Niam

Bhajan Singh, a Singaporean Sikh, was principal at Si Ling Secondary School. Out of 2,000 students, 16 were Sikh, and he watched a 15-year-old girl become a Muslim, a boy become a Christian, a third boy get arrested for drug addiction, and a fourth drop out because he was an alcoholic.

He started the Singapore Sikh Education Foundation to promote the Punjabi language, with dramas, debates, and oratorical competitions. The first value he names is Chardi Kala, perpetual optimism. The next is hard work, and the language was how those values reached young people.

In October 1989 the government said children from five minority Indian communities could study their own mother tongues. Singh asked the heads of the Sikh gurdwaras for $11,000 a month, and within two minutes they committed $12,000. The curriculum from India was rural, and kids in Singapore hadn't been to a field or seen a plow, so the foundation built lessons in print, on CD-ROM, as audio, and as nursery rhymes.