Volunteer Spotlight: Gurdev Singh Pall
In our Volunteer Spotlight, we highlight those making a difference in Glasgow. This time, we meet with Gurdev Singh Pall, who is dedicated to preserving Sikh heritage in the city. He’s building an archive of photos and memories to document the Sikh community’s contributions and running the EKTA Group Elderly Care Forum to support and unite Glasgow’s Sikh and Asian elderly population.
Interview and photo by Rhiannon J Davies
I am currently trying to build up an archive of Sikh heritage in Glasgow. I’m looking for people to share photos and memories of the difference that Sikhs have made to local communities. If you have anything to share, you get in touch via ekta969@hotmail.com.
I’m doing this because I went to an event which had information on Jewish, Italian and Muslim communities in the city but there was nothing about the Sikhs and our contribution.
The last Maharaja of the Sikh Empire, Maharaja Sir Duleep Singh, was deposed by the British after the second Anglo-Sikh war. He was exiled to the UK and given an annual pension. He lived in a castle in the 1850s and 1860s and was known as the ‘Black Prince of Perthshire’. That’s the earliest recording we have of a Sikh in Scotland.
My grandfather came here around 1930. But my research found that Sikh immigration really began from the Punjab in the 1920s and stayed in Dundee. Many worked as door-to-door salesmen, selling things like small bottles of perfume, ladies blouses, stockings. They went all over Scotland. It was before there were department stores where you could easily pick up these things.
My grandfather worked in palmistry – he was able to look at your hand and tell you things about yourself. He worked in administration in the Punjab and got permits that initially allowed him to travel to other parts of the British empire. Then he started to go west through Africa, Italy, Spain and eventually to the UK.
When people moved here they settled in one area. People talk about a ghetto and it gives you a negative impression, but the word, when actually looked at properly, is a gathering of a community in one central area. For the Sikh community in Glasgow, most settled in the Gorbals. My mother lived here 36 years and maybe knew only 30 words of English, but she could go into any shop and they’d serve her what she needed.
My grandfather and others were involved in clubbing together to purchase 79 South Portland Street which became one of the city’s first gurdwaras.
I have always been involved with volunteering, alongside my roles working in care settings. I have also done a lot of fundraising, running races and earning sponsorship for charities.
Currently I run the EKTA Group Elderly Care Forum which exists to promote the Health and Social Care needs of the Sikh and Asian elderly population of the City of Glasgow and to assist the Sikh and Asian elderly population to access services with the view to combating and alleviating social exclusion and isolation. In Punjabi, ekta means unite.
It’s volunteer run, and meet weekly on a Monday in the Pollokshields Burgh Hall from 12–3:30pm. We run activities such as yoga, light massage, board games. We've also taken on IT, embroidery, you know, basic things that are creative and keep the individual focused. And then, you know, there's some individuals who don't want to join in and prefer just to have three hours of gabbing away.
We also go on educational visits up and down Scotland. We want the community to have a deeper understanding of the history of this country, and actually there are similarities between the Punjab and Scotland in terms of how they lost their independence to Britain.
For the last 76 years, the Sikhs haven’t had their independence and have been going to parliament every year to ask for those rights.