My dad went to the Gurdwara this evening and got
this from there. Bhagat Puran Singh is the only person to get the title of 'Bhagat' in modern times. And he did not bestow this title on himself, as so many have done in the past 20 years, it was the Panth that gave him this great honour.
The world talks of
Mother Teresa and how she cared for the underprivileged living in the slums of Calcutta. Everyone around the globe knows her. Recently there was talk about speeding up the process to make her a saint. You ask a Punjabi kid about her and they’ll tell you all about her. But when you mention Bhagat Puran Singh’s name, 9 times out of 10 you’ll get a blank stare.
While the Gurdwara managements around the world were tangled up in a never ending struggle for power and money one man was serving humankind. He started pinglewara, an orphanage that gave shelter to the helpless and so much more. Everyone watched, amazed, gave him awards and honours yet kept watching not lending a hand to his mission to rid humanity of suffering. Till his dying days he went out and with his own hands cared for those that even Mother Teresa would have had trouble looking at.
The real tragedy lies in Sikhs not telling the world about him. Why does every Sikh know who Indra Gandhi was and what she did and not Bhagat Puran Singh? When Jatehdars fought 30,000miles away it got front page coverage in the Vancouver papers by Salim Jiwa and Kim Bolan. Why didn’t we ever get to see even an 1/8th of a page story about him in our so called panthic newspapers?
Mother Teresa won the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize because of the notoriety and media coverage that the west gave her. Bhagat Puran Singh Ji was a candidate who could have easily won not only this but a 100 other international honors. But WE were busy doing other things...
It’s about time people knew about Sikhs that have made a positive contribution.
On June 19th at 1:30pm a
video will be shown about the life of this Great man at Gurdwara Singh Sabha(132St. & 81Ave.)
