February 24 is a very special day for us, it is the day when Giani Gurdit Singh ji was born in 1923. He is no longer with us, and we miss him, even as we still feel his presence in our day-to-day lives.

Here is a picture gallery of his life and times:

Today, the Punjabi daily Ajit, published an article on Papa by Dr D B Rai on its editorial page. Please click here to read it or here to read the e-paper version.

Those who read English may like to read an article on Papa that I wrote after he passed away on 2007. Please click here to read it.

Doordarshan had made a documentary on Giani Gurdit Singh ji. Please click here to see it These are the links to the second and third part of the documentary.

In 2008, we released Giani Gurdit Singh 1923-2007. Please click here to read a report of the event.

Here are some photographs of the book release function:

In Punjab, educating daughters is a tradition

PUNJAB has a higher female literacy rate than the national average, and in fact for both urban and rural sectors, it is higher than most of the states, says a new study by the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO). Punjab’s female literacy rate for rural areas is 56 per cent, against the national average of 53.5. In urban areas, it matches the national average of 77.

The distressing fact about the killing of unborn daughters that is still widespread in the state has eclipsed the major achievement in women’s education.

In fact, the tradition of female education in Punjab is an old one. Bhai Takhat Singh started Sikh Kanya Mahavidalya, Ferozepore, in 1890. The first boarding school for girls opened in 1894. A school for women was started in Barnala by Bibi Pardhan Kaur, daughter of Baba Ala Singh, the founder of Patiala dynasty.

She rides to school, and a better future

Educated women were looked up to, and in villages, women of families that could afford the expenses were sent to school and college for education. At the turn of the 20th century, many women attended college. Because of cultural sensitivities, most of the girls were sent to colleges that were set up exclusively for them, and thus you have such fine institutions that trace their origins to pre-Independence days as Sarup Rani Government College for Women, Amritsar (established in 1932), Government College for Girls, Patiala (1942), Government College for Women, Ludhiana (1943), and Hans Raj Mahila Maha Vidyalaya, Jalandhar (established at Lahore in 1927, shifted to Jalandhar in 1948).

While the British Indian government set up the basic infrastructure for modern education in India, the Singh Sabha and DAV movements, as well as the Sikh Education Society run by the Chief Khalsa Diwan, all emphasised the need to set up educational institutions for the uplift of women.

Punjabi women have done the state proud by their achievements. Mrs Serla Grewal, a Panjab University student, reached the top in the civil service, starting from the office of Deputy Commissioner, Shimla, to become the Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister and Governor of Madhya Pradesh.

Mrs Inderjit Kaur Sandhu, who studied at Lahore and Patiala, was Vice-Chancellor, Punjabi University, Patiala, and Chairman, Staff Selection Commission, New Delhi. Dr Kiran Bedi, a former student of GCW, Amritsar, reached the top of the Indian Police Service.The late Mrs Beant Kaur was India’s first woman pilot.

Creatively, women have done extremely well. The late Amrita Pritam and Dilip Kaur Tiwana are among the top eminent writers in Punjabi. Rani Balbir Kaur and Neelam Man Singh have successfully straddled the world of academia and Punjabi theatre. Amrita Sher-Gil was a legendary artist. Delhi-based writer Ajeet Cour and her artist daughter, Arpna Cour, are rooted in Punjabi culture.

Many of the people who rose high in their profession came from rural areas, though often they had to get to urban centres for their education. Today, there are many rural colleges too, which have excellent educational facilities.

In a study of the changing lifestyle and social transformation of rural Jat Sikh women in Punjab, Dr Amarinder Sandhu, a sociologist, found that an increasing number of people send their daughters to school. Once they are educated, women withdraw from farm work, and seek career options, especially in teaching and nursing.

She found that people look at education as an investment which helps their daughters in gainful employment, fetches them a better match and helps them in cases of separation or widowhood. However, but many lamented that if the daughters are educated too much, it becomes difficult to find a suitable match. Education has also led to a sharp increase in the age when girls get married. Interestingly, she also found that people educate daughters more than the sons; because they say that the returns are going to be good, “because boys know that they can fall back on property, whereas the girls just want to get out of the rural ethos.” The NSSO study supports this finding, since the male literacy rate in Punjab (85 urban, 75 rural) is below the national average.

“Girls are being educated to work, though the desire to have a girl child is generally still not there,” says Lucy Haugh, who has studied women, both in India and in her native US since 1965.

She has touched a raw nerve there. Along with the high literacy rate has come the news that Punjab still has a shameful record of a high female foeticide rate. Only when this stops can it be said that the Punjabis are truly educated in the real sense of the word!

This article by Roopinder Singh was printed on the Education page of The Tribune on November 25, 2008.

LOVE is in the air these days, much more expressively than in my younger days, but I must admit to have written a love letter or two. The objects of this rather public confession were intensely private missives, ones that seemed at that time to express the deepest feelings that I had for the person they were addressed to. You know, it took time, and a lot of guts: “Pyar ka pehla khat likhne mein, Waqt to lagta hai, Naye parindon ko udne mein, Waqt to lagta hai.”

Before you launched your missive, you crafted it. Sometimes your emotions simply poured out on paper, many, many sheets of ruled notebooks, spotless sheets of shining white paper and sometimes scented stationery. The message, the medium, and the whole experience sought to convey much more than mere words could.

I have never spoken or written about these love letters, and now would be as bad a time as any to discuss them or their contents. Yet, I am doing so, and the reason for this somewhat uncharacteristic indiscretion is an advertorial that I have just seen. Something called the “Google Docs: A love letter”, which over two lakh viewers have already watched on YouTube.

Call it a generation gap or whatever, I am simply appalled, amazed is a politer term, at the very idea of someone sharing his or her most intimate thoughts with others. At least in my days, when we wrote a love letter it was (ideally) meant to be strictly personal between the two of us. When you bared your soul, you would be accorded the courtesy of privacy, at least that was the presumption. Sometimes you hit a very wrong number and became an object of ridicule, but for most of us, privacy was an essential part of such an exchange.

Of course, for some this opportunity was simply not available, since they were not educated. In came the ‘Dakiya daak laya, daakiya daak laya‘ option. The somewhat educated and definitely literate postman was used by the masses to convey their message of love to those in distant lands, often he also acted as the scribe.

Before I deride Google Docs on the corroborative issue, it must be admitted that this is hardly a new idea. In college, I remember one time when a college mate tried out the collaborative route.

The amorous young man asked some Dada friends to help him out with snagging a date. The only thing, which these worthies had in common, was their absolute ignorance of the fairer sex. It is not that they could not talk to girls. It was a matter of record that they could say a ‘Hello!’ Beyond that, they became tongue-tied.

Yet, they were more than up to the task of telling others what to do. This poor chap followed their advice. His flowery presentation left her unmoved and she shared the experience with others. The affair that had hitherto been confined to his head now made him the laughing stock of the university.

Now, to be fair to Google, they have taken a diametrically opposite route. Michael writes out a long, elaborate, and flowery letter, quoting Shakespeare, throwing in a bit of French, and even including an elaborate list of possible date activities.

He asks his friends to help and they collaborate to produce the perfect letter for Jessica, whom Michael has met at the beginners’ French class. They do so by pruning the unnecessary flourishes and emotions in Michael’s letter to make it a simple request to meet after class. In the process, someone has included Jessica, too, by saying: “I know that I shouldn’t be showing you this, but this is so cute…”

Jessica accepts the request for coffee after the class, but with the proviso that next time he should ask her in person. Now, isn’t that simple! If only my friend in college had known not to seek advice but follow the dictates of his heart by directly addressing the girl, he might well have succeeded.

This middle, by Roopinder Singh, was published in The Tribune on February 14, 2011

Google love-letter, a middle published on Valentine's Day 2011