Making Of Guru Granth Sahib CD Rom a First time ever Unique Effort :
As is relevant with so many Immigrant groups, I felt Sikhs were concerned about the loss of culture and language among young people. I thought of an idea to digitize the Sri Guru Granth Sahib - The Central Religious Scriptures of Sikhism, so as to reach its contents to non Punjabi speaking world both in India and outside in the Western World. I took the help of my partner Mr Bhupinder Singh in computer parts trading business for doing the same as he had prior experience in digitizing. I felt that we need to spread the message of God to help the human race to fight this fire burning all around.
I also felt that there was serendipity in my idea and I humbly accepted the self-felt responsibility as being the 9th direct descendent of illustrious Poet Laureate Bhai Nand Lal Goya who was a devout disciple in the court of Guru Gobind Singh ji.
I started drawing the blueprint for designing the CD Rom. Initially only Gurbani part was to be taken up, but during our on and on discussions we kept on adding new chapters to include Sikh history, world wide Gurdwaras pictures, Excerpts and Sikh Guru lives. Now this was a huge and stupendous task to collect the information and compile the same and required dedicated tremendous efforts. I used my experience with the Govt of INDIA to avoid any eventual controversies. I stuck to established and authorized works of established Universities. I also needed to get approval of religious authorities. So I went to DGPC in 1994 and showed them my draft work. They were really excited and I was relieved. I took the help of my brother in law MR APS Dhir and his friend Mr RP Singh who got me connected with DGPC authorities. Mr RPSingh video graphed my presentation. So my first hurdle was over.
We had decided to include the translation works from Punjabi language to English Language of Sri Guru Granth Sahib by a panel of scholars headed by Prof Gurbachan Singh Talib of Punjabi University for inclusion in the digitizing works. Hence I proceeded to Punjabi University Patiala. I contacted Dr Torah Singh, Registrar through a friend Dr Gopal Singh. The University impromptu called a meeting of senior Professors in the Registrar’s office. My presentation for digitizing SGGS was keenly listened with utmost interest. It did not take much time to get approval bid from August gathering. This event was also video graphed by my cousin Mr Anand Bir Singh of Patiala.
On my request for authenticated Guru Lives, Dr Tirath Singh presented me a book ‘the Ten Masters’ by Prof Puran Singh.
In mean time I wrote letters to 700 Gurudwara’s to send me the Pics of their Gurdwara’s. But the response was not much.
After completing a successful trip to INDIA, we were on the job, first we scanned a part of it. The results were not satisfying. So we started doing typing the whole of by engaging Mr Ravi an electrical masters in engineering for typing the entire Granth. It took a lot of time although he had a very fast speed of typing.
Our Prodigy son Shivpreet Singh pursuing his double Major from U/C Berkeley in Molecular Cell Biology and western Music, first time ever in history converted all the 31 Ragas included in the SGGS into midi Format so as to make it possible to be included in the CD Rom.
And then came the the Proofreading and Corrections. Harvinder after managing her work at Convenient store and cooking dinner for the family would spend late nights along with me proofreading. It was only Waheguru’s blessings that we could do it to our best efforts. We also took help from volunteers in the community like Mr Jaswant Singh Sethi and Mr Sabharwal for the same. We had big hopes and with Supreme Waheguru blessings, we could complete with the hope that by transforming the Guru Granth Sahib on CD-ROM will be a big push to access the classical texts into English and on line. It will be a step into the next century. That will be the greatest significance--to make the heritage more accessible to the young people and not knowing Punjabi people. To us Sikhs, Sri Guru Granth Sahib is literal embodiment of God, transforming into digital format must be handled carefully and most respectfully.
Total of 15000 pages were included in this project, those included history, Sikh Guru Lives, Excerpts of Quotations from SGGS.
The work of digitizing Sri Guru Granth sahib was highly publicised globally by Premium News Papers of the world. An comprehensive article on the cover of Mercury News paper was published on 9th sept, 1995. This made headlines world wide as this paper being the poineer Online Paper and hence the news spread like wild fire making me and my partner Bhupinder Singh famous in the Sikh world.
As is usual in the Sikh community, a complaint by one Surinder singh of San Jose to Akal Takhat Jathedar Prof Manjit Singh for 'Beaddabi' being done by us. I was called by the Jathedar at the residence of Jathedar Beiniwal of San Jose. His questions on including the Prof Talib’s book and Prof Puram Singh books were explained to his entire satisfaction. I emphasized to Jathedar Sahib, that I was only opening the floodgates of mushrooming of Gurbani for the benefit of unexposed human race. Jathedar finally was satisfied and encouraged me with a Sikh Jaikara. My efforts won with Waheguru Blessings.
The Digital Holibook CD Rom ’SCRIPTURES AND THE HERITAGE OF THE SIKHS’ was the subject of news stories on Indian National Channels, BBC, Voice Of America and Indian newspapers all over North America. Due to explosive development in the field of Software technology particularly the cloud computing, the application of this CD Rom may not be that significant today, but the transformation into digital formats have expanded to infinite routes.
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