A Spectrum of Circuits
Raminder Kaur
You do not need to go far in Amritsar without seeing signs of British colonialism repurposed for the Indian context, and increasingly evidence of British Asian connections across the old city. Aside from London, it is Birmingham that is most known from UK cities with Panjabi residents, largely due to diasporic connections and visits. An estimated 135,000 Sikhs reside in the West Midlands region, most of whom appreciate the direct flights from Birmingham to Amritsar that have been set up over the last decade to cater to these transnational circuits.
More so than the British capital, Birmingham has much material presence in Amritsar through its residents and organisations. This is notable with the work of the Guru Nanak Nishkam Sewak Jatha (GNNSJ) that has its headquarters on Soho Road in Handsworth just outside the centre of the city (Figure 1). Under the charismatic lead of Bhai Sahib, Dr Mohinder Singh OBE, KSG (Papal Knighthood of St. Gregory the Great), the GNNSJ gurdwara committee have channelled donations from communities who come from near and far to pay their respects in this centre of purist veneration. Established in Birmingham in the late 1970s under the lead of Sant Baba Puran Singh of Kericho who had migrated from Kenya, the gurdwara is ‘dedicated to practicing and promoting nishkam (selfless) service’ and entirely run on volunteering. 
Figure 1. Guru Nanak Nishkam Sewak Jatha, a prominent gurdwara on Handsworth Road in Birmingham, UK.
The GNNSJ has grown to become a spiritual centre for practising Sikhs in the UK, serving about a million free meals a year and with donations that amount to millions of pounds. Not only have the funds been used to refurbish the gurdwara and its daily maintenance, but they have also played a lead in setting up a Healthcare Trust and schools in Handsworth, one of the most deprived areas of the city. Bhai Sahib has ongoing liaisons with other faith leaders with regular interfaith activities in liaison with the Fetzer Institute, the Elijah Board of World’s Religious Leaders, Religions for Peace and the United Nations.
Nevertheless, it is still historic gurdwaras in South Asia that hold more sway as hubs for pilgrimage. In Amritsar, the GNNSJ has a workshop close to the Akal Takht in the Harmandir Sahib complex to do sona ka seva (selfless service in gold). Here, Indian craftsmen diligently produce gilded work in 24 carat gold – the purest of the pure – destined to be mounted on the upper walls and roof of the Harmandir Sahib, giving the building a golder gleam than previous decades, under the keen supervision of the Birmingham-based committee. In addition, a trained jatha (group) would come from the Birmingham gurdwara every year to polish and replenish the gilded cladding and tend to any damage from urban pollution.
Just outside the Harmandir Sahib complex in the old bazaar is another GNNSJ workshop for minakari work. Here, craftsmen shape, paint and colour the surfaces of metal through enamelling, a process that originated in Safavid Iran. These were put to good use to embellish the interior of the Akal Takht located opposite the Harmandir Sahib that was destroyed by (para)military tank-fire in Operation Bluestar to oust Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and his followers who were becoming a threat to the then Congress government in 1984.
From 2000, the GNNSJ set out to build the Nishkam International Centre on the outskirts of the Harmandir Sahib complex, a sandstone place of residence that is autonomous from those managed by the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) with its base in the Harmandir Sahib complex. For about £20 a night, preference is given to visitors from UK especially Birmingham as it was their donations that funded the construction of the Centre. Included in their stay is a langar style breakfast and dinner - communal meals as if in a gurdwara. Often British Asian families reside here on their tour of the Panj Takhts, the five seats of supreme authority, in India. At each of these sites, the GNNSJ has donated funds for various kar seva activities. In Bihar, they restored and renovated Patna Sahib with a newly built dome with a span to be marvelled at. They also created the Ik Oankar Mool Mantar Asthaan in Sultanpur Lodhi in honour of the 550th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak Dev in 2019.
I met Bhai Sahib both in Amritsar and Birmingham. With frequent recourse to verses from the Shri Guru Granth Sahib in conversation, he is deeply motivated to merge service to humanity with faith, love, peace, and forgiveness adhering to the core principle of ‘sarbat da bhala’ – ‘may everyone prosper’. One of his creeds is to encourage ‘work in worship’ – an orientation towards one’s duties and donations with which the donor accrues ‘spiritual capital’. Trained in civil engineering, Bhai Sahib has a keen interest in heritage conservation as well as the natural and built environment, organising international events such as a conference on water that was held in Amritsar in 2023.
NRI Niwas
Other niwas (pilgrims’ residence) have been built around the Harmandir Sahib complex decade for NRIs (Non-Resident Indians as is the local parley in India for the diaspora), showing an increasing consolidation of transitional donations across countries over the last decade. The Council of Sikh Gurudwaras with its base in Birmingham has channelled funds from gurdwara up and down the UK to build the Guru Gobind Singh Niwas in 2012, a seven-storey structure just outside one of the entrances to the Harmandir Sahib complex. In 2018, the SGPC opened the Saragarhi Sarai on Heritage Street to tend to the increasing number of visitors to the complex. All these niwas are built for families - single people unwelcome in case they should invite others into their rooms or other problems that the management do not want to countenance.
These collectively funded projects through congregation (sangat) donations follow from individual donations in previous decades. Just opposite the Harmandir Sahib langar hall is the oldest niwas on the premises. The Guru Ram Das Niwas was built around a courtyard in the 1930s during the colonial era (Figure 2). From the inscriptions above doorways to rooms and on surrounding columns, it is evident that the ground floor was built with donations from around 1933, the second floor from around 1937, and the third floor from 1977. The ground floor is mainly built from contributions from those living in Amritsar or neighbouring regions. The second floor is similar but also has a series of ten donations from ‘sangat Kabul (Afghanistan)’.¹ On the third floor built in the 1970s with donations inscribed mainly in Gurmukhi (as used in Panjabi) and Roman scripts, we begin to see donations from diasporic Sikhs from further afield including: ‘1500 from Mr Gurmel Singh Dosanjh, Sweet Brial Road, Leicester U.K.’; ‘5000 Mrs Davinder Sethi W/O [wife of] Satdev Sethi of Manchister [sic] U.K C/O S. Amir Singh Bawa’; and ‘5000 seva from Bibi Surjit Kaur Pasture Road Leed-9 [sic] from England’.
Figure 2. Guru Ram Das Niwas, residence for pilgrims at Harmandir Sahib in Amritsar.
There are also Gurmukhi inscriptions on columns on the ground floor that indicate a portion of ‘safal kamai’ (successful earnings) and are mainly at the behest of those from Panjab with some hailing from New Delhi, Calcutta, Bombay, Nagpur, West Bengal, and Kabul; one of 101 rupees from ‘Jagjit Singh, son of Sant Singh from Manchester, UK’; and two from families based in ‘Warton Road in Canada’ for the construction of the third floor. The columns indicate smaller sums of donations when compared to singular blocks over doorways to rooms of a larger amount – about 500 rupees on average for rooms on the first floor rising to 5000 and more for the second and third floors.
Oral histories with interlocutors confirm that in the 1970s diasporic Sikhs were staying in such niwas when visiting the Harmandir Sahib for a night or two. At that time, arrangements to come to Amritsar were made for families to sleep in one room with basic provisions. It was a time when diasporic populations in the UK were not as established, and when touristic infrastructure in India was meagre. It was also a time where there were no queues to enter the sanctum sanctorum of the Harmandir Sahib in the middle of the sparkly sarovar, a fact that many of my older interlocutors remembered fondly.
Over time, the Guru Ramdas Niwas has not been maintained to the same standard, and along with the growth of other accommodation options, it has fallen out of favour for the diaspora who expect cleaner and more comfortable surroundings. For some time, the diaspora stayed in newer niwas nearby that also had air-conditioning as provided by the Guru Arjan Dev Niwas. But by the turn of the millennium even these became unpopular to be replaced by India-based pilgrims. Instead, those who can afford it choose to stay in international range hotels, knowing that here they do not need to worry too much about any stomach upsets with food and ‘could eat salads too’. The most popular hotel is within fifteen-minutes walking distance of the Harmandir Sahib that was opened in 2015 and provides a popular multi-cuisine buffet breakfast to boot for around £70 a night. Another more recent international chain opened even closer to the Harmandir Sahib at a slightly lower rate with more modern décor but no buffet breakfast.
These residences are essential for the British Asian diaspora who make plans years in advance especially if they had booked an akhand sahib at one of the smaller shrines around the Harmandir Sahib – now costing about £100 with a wait time of at least a year. For the akhand sahib, the entire scripture of the Shri Guru Grant Sahib is read from beginning to end over 3 days, followed by a prayer (ardas), a vak (recitation opened at random from the holy scripture), and kirtan by singer-musicians to end the ceremony. The increasing popularity of akhand path has meant that several smaller shrines have been built behind the Akal Takht, such that there are now over a hundred smaller shrines around the golden centre of the sanctum sanctorum.
With akhand path, families mark birthdays, weddings, births, major achievements, remembrances, other requests, and/or ask for general health and happiness for themselves and their family members. Not only is there a fee involved in advance booking of the akhand path, but devotees do matha tek (obeisance) as they respectfully bow in front of the Shri Guru Grant Sahib followed by a financial donation, which go to the SGPC. This is quite literally a deed that ‘pays respect’. The congregation also give further funds to the kirtan performers as they so feel, which go to the individual musicians. One of the heads of the families would donate a rumala, sparkly material that they would have bought outside in the market so as it can be used to cover the Shi Guru Granth Sahib when not being used. For such ceremonies, families would stay two or three days in Amritsar, and go back to their residents in either Panjab or UK knowing that a promise had been fulfilled and a prayer blessed in the holiest of holy Sikh shrines.
Back in Birmingham
Pilgrims would often return with photographs of the Harmandir Sahib with themselves in front holding their hands together in the prayer pose – this is something that caretakers actively encourage with admonitory interventions if visitors should do anything inappropriate or stick their feet into the water as if they were ‘on a picnic’. Photographs were also taken of the akhand path, and other shrines that British Asians visited. These photographs of their time in India would be accompanied with parshad (blessed food), with the option to have a dried variety in an airtight package designed specifically for transnational travel, a saropa (an orange scarf blessed in the akhand path), and some amrit (holy water) from the Harmandir Sahib sarovar. Religious souvenirs and other purchases from the surrounding markets would complement these ritualistic items. These might include representations of the Harmandir Sahib and gurus, items to do with the Panj K’s - the five signs of Sikhism such as a kirpan, kara, and kanga - musicals instruments, books, shawls and more as the heart desires and the purse dictates.
The associated circuits of exchange appear to be financial in terms of Birmingham to Amritsar; and gift-like in terms of Amritsar to Birmingham that are also tied in with consumer items that have little to do with religion. Similarly, while gurdwara gather donations to invest in Amritsar and other holy places in India, the SGPC based in Amritsar manage gurdwara in Panjab, and make edicts and guidance for all gurdwara but do not offer financial assistance to those gurdwara in the UK. The circuits flow from west to east in a manner that reflects the dominant financial flows of global capitalism even though India is now an emerging regional power.
Financial flows may turn into gift-like flows where the former is transferred into the latter but not vice versa. For instance, finances may flow into Amritsar to reguild the dome of Harmandir Sahib that becomes a gift to the Indian and international community. But this gift of gold cannot officially be resold on the market for finance without disapproval. Therefore, we have a series of circuits that do not encompass reciprocal dynamics in kind. What is reciprocated is values of sort that amount to the accrual of spiritual capital. These values could be ‘religio-spiritualist’ that are tied to religious identity; ‘philosophical-spiritualist’ associated with an exploratory and more universalist approach; or ‘worldly religious’ that are tied to the pragmatics of being a householder who wants the best for their family and/or community. Often, the spiritual capital accrued is a combination of all three in a spectrum of overlapping circuits.
Footnote
1- There are several connections with India and Afghanistan. The founder of Sikhism, Guru Nanak Dev, travelled to Afghanistan during his fourth udasi or journey from 1517-21. Bawa Kirpal Das, who was a descendant of Guru Amar Das, the third Sikh guru, wrote Mahima Prakash Vartak in 1741. This manuscript mentions the name of Kabul wali Mai (Lady from Kabul) who did seva (selfless service) with great devotion when the digging of the baoli (stepwell) at Goindwal was undertaken by the third Guru. Gurdwara Pipali Sahib situated a mile and a half north-west of Harmandar Sahib commemorates the visit of the fifth guru, Guru Arjan to greet the Sikh sangat from Kabul who had come to participate in the digging of four tanks. Guru Arjan’s cousin, Bhai Gurdas, wrote Vaaran that mentions the name of Bhai Rekh Rao and Bhai Bhana Mallan, Sikh residents of Kabul. Traditionally the Sikhs were shopkeepers, hakeems (experts in Greco-Persian medicine), moneylenders, informal bankers or traded in spices, herbs and medicines (see Kulwinder Singh Bajwa. 2004. Mahima Prakash (Vartak). Amritsar: Singh Brothers).