PUNJAB LETTER:Punjab has possibly the largest number of expatriates, numbering about three million, writes RAHUL BEDI
CARRYING COLOURFUL toy aircraft as holy offerings, scores of aspiring migrants to the West flock daily to a Sikh temple at the end of a winding, dusty village road in India’s northern Punjab state, confident that their wishes are soon to be fulfilled.
Once at the Sant Baba Nihal Singh Gurdwara or Sikh temple in Talhan village near the garrison town of Jalandhar, 360km north of New Delhi, they queue patiently to climb to the inner sanctum on the first floor, where scores of equally decorative model aircraft lie in neat rows, each a poignant tale of supplication or fruition.
They reverentially place their rainbow-coloured aircraft inside the demarcated enclosure and, touching their forehead to the floor in obeisance, pray to the Sikh Gurus and Baba Nihal Singh – a simple farmer from the predominantly agricultural Doaba region, after whom the century-old temple is named – to send them abroad speedily.
“I have just put in my application for a visa to go to the UK and am here to ensure my passage by making an offering of an aeroplane,” says Satwinder Singh, a 21-year-old graduate from nearby Kangniwal village.
It’s well known among Punjabi youths that coming here and submitting aircraft will ensure that they go abroad, mostly to the UK and North America, sooner than immigration and visa-issuing authorities imagine, he says.
After all, there is a power greater than embassy officials and its here, he adds smilingly.
Many others who had successfully migrated come armed with replicas of Boeing 777s and Airbus 300s that ferried them abroad to express gratitude to the Baba who they believe made it all happen.
“My son was trying hard to go to Canada, but was denied a visa. A friend suggested we offer the replica of an aeroplane at Talhan gurdwara and it worked, and he is now in Toronto,” says Surinder Kaur from a nearby village. “I have returned to thank the Baba.”
Of all 28 Indian provinces, Punjab has possibly the largest number of expatriates, largely Sikhs, who number about three million – mostly in the UK, Canada, the US, western Europe, Australia and New Zealand.
There is hardly any family in the Doaba region that does not have at least one if not more people living in these countries.
In classic immigration patterns, much like Irish settlers in the US in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Punjabi migrants have over years sponsored either relatives or fellow villagers to join them overseas, resulting in entire neighbourhoods in British, Canadian and US cities reflecting the ambience back home.
Many such emigres lived out their lives abroad without even learning English or even feeling the need to do so to survive.
Jassi Khangura, a provincial assembly legislator, says around 150,000 Punjabis, mostly Sikhs from the farming Jat community, legally migrate overseas each year; an equal number tread, albeit partially successfully, the illegal, dangerous and hugely expensive migration route managed by criminal syndicates and “slave traders”.
“Shrinking land holdings, lack of employment opportunities and increasingly uneconomical farming were responsible for around 300,000 Punjabis annually migrating from rural to urban areas, triggering a serious and irreparable demographic change in the countryside,” Khangura says.
Of this number, around half have managed somehow to join relatives abroad, considerably augmenting the Punjabi diaspora overseas, he adds.
“I take hundreds of toy aeroplanes almost daily, sometimes even twice on weekends and holidays, down to the temple,” temple worker Shivinder Singh says.
Blind faith in the Baba’s powers to vindicate their wishes and send them overseas is overpowering to them, he adds.
Nestling beside the toy aircraft are models of buses and trucks proffered by those wanting real ones, who hope to launch their own transport businesses – a calling to which entrepreneurial Punjabis are partial.
Lining the narrow, bustling alleyway leading to the temple are a host of shops selling a glittering variety of traditional offerings, of which toy aircraft are the most prominent.
“It is one of our most popular and hot-selling items” shop owner Bahadur Chand says. It obviously works or there would be no repeat sales each day, he adds.
