“Hello Langar! Goobye Hunger!”
The Langar Week campaign is currently underway in it’s second year running, as an initiative highlighting the Sikh practice of Langar – serving free food to any and all.
Cities such as New York, Toronto, Los Angeles, Kuala Lumpar, London, Mumbai and Glasgow, among many more, have seen members of the public being awe-struck at the Langar events taking place. And so too, in a little known town of Leeds in the UK, Sikhs have come together to share this altruistic practice in public.
In the early hours of Monday morning, the 5th of October, sevadars (selfless servants) are frying a mountain of samosas and preparing large pans of Chickpea curry at Sikh Gurdwaras around the Bradford/Leeds area. This is no special occasion, no festival or religious celebration -however, today is a day when the local Sikh come together to show the warm and friendly folk of Leeds a simple act of kindness, by serving them a free hot meal at Dortmund Square, situated in the heart of Leeds.
This unique event is part of an international initiative called Langar Week ( 5-11th October) where Sikh communities around the world were serving Langar to non Sikhs, be it by welcoming non-Sikhs to Gurdwara or taking Langar to the streets of heir town/cities. Some brave Sikhs served Langar in one of the most dangerous places on earth today – Syria!
The central goal of this initiative is to introduce the concept of Langar to a wider community to promote 3 main principles of Langar: Fighting Hunger, Equality and Compassion. It is also an opportunity to educate others about Sikhs and give a brief insight into this wonderfully rich faith.
The weather was abysmal -but given this is Yorkshire the howling wind and rain was not going to deter the dedicated and committed sevadars in delivering what they had set out to do after weeks of careful planning. So gazebos were erected, tables were laid and the hot food arrived just in time to serve our public. Sevadars were keen to engage in conversation with anyone that passed be it the everyday Leeds shopper, the young, old, all faiths and all colours sharing and eating the same food together – Equality in Action – Sikhi.
The local media took a very keen interest in the event, we had the team from Made in Leeds and BBC Radio Leeds covering the event, they too enjoyed the Langar.
The team of sevadars would say this was a resounding success, great team work, good collaboration between 8 local Gurdwaras. Positive response from the local community and more importantly we all learned that our Guruji has given us a wonderful gem in Sikhi. This will inspire us to learn more about Sikhi and with Guruji’s help …practice being the kind of Sikhs that would make the Almighty proud.
We can but strive everyday to be the best Sikhs we can be and excellent role models for the generations to follow.
nice to see a warming to the wider community, by all volunteers.. Well done. It reflects very much the principle teachings of Guru Nanak, of humanity being one. Hope to see more such initiatives reaching out to those in need, in the wider community.
Can anyone find the ww2 sikh history documentation files records and and enter them in on this sikh24.com