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At the 2004 Parliament in Barcelona, Spain, many dedicated volunteers from the Guru Nanak Nishkam Sewak Jatha (GNNSJ) daily prepared and served langar to thousands of delegates attending the Parliament as well as people who came as news of the event passed through the local community.

An extract of Bhai Sahib Mohinder Singh Ji’s Address at the Opening Plenary Session of the 2004 Parliament of the Worlds Religions follows.

“…I stand here to extend an invitation to you to partake Langar at this place of worship, Langar will be served...for all the days of the event. Serving you food will be for us Sikhs an honour and blessing. I implore you to accept and help us keep the five hundred years tradition alive, consider it a continuing simple and profound act. Thank you so much.”

Extract of Bhai Sahib Mohinder Singh Ji’s closing messages of thanks at the final Parliament ceremony, summarizes the enormous gratitude the GNNSJ felt for the opportunity to serve all who attended langar:

“...The CPWR, we want to thank them, they showed us the paths, pathways to peace. We came to Montserrat, it was a pilgrimage, people have been praying there for thousands of years, we walked on Holy ground, and the Mayor of Barcelona, allowed us to pitch our tent here in marquees to have a place of worship, where we could eat together, sit together, exercise love, humility, benevolence, you made it possible, we salute you. The words of the Lord, the Creator, the Infinite, and our Guru, came to Barcelona, and we had forty eight hours of continuous Prayer, and then we had the initiation, which is equivalent to ‘baptism’, I just came from there. We are humbled that we could be given such honour and dignity, such love that you could give us we have no words to thank you, the Holy Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s message is universal. If each and every hair on my body could say thank you, I would go ahead and say thank you Barcelona, thank you the people, all the faith religions, all the faith people, thank you everybody.”

Bhai Sahib Bhai Mohinder Singh Ji has been an ‘informal’ minister of the Sikh faith for over three decades and has regularly been in the Panj Piyare (the five representatives responsible for Amrit Sanchar – a ceremony akin to baptism for the Sikhs). Often simply addressed as ‘Bhai Sahib Ji’, he is current chairman and spiritual successor of the GNNSJ, selected (in 1986) and appointed to this role by his predecessor, Bhai Sahib Bhai Norang Singh Ji.

Bhai Sahib Ji is a Civil and Structural Engineer by profession who has worked on projects in the UK, Africa and India. Until 1989 he worked in Zambia for the National Housing Authority under the auspices of the British Government’s Overseas Development Administration providing expertise for the provision of low income housing, town-planning and infrastructure implementation. While in Zambia he assisted Sikh communities in different parts of Africa in the construction of Gurudwaras. In 1989, he left Zambia in order to devote his life to full time service of the community under the personal supervision of Bhai Sahib Bhai Norang Singh Ji. In recognition of his many unique qualities and inner spiritual strength, he was chosen by the founder Saints to succeed to the chairmanship of this organization.