Obituary

Joginder Singh

Founder of The Rozana Spokesman

One of the Sikh world’s foremost and tireless reformers, most prolific and courageous newspaper man, and critical thinker- founder, owner and editor of the Rozana Spokesman – Sardar Joginder Singh passed away on 4th of August 2024; leaving behind a legacy that is difficult to put into words in a way that captures it well.

A great portion of his life of 83 years was spent on contributing innovative ideas towards reform of Sikhism; fighting the backward looking, obstructionist and fossilized institutions within the Sikh world, and paying the heaviest of personal penalties for his contributions.

It speaks as much of the dilapidated state of Sikh religious institutions as it does of Joginder Singh’s stature that the man who was eulogized as the “Martin Luther of the Sikhs” upon his death on the one hand by none other than a former Granthi of Darbar Sahib; was also excommunicated by the highest echelons of Sikhdom – the Akal Takhat (AT) – at the peak of his dedicated service to the Sikh world. It is as paradoxical as it is baffling.

The Editorial Board of the Sikh Bulletin pays its highest respects to Joginder Singh the man, his unmatched talents, his undying service and his immeasurable courage, by laying out for its readers, a summary of his notable contributions.

The Rozana Spokesman.

His overarching contribution is perhaps that he founded, established and held in place a powerful platform for progressive views on Sikhi in the form of The Rozana Spokesman. And that he withstood the most powerful of forces – including institutions such as the SGPC, the political Badals of Akali Dal, and the Pujaris of Akal Takhat – in their attempts to burn it all down.

Born on February 20, 1941 in Chelianwala, Pakistan, Joginder Singh was a lawyer by profession but he gave up a promising career to found and establish an independent media outlet that stood for and raised the voice of the people in Punjab. His fierce writing style targeted the state machinery, bringing light to entrenched mis-governance, corruption, and personalized bureaucracies.

He was met with powerful resistance from people at high places, but his for-the-people stance highlighted the plight of the citizens and the state. The efforts to muzzle his voice went in vain, and Rozana Spokesman rapidly gained traction under his leadership to transform into a prominent and independent print and digital media journalistic venture.

His ideology and writing style continued to dictate his beliefs in representing the people and reporting unbiased and truthful information to all readers.

Taking Punjabi Journalism to New Heights.

Joginder Singh had a captivating flair for writing that caught the attention of a wide audience. He had begun writing on the most serious of issues in his college days and his pieces were widely quoted and referenced by others. Even in those early days, he had been referred to as “the Panth’s greatest intellectual.” Then Akali leader Master Tara Singh had become a regular reader of Joginder Singh’s writings and wrote to the editor of the then Akali newspaper Jathedar, Gyani Bhajan Singh, requesting that Joginder Singh be appointed a weekly columnist. Joginder Singh’s column focused on matters concerning the Panth and Punjab and the powerful writer soon became a regular speaker at Akali events at the behest of Master Tara Singh.

Upon graduating from Law School, Joginder Singh became a solicitor at the Chandigrah High Court. But it seemed that his heart was elsewhere – Sikhs, Punjab and Punjabi. It is said that he sold his matrimonial gifts to purchase an offset printing press and produced – together with his wife Jagjit Kaur – a magazine called the Young Sikh, in full color. This magazine was subsequently renamed Panj Panni which did very well in terms of subscriptions but shuttered in 1982 due to lack of advertising revenue.

The Rozana Spokesman has its origins in the Spokesman that was started by Hukam Singh, the Speaker of the Lok Sabha, in 1970. It was bought over by Joginder Singh in 1994 and reintroduced as a monthly paper. It was published in two languages; English and Punjabi with a monthly subscription of about 50,000. By popular demand, and by Joginder Singh’s own convictions to stand up more regularly to the powers that be, it was converted into a daily newspaper in 2005. It quickly rose to become amongst Punjab’s top five most read newspapers.

Joginder Singh took Punjabi journalism to new heights with his writing style, courage to cover issues that others would not touch, encouraging his readers to contribute their views for publishing, and for giving space to new and upcoming writers.

Exposing The Truth of Sikh Institutions.

Joginder Singh exposed the jathedars of AT as paid employees of SGPC, as no more than glorified granthis with bigger sounding names, and as people who did the bidding of the Akali politicians. He further exposed them as clergy who were in cahoots with the dera and taksali cults that have become the cancer on Sikhi and as those who stood in the way of those wanting to take Sikhi on the path to progress.

He was joined by progressive Sikh thinkers such as Gyani Gurbakhs Singh and Prof Inder Singh through their regular writings. He critically questioned their “excommunication” from the Sikh Panth by AT jathedars Joginder Singh Vedanti and Prof Darshan Singh respectively.

Keeping Alive the Thoughts of Gyani Gurbaks Singh, Canada.

Joginder Singh allowed for the thoughts of Gyani Gurbaks Singh to be preserved, highlighted and propagated. It can be said that all the progressive thought that emanated from the enlightened mind of Gurbaks Singh – no matter how voluminous – would have remained buried under the weight of his intricate and complex writing style had Joginder Singh not given space in a way that allowed Gurbaks Singh to reach a much wider audience.

Paying The Price of Excommunication

When Gurbaks Singh was excommunicated by AT Jathedar Vedanti as penalty for exposing the Jathedar’s hand in the republishing of the blasphemous and previously banned Gurbilas Patshahi 6 – Joginder Singh organized a meeting of progressive Sikh intellectuals at the 2003 World Sikh Convention (WSC) which passed a resolution stating that the act of excommunicating Sikh intellectuals went against the basic tenets of Sikhi and called upon Sikh intellectuals to not appear before Sikh pujaris. In his reports on the WSC meeting, Joginder Singh questioned the legality, morality and validity of the act of excommunication. The AT responded by excommunicating Joginder Singh who responded in saying that “he was prepared to pay whatever price was necessary but would not bow to the clergy, because doing so would mean turning my back on the Sikhi of Baba Nanak, and to accept the notion that Sikhi was not a religion of the current times but a philosophy of a backward era. I will not commit such a sin.”

Joginder Singh paid a heavy price of it by being excommunicated too. The numerous court cases practically bankrupted his newspaper even if his subscription went up by leaps and bounds. Yet, it was Joginder Singh who came to the defense of Prof Darshan Singh when it was this former jathedar’s turn to get excommunicated.

Standing Up to The Dasam Granth.

Joginder Singh stood against the DG – as a lone, consistent, and powerful voice. He exposed the sexual decadence that filled up to one half of the granth. One page a day of the Rozana Spokesman was devoted to exposing one decadent compostion after another. His exposes’ brought about a massive awakening amongst readers as to the reality of what was propagandized by the anti-Sikhi forces as Guru Gobind Singh’s writings. Many of his readers actually narrated their experiences of opening up their copies of the DG that they had kept wrapped up in rumallas for ages to verify for themselves if the sexual tales being exposed by Joginder Singh were indeed recorded on the pages that were mentioned in the newspaper.

It was Joginder Singh’s DG columns in the Rozana Spokesman that exposed both writers of this obituary to the truth of the falsehoods pertaining to the DG. It was the factual, detailed and referenced writing styles of Joginder Singh that turned both writers from the rabid supporters of the DG they once were to beings that were enlightened of the bankruptcy of Gurmat spirituality within the DG’s hollow and plagiarized compositions.

Taking On the Akal Dal.

Joginder Singh was unrelenting in his call for the Akali Dal to break from the BJP, RSS etc and become a party purely concerned with panthik and Punjab matters. He argued that Sukhbir Singh Badal had the opportunity that his father Parkash Singh Badal did not have due to the father’s deep roots in the anti-congress Janata Dal during the 1970s. The Akali Dal never forgave the Rozana Spokesman and held Joginder Singh responsible for all the downward trend that the Akalis have faced in the last two decades. The Badal Dal eventually became Joginder Singh third largest sworn enemy – after the SGPC and the AT.

Taking On Derawadis, Taksali Cults and Other Deviant Groups.

Joginder Singh proved to be a fierce and unrelenting critic of derawaad, clergy and taksali cults. He exposed the Sauda Sadh, Nirangkaris etc- writing front page reports when other papers were afraid to do so. In fact, Joginder Singh was the one who coined the term “sauda sadh” to refer the con-man cum convicted rapist and accused murderer “sadh” who masqueraded as a religious man. When the AT jathdedars offered unsolicited forgiveness to the sauda sadh, it was Joginder Singh who exposed the shenanigans and horse trading that went on between the five pujaris and the Badals.

The Rozana Spokesman Lives On, As Does Joginder Singh.

In an unparalleled feat, Joginder Singh was able to get the Rozana Spokesman to hit the stands in December of 2005 – within two years of his ex-communication. The SGPC, using the offices of the AT, issued a hukumnama asking that no Sikh should read the newspaper, accept employment in it, advertise in the newspaper or offer any other kind of support and assistance to it. Various persons, speaking from the stage of the Teja Singh Samundri Hall went so far as to issue death threats to Joginder Singh. Some SGPC and AT-aligned Derawadi and Taksli outfits seemingly gave Joginder Singh six months to shutter his newspaper. The Badal state government issued a 100% ban on government advertisements in the Rozana Spokesman; the objective of which was to bring Joginder Singh to his knees and force him to apologize.

In 2005, the Rozana Spokesman lost Rs 100 crore primarily due to zero government advertisements and the active opposition by the Sikh institutions mentioned above.

In one editorial titled ਜਦੋਂ ਸੰਤ ਸਮਾਜ ਦੇ ਪ੍ਰਤੀਨਿਧ ਸਪੋਕਸਮੈਨ ਨਾਲ “ਸਮਝੌਤਾ” ਕਰਨ ਆਏ When representatives of the Sant Samaj came to “strike a deal” with the Spokesman – Joginder Singh detailed the incident of a delegation of the Sant Samaj coming to meet with him after the Rozana Spokesman had been running at a loss for two years. In this editorial, Joginder Singh narrated that he was made three offers in return for three demands by the three-member delegation. The three offers were (i) a reimbursement of Rs 20 crores for financial losses suffered by his newspaper over the past 2 years, (ii) a rescinding of his excommunication by Vedanti within 24 hours of the acceptance of this deal and (iii) all future financial gains to be borne by the Sant Samaj until the newspaper is able to be financially stable.

The three demands in return, as narrated within Jodinder Singh’s editorial were (i) that the Rozana Spokesman would not carry a single word against the Dasam Granth, (ii) there will be no write-ups against any sant, and (iii) there would be no criticism against the Damdmi Taksal in his newspaper.

Joginder Singh provided his four responses to the delegation in classic Rozana Spokesman style.

“As for the DG, my views are as follows. Just like the Dabar Sahib has 4 doors so that any one can enter from any direction, some enemy has opened a fifth door in the form of ‘Dasam Granth’, so that any Sikh who wants to exit Sikhi and return to the path of Brahminvaad can do so through this door. We consider it our religious obligation to shut this fifth door, and will always continue to consider it as such.

As for Vedanti’s hukumnama, getting it rescinded would make no difference to me because I never accepted it to begin with. But if Vedanti had not issued his hukumnama, the Rozana Spokesman would never have needed tp come into existance.

As for my critique of sants, my view is that anyone who calls himself a sant on account of the golak can never be considered a true Sikh. To be considered a Sikh, it is imperative that one earns an honest living through honest labor, and share his earnings with the needy. Wrapping a round turban, donning a flowing chola and self-labelling oneself a sant cannot be considered a sant by any standard.

As for my criticism of the Damdmi Taksal, I have not sworn an oath to oppose this or any other institution. We respect and honor all Sikh institutions, but if an institution decides to smear Guru Nanak’s philosophy with the dye of Brahminwaad, we cannot stand in support of it. We never blindly or permanently support or oppose any Sikh institution. Our support or opposition will be decided by their behaviours and attitudes towards Guru Nanak’s Sikhi. “

Is it any wonder then as to why the Rozana Spokesman has not just lived on, but thrived? His paper grew by leaps and bounds; and its circulation and advertising was rapidly going up.

The Rozana Spokesman is now the third most read newspaper in Punjab and has established itself as a brand known for its fearless neutral voice. The organization that started in 2005 as a result of the excommunication of one brave, righteous and principled man – has rightfully grown from a monthly-edition magazine to a print and digital media outlet. The brand portfolio consists of a daily newspaper, a social media platform with its presence on Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram, among others, and a website where an e-paper, written articles, links to video content, and fact-checks are hosted.

While the excommunication hukumnama ordered that Sikhs have no dealings with Joginder Singh, it was ignored by a vast majority of the people. Joginder Singh continued to be widely met with, consulted and courted by vast majorities of Sikhs, politicians, policy makers, thinkers and other influential people in society. The Chief Minister of Punjab and numerous members of his cabinet who offered glowing tributes to Joginder Singh and his work stands as testimony to the man’s contributions and stature.

The Sikh Bulletin offers its condolences to the Sikh world on the loss of its foremost and tireless reformer. May his wife Jagjit Kaur and two daughters have the strength to bear his loss.

Karminder Singh PhD, Chief Editor

Gyani Jarnail Singh Arshi, Punjabi Editor.

Reproduced with thanks from The Sikh Bulletin, Issue 4/2024. https://www.sikhbulletin.com/Bulletins/SikhBulletin2024Issue4.pdf