Tuesday, 28 August 2012

Kuldip Singh Kular


Dr. Kuldip Singh Kular, (born December 12, 1948 in Ludhiana, Punjab, India) is a physician and former MPP in Ontario, Canada. He represented the riding of Bramalea-Gore-Malton in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario, for the Ontario Liberal Party.
Kular was born to a Sikh family in Punjab, and received a medical degree from Guru Nanak Dev University. He moved to Canada in 1974, and completed two years of residency training in paediatrics at the IWK Health Centre at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia. He then worked for two years at the Canadian Armed Forces Hospital in Halifax, Nova Scotia before starting a family practice in Campbellton, New Brunswick in 1978.
In 1986, Kular founded a family and sports medicine clinic in Brampton, Ontario, a city which has a large number of recent Indo-Canadian immigrants. He was also a founding member of the Northern Indian Medical and Dental Association of Canada.
In the 2003 election, Kular defeated incumbent Progressive Conservative Raminder Singh Gill by about 4000 votes in Bramalea-Gore-Malton-Springdale. He was a member of the Speaker of the Ontario Legislature’s multi-party delegation in June 2005 to the 43rd Canadian Regional Conference for the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association in St. John's, Newfoundland.
In the 2007 election Kular was re-elected in the newly reshaped Bramalea—Gore—Malton, defeating the closest candidate, Progressive Conservative Pam Hundal, by about 6,000 votes.
In the 2011 election he was defeated by NDP candidate Jagmeet Singh by 2,120 votes.
Dr. Kular served on the Standing Committees on Estimates, Social Policy, Regulation & Private Bills and the Select Committee on Electoral Reform through his three terms. He was parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, Minister Responsible for Democratic Renewal, and to the Minister of Health and Long-Term in order by period of service.
Dr. Kular is an avid jogger and enjoys skiing, gardening and traveling.

UK former minister's daughter living life of Sikhs warrior


Spear in hand. Check. Dagger (slung over shoulder). Check. Turban. Check. Flowing white tunic. Check ... this is Uttrang Kaur Khalsa or, at least, that is the name she goes by in India where she lives in an ashram (spiritual hermitage) and begins each day at sunrise.
We know her, of course, by a rather different name and reputation. Behind the ‘warrior chic’ uniform is former It Girl Alexandra Aitken.  Complete with a bag of bananas.
It was only last year that news emerged that Miss Aitken, 32, daughter of former Tory jailbird Jonathan Aitken, had married a Sikh warrior and was converting to Sikhism. 
Not surprisingly, the revelations were greeted with bemusement and scepticism in society circles.
Apart from anything else, Miss Aitken’s nuptials were announced in Hello! magazine, hardly in keeping with Sikh traditions. 
Nor, more pertinently, was Miss Aitken’s former lifestyle which consisted mainly of falling out of nightclubs in revealing dresses and, on one memorable occasion, posing naked in GQ magazine.
Could there be a more unlikely transformation? Miss Aitken, photographed striding along an Indian country road, is staying with a sect of yoga Sikhs in the Punjab village of Bani.
The Sikh customs she has adopted could not be further removed from her old life. Miss Aitken is no longer allowed even to cut her hair and uses only a wooden comb.
The woman often seen in the company of royalty at polo matches now spends much of her time in prayer, apparently, often helping to scrub the temple floors with holy water at the end of each day. 
She is also, by all accounts, learning Punjabi and studying Sikh religious history.
Why the spear and dagger? Well, her husband, Inderjot Singh, is a so-called ‘warrior’ Sikh (or Nihang Sikh). 
However, few Sikh women carry  ceremonial weapons, still less own an iPod (in the photograph, headphones can be clearly seen tucked beneath Miss Aitken’s white-and-purple turban), which has left many in the village puzzled.
It is not the only source of intrigue.
Miss Aitken, it seems, has not be seen with Mr Singh of late and locals say he is no longer with her at the ashram. Neither did Miss Aitken attend the recent funeral of Mr Singh’s father, leading some to wonder if the couple might have split up. 
Cross-cultural marriages, after all, bring their own particular strains and difficulties.
They met at the Golden Temple of Amritsar in 2009 when Miss Aitken was on a trip to India.
Speaking about that moment in an interview last year, she recalled: ‘I was sitting on the roof of the Golden Temple at about 3am, and the most beautiful man I’d ever seen in my whole life walked in. He seemed 100 per cent man, gentle and intuitive and poetic and sensitive, but also extraordinarily strong and manly. And you don’t see many of these around. So I was like: “Oh wow!”’
Miss Aitken described falling for a devout man who spent his time helping to feed and clothe the poor. 
She painted a picture of someone so religious that, when the two were married the following year, in the temple where they had first fallen in love, dozens of holy men left their caves to attend the wedding ... Or did they?
Flashback: Alexandra Aitken before her transformation, pictured with her father, former politician, Jonathan Aitken
The truth, as ever, is more complicated. For some of Mr Singh’s friends and family have cast doubt over his religious credentials and his involvement in the devout Nihang sect.
It seems that, in fact, until his mid-20s Mr Singh used to enjoy the party lifestyle, drinking, smoking and flirting with girls.
His upbringing in the industrial city of Ludhiana was quite conventional, born to a civil servant father and a mother who was a clerk with the local electricity board. Apparently, he found religion after a trip to — of all places — Australia, where he went to college for a year.
‘When he was there he met a saint and became very religious,’ said an old friend. ‘Before that, yes, he was not so religious; he did like parties.’

Marriage: Alexandra Aitken on her wedding day when she married Inderjot Singh in India
So perhaps the former party lovers were kindred spirits in that regard? They certainly were quick to marry. Friends were informed of Miss Aitken’s new life by email, with the following subject line: ‘I am a happily married devoted mrs wife and new contact details!’
The accompanying message read: ‘Hi, heavenly friends. A very funny forgiving huge hearted saintly hero was adventurous enough to marry me! We’ll have celebrations in London and LA soon. Hope you’ll join us.’
In fact, the wedding was arranged with such haste that Miss Aitken’s parents were unable to attend, leaving them understandably upset.
They were not the only ones. While Mr Singh’s parents appear to have been happy with their son’s choice of bride, not everyone in the family shared their delight. Relatives believed Mr Singh had polluted their pure bloodline by marrying a British girl.
Either way, Alexandra Aitken’s story is an extraordinary one, even judged by the standards of her family’s colourful history. Her father, a former Cabinet minister, famously vowed in 1995 to use the ‘sword of truth’ against The Guardian when he sued the paper for libel in a row over his dealings with Saudi arms traders, but was later jailed for seven months for perjury.
At around the same time, the Aitken sisters Alexandra and her twin, Victoria, discovered that Petrina Khashoggi, supposedly the daughter of millionaire arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, was their half-sibling. DNA tests established that she was conceived during an affair between Aitken and Soraya Khashoggi, the ex-wife of Mr Khashoggi.
Until their father’s trial — he was bankrupted by the legal costs of the libel case — the Aitken girls enjoyed the luxury of live-in staff at an imposing town house in Westminster and a home in Kent.
Their father’s fall from grace put an end to all that. Victoria embarked on a ‘career’ as a rap artist in the U.S. while Alexandra remained in London.
She attended parties, contributed to Tatler and became part of the early Noughties Sloaney set, which included Tara Palmer-Tomkinson. Aged 21, along with Petrina, she posed naked for that now famous GQ photoshoot.

Alexandra Aitken pictured at the The Times London Film Festival during her days as an It girl
Could she have imagined then that one day she would be scrubbing temple floors in the Punjab and wearing a turban?
That tortuous journey, it seems, began in 2002, with the first of her re-inventions. Miss Aitken earnestly insisted that she wanted to be a serious actress. Although she did appear in some short films, the career change failed to ignite. 
Eventually, she left London, moving to Hollywood to offer psychic readings and teach yoga.
Along the way, she had  dabbled in Judaism, Islam, Buddhism and Kabbalah.
Explaining her conversion to Sikhism in that newspaper interview last year, Miss Aitken said: ‘I don’t really think of Sikhism as a religion, more a path for anyone who is looking for something more spiritual.
‘We live in a computer age where life is increasingly stressful . . . people are desperately trying to find a way to relax, to escape from everything.
‘As I see it, you’ve got one of two options: you can either find a drug dealer, or you can find something that’s going to give you a natural high. Everyone is looking for something. I’ve found Sikhism.
‘But I didn’t just jump on the first bus going. I did my homework; I’ve read just about everything.’
However, she admitted: ‘Frankly, if someone had told me ten years ago, when I was living the party girl lifestyle in London, that a decade later I’d be a teetotal vegan [living in an ashram], I wouldn’t have believed them.’



Wednesday, 22 August 2012

When Sikhs conquered Delhi


Nadir Shah's brutal offensives and the eight invasions by Ahmed Shah Abdali had made the Mughal Empire fragile and weak.
Sikhs had emerged as a strong and powerful force in northern India, and eventually halted Abdali's invasions. Under the leadership of Dal Khalsa chief, Sardar Jassa Singh Ahluwalia, the Sikhs refused an alliance, and instead challenged Abdali for battle.
They were anxious to avenge the killing of over 20,000 Sikhs, mostly women, children and old people, and also the destruction and desecration of the Golden Temple. Sensing defeat, Abdali called it a day, and finally returned to Afghanistan, never to come back again.
The vast area of the Indian subcontinent lying between the Indus and the Yamuna thus became free from foreign rule.

Sikhs Control Greater Punjab


With no enemy in the North, and Shah Alam II at the head of the decaying Mughal Empire at Delhi, the powerful 12 Sikh misls had a free run in increasing their influence, from the Indus to the Yamuna, seeking rakhi (tribute, protection money) from various small chiefs, nawabs and rajas.
The Marathas, after their defeat by Abdali in the third battle of Panipat in 1761, were marginalised, and the Rohillas were a spent force and the English were in the process of finding their place at Delhi.
It was easy for the Sikh misls to cross the Yamuna and make forays towards Delhi and beyond. The misls did not owe any allegiance to each other, except when the Sarbat Khalsa, through a Gurmatta, resolved to attack a common target.

Sardar Baghel Singh


Baghel Singh's Karor Singhia Misl was operating in south-east Punjab. He was a very able leader, a good political negotiator who was able to win over many adversaries to his side. The Mughals, the Marathas, the Rohillas, the Jutts and the British sought his friendship, and, above all, he was a devout Sikh; amrit prachar was his passion.
Karor Singhia was one of the strongest misls with 12,000 well trained horsemen. The combined strength under Baghel Singh, including soldiers of a few sardars who joined him, was well over 40,000.
He captured territories much beyond Delhi to include Meerut, Khurja, Aligarh,Tundla, Shikhohabad, Farrukhabad, Agra and many other rich townships around Delhi, collecting tribute and rakhi from nawabs and rajas. He captured Saharanpur and overran the Rohilla territory in April 1775.

Sikhs March Towards Delhi


In March 1776, Baghel Singh's forces gave a crushing defeat to the Mughal army near Muzaffarnagar; thus Sikhs extended their influence on the whole of the Yamuna-Gangetic doab.
Baghel Singh invaded Delhi on January 8, 1774, and captured the area up to Shahdara. The second invasion was on July 17, 1775, when the Sikhs captured the area around the present-day Pahar Ganj and Jai Singhpura. Bulk of the fighting took place where present-day New Delhi is located.
Sikhs temporarily withdrew due to shortage of supplies, but they kept the agenda of the Red Fort alive, and continued domination and intrusions into the Emperor's territory surrounding Delhi.
By early 1783, the Sikhs commenced preparations for the capture of the Red Fort.
A force of 60,000 under the leadership of Sardar Jassa Singh Ahluwalia and Sardar Baghel Singh assembled at Ghaziabad, continuing their attacks and capturing rich towns around Delhi.
Enormous booty was collected by Sikhs, which was sent to Punjab with an escort of 20,000 soldiers. One-tenth of this booty was sent to the Golden Temple as offering to the Guru.

Sikhs Forces Capture Delhi


On March 8, the Sikhs captured Malka Ganj and Sabzi Mandi. Prince Mirza Shikoh, on orders from the Emperor, tried to stop the invaders but suffered defeat, and fled. On March 9, they captured Ajmeri Gate. There was a panic in the city; many took shelter in the fort.
Jassa Singh Ramgarhia joined the Sikh forces at the last moment with 10,000 soldiers. As many as 30,000 Sikh horsemen of Baghel Singh's army were camping at a place now known as Tees Hazari, location of the Delhi High Court.
The Sikhs attacked the Red Fort on March 11,1783. The Emperor and all his guards, in fact every one in the fort, hid themselves. The story goes that an insider informed Sikhs of a weak spot in the wall of the fort, where the soldiers made a hole by ramming it with wooden logs; the place is now named as Mori ('hole') Gate, the location of Inter State Bus terminus (ISBT).

Red Fort is Captured


The Sikhs entered the Red Fort, hoisted the kesri Nishan Sahib, and occupied the Diwan-e-aam, a key location in the fort, where the Emperor, sitting on the throne, used to have audience with the public. In a symbolic gesture, Jassa Singh Ahluwalia was made to sit on the throne, which made him the Emperor.
His old rival and his name-sake, Jassa Singh Ramgarhia, joined by some other chiefs, opposed Ahluwalia's sitting on the throne. Before the event took an ugly turn, Jassa Singh Ahluwalia gracefully vacated the throne and, thus, avoided a controversy amongst the chiefs at a critical moment.

Emperor reconciles with the Sikhs


The Emperor was quick to reconcile with the Sikhs; he offered a treaty and accepted their terms. The Emperor agreed to pay Rs 300,000 as Nazrana. The kotwali area was to remain the property of the Sikhs.
Baghel Singh was allowed to construct gurdwaras on all sites connected with Sikh history. Baghel Singh was to retain 4,000 soldiers till his task was completed; the Emperor was to pay all expenses. The Sikh army left the fort after the treaty.
The Sikhs conquered the Red Fort, but they missed a great opportunity and failed to exploit the advantage of being the strongest force.



Sunday, 19 August 2012

Hero of forgotten war



Lt.Col. Abjit Singh Sekhon never approved of escort vehicles. Nor did he permit gun toting bodyguards even when he was deployed in an insurgency ridden Naga town. The infantry officer didn’t think his rank made his life more valuable. “Why should I risk their lives? They also have mothers,” he would chide his wife Kanwaljeet Kaur, or anyone who dared to suggest that he should get an escort.

Commissioned into 7 Madras, Sekhon considered himself very fortunate when he was chosen to command it. Those were turbulent times and the battalion was part of the IPKF in Sri Lanka but the Lt. Col was upbeat about his assignment. 

Soldiering was in his genes. His grandfather in the pre-independence Army was decorated with the Order of British Empire (OBE) while his father, a civil services officer, had earned the title of “Sardar Sahib” for participating in World War II.

Sekhon’s entry into the armed forces was a foregone conclusion. The tough conditions in Lanka suited him just so. On April 13, 1988 he received a tip-off about the presence of some hard core militants at Vannerikulam. He took a calculated risk, reached the unmapped area and took the LTTE militants by surprise. Leading the action, Lt. Col. Sekhon killed two Tigers, one of whom was an area leader. Again on April 21 when information came about the presence of militants at Urithirapuram, Sekhon led two platoons and got out of his vehicle to shoot down a militant. But his luck was running out. A LTTE sniper close by shot him through the chest. The man who believed in leading from the front died on the spot. Later, he was awarded Vir Chakra for his exemplary gallantry.


But the shock of his death was too much to bear for his father Gurdial Singh who passed away a year later. 

It’s been 18 years but Sekhon continues to inspire his beloved battalion, 7 Madras. Kanwaljeet says it’s the affection shown on her by the unit that gave courage to her and her two young sons during those traumatic years. “In all this time never once have they forgotten to invite me to his martyrdom anniversary. And even though it’s a Madras regiment, they hold an akhand path on this occasion.” Sekhon’s two sons, one a commercial pilot and the other a management graduate, are equally fond of their extended family. Their father would approve. The bonds of OG, he believed, are thicker than blood.

Saturday, 4 August 2012

Asma Chaudhry


Asma Chaudhry is the Anchor Person OF Dunya News and hosts the famous show Insession. She has  been associated with the field of journalism for the last 10 years. She started my career as Sub Editor in Jang Group of News papers. Later on she got associated with the state television and served there as a Producer. She was the recipient of PTV Award for program Vision Pakistan in 2003. Since then, she has worked with the top rated channels of Pakistan as a Producer as well as an Anchorperson. She presented the program Parliament Cafeteria live from parliament with prominent political personalities of Pakistan, in her earlier career. As a special diplomatic correspondent she also covered the AGRA Summit, SAARC Summit, US Presidential Elections 2008 and also visited USA, UK, India, Germany, Srilanka, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh for special assignments. She also participated in IVL program arranged by state department of USA on Documentary Productions and Film Making. Currently, she is serving as a lead anchor person and hosting a popular program- In Session on Dunya News TV. Recently, She is awarded with the Best Anchor Current Affair Female Award in 2nd Pakistan Media Award. 2011

Awards


She was the recipient of PTV Award for program Vision Pakistan in 2003. Recently, she awarded with the Best Anchor Current Affair Female Award in 2nd Pakistan Media Award 2011.


Source : http://www.awaztoday.com/singleprofile/136/Asma-Chaudhry.aspx