National Sikh Heritage Centre and Holocaust Museum

Although it has been a few months since its ‘soft opening’, the National Sikh Heritage Centre and Holocaust Museum at Derby in the UK in July will soon host the Queen of England, Elizabeth II, to inaugurate the museum.

Although many Gurdwaras have a ‘museum’-room and apparently on the internet we have a cybersikhmuseum, the initiative to bring scattered items of Sikh heritage is much needed and should be lauded.

The Museum hosts a number of artifacts, including a canon that belonged to the Sarkar-e Khalsa during the time of Sardar (often erroneously called Maharaja by Sikhs) Ranjit Singh.

The library is currently featuring an exhibit ‘From Jawans to Generals’ and in May will begin an exhibit on the Sikh Holocaust of 1984.  They are beginning to collect rare books and hoping that the library will become a hub for Sikh scholarship.

The museum by bringing many such historical artifacts, located throughout UK together is more proof of the burgeoning of the Diaspora Sikh community and its finding new ways to engage with its changing self as well as non-Sikh community members.  One hopes we will see similar initiatives in the US and Canada as well.