LONDON
Diaspora donations fund gurdwara restorations across Punjab
A record year of seva: £14m raised across the UK for heritage shrines on both sides of the border.
FROM OUR LONDON DESK
British Sikh congregations have raised more than fourteen million pounds this year for the restoration of historical gurdwaras across Punjab — a record sum, and a measure of a diaspora that has never let distance loosen its bond to the shrines of its ancestors.
The funds, gathered through gurdwara collections from Southall to Glasgow, will support conservation work on both sides of the border: structural repairs to heritage shrines in Indian Punjab, and — through the growing cooperation of heritage bodies — the careful restoration of gurdwaras in Pakistan that stood shuttered for decades after 1947.
Conservation architects involved in the projects stress that the work is as much about memory as masonry. Frescoes that survived seventy years of monsoons are being stabilised by specialists; original Nanakshahi brickwork is being repaired with bricks fired to the old specifications.
"Every rupee of this is ardaas made solid," said one trustee of the fund. "Our grandparents prayed facing shrines they could not visit. Our generation can rebuild their roofs."
This channel will follow the restoration works as a standing story, with cameras invited to document the craftsmanship at several sites — reports that will air on this desk, free, as they are completed.
— AS·TV NEWS DESK