SCD Government College, Ludhiana organised an Interaction and Discourse of former premier of British Columbia, Canada, Sardar Ujjwal Dev Singh Dosanjh on 4th April 2019 in the Sahir auditorium. The lecture was in the series of centenary celebrations of the college organised to provide opportunities to students to interact with personalities from diverse fields so that their scope of experience widens.
Sardar Ujjal Dosanjh was accorded a cordial welcome by the principal Dr. Dharam Singh Sandhu and the staff and students of the college. The function began with the singing of the Punjab University Anthem and the lighting of the lamp by the chief guest and other dignitaries like Mr Deepak Manmohan, poet Gurbhajan Gill, Satish Gulati, Ravindra Bhattal, KL Garg and Jarnail Singh Shekhan.
On this occasion the Punjabi translation of his biography written by Doug Wellbanks was also released. The Punjabi translation – Ispati Manukh is by Sri K L Garg.
Thereafter, the principal introduced the chief guest to the audience and informed that Sardar Dosanjh was born in a village in Jalandhar district of Punjab. He immigrated at the age of 17. First went to England and then to Canada where he supported his education in his favourite subject – political science by doing odd jobs. He earned his law degree and opened the own Law Firm. Later on he became involved in activism, fighting for the rights of farm workers, women, bringing improvements in hospitals, public schools, higher education, cancer treatment centres , etc.
in his interaction with the students, Sardar Dosanjh began by saying that we must build such societies in which no one feels compelled to go out of the country to earn their livelihood because doing so makes one lose his one’s culture and one feels utterly lost in a strange land, amidst strange people speaking a strange language. He rued the fact that human capital from a relatively poor country like India is going waste when it goes abroad and starts doing jobs for which he is over qualified.
Everybody does individual struggle but it is only collective struggle that will be bear fruits and provide a better future.
The students put their questions and in reply to their questions he said that throughout his life he has considered himself as somebody who has deserted his motherland. He said that on foreign soil he fought for the rights of other people. It would have been better if he had fought for the rights of his own people. All problems donot have legal solutions, he said when talking about the problem of deserted NRI wives. These are social and cultural problems. He was sorry that in India people look down upon physical labour. Indian society has a perverted kind of thinking, the sense of fairness and the sense of justice is missing in the Indian culture.
The country should have its priorities straight.
All professions should be given equal importance and respectably rewarded in terms of money. Upon being asked about the difference between politicians in Canada and those in India, he replied that in Canada, politics is hard labour, there is no glory and there are no perks. All politicians are not the same anywhere in the world. But for his part, he has always been honest and he has taken tough decisions which made him unpopular with some people. Individual interest is subordinate to national interest.
The interaction proved very benificial to students in the perspective of wide spread craze for immigration to foreign countries.
