First Brush With Nishkam Sikh Welfare Council, New Delhi

In Feb of 2004, I came across a couple of web posts talking about Nishkam, a charity that had done stellar work for the victims of the 1984 atrocities against the Sikhs.

1984 was another personal moment of shame for me. I was born in Delhi but was not India when the 1984 savagery happened. And to some extent I have felt that being fortunate in that regard has made me has made me feel guilty, as I was not there to share the risk/pain/trauma.

I do know that even If I had been there, it is unlikely that I personally would have been impacted, or would have reached out and done something, but I still carry this burden on my conscience regardless.

After some surfing around, I was able to locate the website www.nishkam.org and I went thorough every single page and this seemed to be the charity that I was looking for. I emailed them and was disappointed to see my email returned as it got bounced back. I then looked up the phone number associated with the domain name on the “who is” on the registry records and was able to speak to some one in India and get that email address fixed.

And this opened up the door to my interaction with Nishkam India. The gentleman that I spoke to there was Kulvinder Singh Sawhney, the General Secretary and I will forever be in his debt for taking time from his busy schedule to speak to me every now and then.

Around the same time I saw a small, innocent post on the web about a volunteer trying to set up a Sikh charity in Canada. My email was answered promptly by a South Indian, Chandran Ganagadharan. I was able to speak to him and he told me about how he and a couple of other ex Nishkam India folks that had now moved to Canada to be close to their children were in Ontario and wanted to set up a Nishkam in Canada so to speak.

The circle felt complete and the choice was obvious.