Bathinda: The better part of pre-Partition-era heritage lost to 1947’s Hindu and Sikh mass migration from Pakistan might be restored in less than two months once Visria Virsa (lost heritage), Punjabi version of two 1,000-page English volumes, is out in October. The Urdu version, ‘Khoi Hui Meeras’, was released this February in Lahore.
Visria Virsa will combine two volumes — 'Lost Heritage: The Sikh Legacy in Pakistan’ and ‘The Quest Continues: Lost Heritage, The Sikh Legacy in Pakistan’ — about the remnants of the syncretic legacy that partitioning of the Indian subcontinent had impacted. This heritage had remained a subject of research, art, documentaries, and recording of more than 11,000 oral histories from the survivors of Partition under ‘1947 Partition Archive’. Now this book is expected to be another guide to the past from its witnesses.
Amardeep Singh of Singapore, who has worked in the financial sector for 25 years and served American Express as head of revenue management in Asia Pacific since 2014, has created this content based on visual ethnography. For his two books in English, he had travelled 126 cities and villages across Pakistan to document the remnants. He wants to take this lost heritage to the Punjabi-speaking people whose forefathers were victims of the Partition.
He claims to have approached the subject holistically to cover religious places, arts, architecture, forts, and living cultural aspects. His study of the abandoned legacy of one community is to motivate all communities to be aware of their past and learn to live in harmony for mutual progress. He travelled across Pakistan in 2014 to visit the native lands of his parents in present-day Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK). In a vast population’s imagination, this heritage was limited to just a few functional gurdwaras. But his findings from 36 cities and villages fill an entire book with the remnants of Sikh legacy. ‘Lost Heritage: The Sikh Legacy in Pakistan’ was published in January 2016.
In January 2017, he covered 90 more cities and villages across Sindh, Baluchistan, POK, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and Pakistani Punjab. This resulted in the sequel, ‘The Quest Continues: Lost Heritage, The Sikh Legacy in Pakistan’.
The second book is interspersed with photographs of the lost legacy, besides life and practices of the forgotten communities.
With his wife, Vininder Kaur, he produced a 24-episode documentary series ‘Allegory, A Tapestry of Guru Nanak’s Travels’ in five languages, filmed at multi-faith sites in nine countries. In Nov 2022, Hofstra University of the US gave him its 8th Biennial Interfaith Award for this work. Amardeep and Vininder lead the ‘Oneness in Diversity’ project for creating audiovisual educational content based on Indic saints whose verses are enshrined in Guru Granth Sahib.
Stay updated with the latest news on Times of India. Don't miss daily games like Crossword, Sudoku, Location Guesser and Mini Crossword. Neel Kamal writes about sustainable agriculture, environment, cli...
Read MoreNeel Kamal writes about sustainable agriculture, environment, climate change for The Times of India. His incisive and comprehensive reporting about over a year-long farmers' struggle against farm laws at the borders of the national capital won laurels. He is an alumunus of Chandigarh College of Engineering and Technology.
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