In 1894, Giani Ditt Singh saw what was coming:
“Just as we do not see any Buddhists in the country except in images, in the same fashion the Sikhs will be seen only in pictures in museums. Their own sons and grandsons…will go to see them in the museums and say in their pidgin Panjabi: ‘Look, that is the picture of a Sikh—the tribe that inhabited this country once upon a time.'”
We are building the infrastructure to prove him wrong.
THE CRISIS
Every Sikh child in North America knows when Christmas is. When we asked a room full of teenagers at a Khalsa school, not a single one could tell us when Guru Gobind Singh was born. We asked the same class: what is Keshgarh? Dead silence — for the birthplace of the Khalsa itself.
These children have attended Khalsa school their entire lives. They have celebrated Vaisakhi, walked in nagar kirtans, heard the stories of the Sahibzadas. And still: dead silence.
Our children know that they are Sikh. They cannot explain why it matters. They have inherited the forms — the kesh, the gurdwara, the langar — but not the meaning. And when you inherit forms without meaning, you have nothing to pass on.
THE CONFUSION
But here is the harder truth: the confusion does not start with them.
In 2025, on the 350th anniversary of Guru Tegh Bahadur’s martyrdom, celebrated artists like Satinder Sartaaj and Harshdeep Kaur released songs calling him “Hind Ki Chadar” — Protector of Hind. The Sikh community embraced these tributes. But Sri Gursobha (1708) — composed at Guru Gobind Singh’s court at Anandpur — describes his protection as extending over sagal srisht, the entire creation. Not one region. Not one community. All existence.
If our most celebrated artists have lost contact with our primary sources—if the community applauds songs that diminish our own Gurus— how can we expect our children to know their history? They inherit what we give them. And what we give them, increasingly, reflects not our sources but our forgetting.
This is not their failure. It is ours.
Walk into any gurdwara in Panjab today and count the young men wearing turbans. Where they were once the overwhelming majority, they are now rare. In the diaspora, we surveyed Sikh girls ages 10-13 at a Boston-area gurdwara. Eight out of ten expected to marry non-Sikhs. The turban is disappearing. The kakars are disappearing. And with them, something harder to measure — the knowledge of why. The sense that this identity is not a burden to be managed but a gift to be claimed.
Forces hostile to the Panth exploit this vacuum. Banda Singh Bahadur becomes “Veer Banda Bairagi.” Encyclopedia Britannica calls Guru Nanak a disciple of Kabir. Kabir built no institutions. Guru Nanak gave the world the dharamsal, the langar, bani with a new script, a line of succession, new raags and literary genres. As Bhai Gurdas wrote, he “struck coin in the world” and inaugurated the Nirmal Panth. He called the Mughal emperor Babar to account for his atrocities. This is whom the world’s most trusted encyclopedia calls a disciple.
Our children encounter these distortions everywhere — but have no foundation to recognize them, no sources to counter them. We never built one.
Khalsa schools and Sunday programs do heroic work with volunteer teachers and borrowed materials. But the curriculum is uninspiring — dry chronologies that treat history as something dead to memorize rather than a living force that shapes who we are. We have been playing defense when what we need is a vision that makes Sikh identity irresistible.
We are building that vision.
WHAT WE'RE BUILDING
PRIMARY SOURCES
Students engage directly with coins, hukamnamas, court records, and eyewitness accounts — not summaries, but the actual evidence of their history
GLOBAL SANGAT
Sister Classroom Partnerships connect students across continents — Fremont to Birmingham to Chandigarh — transforming isolated learners into a worldwide community
FLIPPED CLASSROOM
The platform handles content delivery, freeing facilitators to lead discussion. Any gurdwara volunteer can guide meaningful conversation with platform-provided resources
BILINGUAL DELIVERY
Full content in English and Punjabi with Gurmukhi script support. Students choose their language or mix them. Audio narration throughout
WHY HISTORY MATTERS
Traditional history teaching treats the past as a foreign country — disconnected from contemporary life. Students memorize dates and names, pass exams, and forget everything within months. The past remains inert, irrelevant, someone else’s story.
Our approach is different. We teach history as a vector — a force that shapes worldview and demands action.
When Rattan Singh Bhangu’s Sri Gur Panth Prakash (c. 1810-13) records Darbara Singh rejecting the Mughal offer of a government position, the text does not present this as a quaint anecdote:
ਪਤਿਸ਼ਾਹੀ ਛਡ ਕਿਮ ਲਹੈਂ ਨਿਬਾਬੀ । ਪਰਾਧੀਨ ਜਿਹ ਮਾਂਹਿ ਖਰਾਬੀ । ਹਮ ਪਤਿਸ਼ਾਹੀ ਸਤਿਗੁਰ ਦਈ ਹੰਨੈ ਹੰਨੈ ਲਾਇ ॥ ਜਹਿਂ ਜਹਿਂ ਬਹੈਂ ਜਮੀਨ ਮਲ ਤਹਿਂ ਤਹਿਂ ਤਖਤ ਬਨਾਇਂ ।
Why should we accept a position that comes with subordination? The Satguru has conferred dignity on every Sikh. Wherever a Khalsa sets foot, they establish their own throne.
This is not information to be memorized. It is a worldview to be inhabited.
When our students read these words — in the original, with full context — they understand that when they wear their turban to a job interview, when they refuse to cut their hair despite pressure, when they stand up for justice in their communities, they are not merely preserving tradition. They are claiming an inheritance.
The Gurus built institutions that transmitted identity across centuries of persecution. We are building the institution this generation needs.
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