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    A Cultural Connect: Vancouver Police Pipe Band On Tour Punjab To Mark Jallianwala Bagh Massacre

    Darpan News Desk IANS, 12 Apr, 2019 08:31 PM

      The Vancouver Police Pipe Band, along with its first Punjabi Sikh member, is in India to commemorate 100 years of Jallianwala Bagh

       

      The 34-member pipe band of the Vancouver Police Department is on a three-day tour to Punjab, beginning Saturday. After paying obeisance at the Golden Temple, it is scheduled to play at Guru Nanak Dev University’s hockey stadium at 3 pm and in Amritsar city at 6 pm, at Kartarpur's Jung-e-Azadi museum on April 14, and at Guru Nanak Mission Medical and Education Trust at Dhahan Kaleran in Nawanshahar on April 15.

       

      After its Punjab tour, it is scheduled to play at Chandigarh’s Elante Mall on April 16, Vancouver Police Department Chief Adam Palmer said.

       
       
       
       
       
       

      Canada, a fellow former British colony, identified 1.4% of the population as Sikh, in its 2016 census. As early as the 1990s, Vancouver was known as home to one of the largest Sikh populations in the world outside of India.

       

      And now, says the Vancouver Police Department’s deputy chief constable Steve Rai, Constable Sukhi Sunger is possibly the only Sikh Punjabi member in any pipe band through North America.

       

      Sunger wasn’t born in India. Both his parents were though, and in 2004, on a personal visit to the country, he found himself in Jallianwala Bagh. The site moved him so much, that even with more than a decade left for the commemoration, he put a calendar alert on his phone to come back and mark 100 years of the massacre at the site, to reconnect and remember some of his ancestors.

       

      After Sunger’s more than decade-long service in the Vancouver Police Department, he was invited earlier this year to be part of their pipe band — one of the oldest in the world. Since turning a hundred years old in 2004, the Vancouver Police Pipe Band has had a visit to India in the pipeline for over a year now.

       

      Finally here, the band has pegged its trip to the festival of Vaisakhi on 14th April this year. Back home, they lead the Vancouver annual Vaisakhi parade. But now, in a serendipitous overlap for Sunger, their more solemn agenda is to honour the memory of the lives lost on April 13th, 1919 at Jallianwala Bagh.

       
       
       
       
       
       
       
       

      On Tuesday night, at the Residence of Canada here in Delhi, the band, with its 24 touring members — the youngest is in their 20s, with the oldest almost 75 — made an entry onto the lawns with a grand march, playing Sixth of June. Once on stage, it was their “usual repertoire,” says Pipe Major constable Cal Davis.

       

      Some of the tunes were written by band members, too. They played Lord Lovett’s Lament, Pathfinder, and Crescent Beach.

       

      But when Sunger kept the Scottish drum aside and took up the colourfully tassled Punjabi dhol, it was clear that they’d made an effort to include some specials: For over the next few minutes, the summer evening air was filled with Muhammad Iqbal’s Sare Jahan Se Accha. The melody in pipe music, was carried by the unmissable strength of Sunger’s dhol.

       
       
       
       

      The Punjab police department will bear expenses of the tour, with assistance from the Punjabi Diaspora in British Columbia.

       

      Palmer said the tour was purely cultural, and that no Canadian politician will be involved.

       

      Known for being ethnically diverse, the Vancouver Police Department has a growing number of Punjabi’s in its fold. The department’s band performs at various events for the Punjabi Diaspora, including the annual Baisakhi Parade in Vancouver.

       

      The band has previously toured Britain, China, Switzerland, France, the USA, Mexico, Scotland, Germany, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Singapore, Japan, The Netherlands, Italy, and Portugal.

       
       
       
       
       
       
       
       
       
       
       
       
       
       
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