approach is in India, for instance, I'm seeing, you know, you can afford these books. These books are not easy to do. You have to give up huge amounts; you have to do research costs, you have to throw money to get the data out inside. You physically go and do it. And then printing the publication gets expensive in India, for the common man in India. For Pakistan, it gets expensive. My vision is you can afford it in these worlds because your purchasing power is much bigger. But in India, it always gets questioned, "Why are the books so expensive?" They are seeing it as a book, they're not seeing the experience and the things that have gone behind it. And I'm telling this about your own heritage. When are you going to own it? They are not even wanting -- an organization in India has not even supported me to my simple program that I'm saying, "Help me put these books inside the libraries of Sikh institutions inside." It's been three years now; not a single organization in India -- in Punjab has come forward to say, "We will take 200 books to put them inside the schools and colleges." Because the next generation needs to see it. They were not seen for seven decades. That's the kind of blankness that you see, right? So that's the big issue out here. I'm saying why should the Pakistanis not have these books? Because I get every month five to six people asking me in Pakistan -- from Pakistan, "I want to do a PhD work on this. I will look at the Sikh murals. I want to see it -- understand some Sikh theology, Sikh architecture." And I'm believing that these books need to be put out there. You know what, it's a big problem to get these books inside the institutions there, because from India you have to move a huge amounts of books. How can we enable this through a partnership with the Pakistan government, and who will support this? If I'm going to expect that each individual organization is going to actually bring in a book, it may not happen. [Inaudible] Sikh man who says, "You know what, I'm going to sponsor a hundred books for your project and get them inside." I'm struggling to get that. So it is a struggle; it's not easy. And the last thing what I'm saying is when I look at Nanak Panthis sitting there, let's talk about where is Amardeep in all of this? Amardeep's fluent in [inaudible]; I have the ability to do that. I've done two publications in a very short time. Do I want to study in Nanak Panthis and understand and document them for our next generations? It's a project that needs to be done. Am I getting support? I'm really hitting a head block -- a roadblock; I don't know where to go now from here, because I'm not associated with an institution. I don't have grants with me. I'm just doing it on my own. So all I'm trying to tell you is it's a challenging task. But I believe if you do the things right, if we lay the foundation on this, someone is going to build the castle. Will it be me who will build it, I don't know. But someone is going to build it for sure. >> Jonathan Loar: And I think on that note that brings our great lecture for today to a close. It's an incredible journey on an important topic, and a very powerful presentation that we have the honor to hear today. >> Amardeep Singh: Thank you. >> Jonathan Loar: So thank you very much for coming, Amardeep Singh. Let's give him [inaudible]. ^M01:59:02 [ Applause ] ^M01:59:08 >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc.gov. ^E01:59:14