Largest Sikh 'Jatha' from Sindh visits Golden Temple

[Gul Agha <agha@CS.UIUC.EDU>]

Excerpted from India Tribune:

Biggest jatha of Pak Sikhs arrives
Varinder Walia
Tribune News Service

(See photo and story at
http://www.tribuneindia.com/2004/20040828/main8.htm

Caption: Mr Parkash Singh Badal welcomes Baba Hari Singh, leader of
the Sindhi Sikh Jatha from Pakistan Mr Parkash Singh Badal welcomes
Baba Hari Singh, leader of the Sindhi Sikh Jatha from Pakistan, at
Attari railway station on Friday.)

It was dream come true for most of the Sindhi Sikhs from Pakistan to
get a chance to pay their obeisance at Golden Temple for the first
time even as the biggest jatha of Pakistani Sikhs (about 1000
pilgrims) arrived here today through a special Samjhauta Express to
participate in the quadricentennial celebrations of the installation
of Guru Granth Sahib late in the evening here today.

The strength of the present Jatha is triple the size of the previous
jatha which visited Amritsar and Anandpur Sahib during the
tercentenary celebrations of the birth of Khalsa Panth...
The Jatha was led by Guru Granth Sahib which they brought with them
from Pakistan...  They were given a warm welcome at the Attari Railway
Station ... This is for the first time that so many SAD, SGPC leaders
went to Attari to receive the jatha from Pakistan.

Many elderly Pakistani Sikhs who had witnessed the holocaust of
partition and suffered the most in the communal frenzy that followed
said that after visiting the holy city of Amritsar -- that too during
the quadricentennial celebrations -- they could now die as satisfied
souls...

(See
http://yangtze.cs.uiuc.edu/~jamali/sindh/sindh-l/archive/her/msg00248.html

for a eyewitness account including a description of the massacre of
hundreds of Labbaarnaa Sindhi Sikhs in Karachi on January 6, 1948).