Our Founder

Ancestory

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Bhai Kulbir Singh was born in 1969 in Batala, India. His father’s name was Sardar Mahinder Singh and his mother’s name was Sardarni Mandeep Kaur. His paternal grandfather had been Sardar Hari Singh Khanda, who had been a member of the Babbar Akali Lehar and had also been a poet. Sardar Hari Singh’s father, Baba Basant Singh, had traveled and lived in South Africa for two years during his youth, but later returned to India. He had been married to Mata Pratap Kaur and had five children: Bishan Singh, Hari Singh, Piara Singh, Shankar Singh, and Preetam Singh. Their son, Sardar Hari Singh, had two sons: Mahinder Singh and Gurnam Singh.

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Bhai Kulbir Singh was born in Batala but he belonged to the village Chela, located in Hoshiarpur, Punjab. His ancestors had originally lived in a village called Chidik, which is located in the Frozepur District of Punjab. According to the elders of Chela village, the inhabitants of the village – who are members of the Gill tribe – owe their residence to one particular ancestor, a wrestler from Chidik by the name of Chhijh Gill. The story goes that long ago there had been a ruler in the Hoshiarpur area who decided to hold a wrestling competition. Wrestling had been a popular and famous sport in Punjab and continues to be today. Chhijh Gill won the competition. The ruler was so impressed that he rewarded the wrestler by letting him keep as much land as he could walk on for one entire day. The wrestler walked for the entire day and came to possess a vast expanse of land. He then settled his kin in this vast land. Today that land is made up of 22 villages, Chela being one of them.

 

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Early  Life

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Bhai Kulbir Singh, though born in Batala, had not spent much time in the village Chela. At the age of 1 he moved with his mother to UK where his father was living. A few months later they moved to Canada.

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After living in Canada for 6 years, he went back to Punjab in 1976 with his mother to complete his studies. In 1986 he returned to Canada once more.

 

 

Education

 

Bhai Kulbir Singh studied at the Ludhiana Convent School until 10th grade. After that, he arrived in Canada and completed his high school studies at Bathurst Heights High School in Brampton. After college he worked several jobs, until receiving a government job as a chartered professional accountant (CPA) for the City of Toronto.

 

 

Religious Life

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Bhai Kulbir Singh had a deep love for literature from a young age. This led him to read the philosophical works of Bhai Sahib Randhir Singh, an important political influencer who agitated peacefully for India’s freedom from the British during the Freedom Revolt movement. These books had a profound impact on Bhai Kulbir Singh’s life, and he was moved to take Sikh Baptism at the age of 19, after which he maintained a strict, orthodox lifestyle for the rest of his life. He began to delve deeply into Sikh theology and philosophy through his endless perusal of spiritual literature and of Scripture.

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His strict lifestyle was entirely centered on the pursuit of the Divine. He woke up daily before 2:30 am to take a cold shower, and then to spend several hours praying and meditating. It was a routine he would maintain without fail for the rest of his life.

 

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Influence in the Community

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Because of his fluency in both English and Punjabi, he was one of the first people to make use of the internet to spread a religious influence within the Sikh community. He very soon became a prolific Sikh writer, producing hundreds of articles in both languages on topics such as theology, politics, Scripture, and lifestyle. For some time his articles were also produced in a Punjabi Sikh magazine in India called Soora.

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Bhai Kulbir Singh soon came under the influence of another prominent figure in the community, Bhai Jagtar Singh. Under his guidance, he and his companions established Gurdwara Tapoban Sahib in Brampton in 2004. This Gurdwara became an influential center of Sikh ministry. As an organization, the Gurdwara founded an online Forum which influenced many diaspora Sikhs to adapt a true, traditional Sikh lifestyle. Many readers began to adopt the traditional Sikh clothes and diet, and to also learn Punjabi and seek to understand the Sikh scriptures in their original language.

 

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Accomplishments

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In 2009, Bhai Kulbir Singh founded the Gurmat Bibek website. On the website he continued to write countless articles and posts which were read by audiences around the world. Around this time he also began the monumental task of writing a “Saroop” of Sri Guru Granth Sahib by hand.

In 2014 he helped establish the Gurmat Bibek Vidyala, an academy for training children and adults in understanding Sikh language, scripture, philosophy, and even music. Here, he personally taught a class every weekend to adults in which he taught students the meanings and applications of the Sikh scriptures. Shortly after the establishment of this institution, he founded the Gurmat Bibek YouTube channel. In a very short period of time, he produced hundreds of scripts for hundreds for videos on many varying theological topics, garnering hundreds of thousands of views. Alongside this, he established a small animation studio for producing inspiring Sikh animations.

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In 2018 he helped establish another institution in India called “Bibekgarh” in the village of Nasrali. Here, poor children receive free tutoring alongside free classes similar to the ones which run at the Gurmat Bibek Vidyala. In addition to this, he ran many private projects in Punjab to help poor families get their basic necessities.

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In 2018, Bhai Kulbir Singh also established Dasmesh Khalsa School, an academic private school in Brampton. He had envisioned that such a school would help to preserve Sikh traditions, culture, and language, an important need for a minority community such as the Sikhs.

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In addition to all of this, Bhai Kulbir Singh had quietly worked on a personal project that had never made it to the public eye during his lifetime. He had written hundreds of pages of notes which translated and interpreted the Sikh scriptures. In these Punjabi translations, he examined the etymology of words, and also the grammatical structure of the scriptures, systematically breaking down each line of text in order to produce the truest translations possible. He had also produced similar “translations” of other works of Sikh literature, particularly the writings of Bhai Sahib Randhir Singh ji.

 

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Scholarship

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Bhai Kulbir Singh was an avid reader. He had read more than 4000 books in his lifetime, and had even built an entire library in his home. Along with Sikh literature he also studied the texts of other religions thoroughly. Along with Veds, Puran, and Shastars, he also studied the Quran and Bible on a regular basis. He had an intuitive as well as scholarly understanding of spiritual states in other religions, as a person who had had many spiritual experiences throughout his own life. In addition to religious scholarship, he was very fond of reading about history and politics, of which he had a vast understanding.

 

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Personal Life

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Bhai Kulbir Singh believed strongly in the importance of Sangat (community). In an unusual act of altruism, he had opened his home freely to any and all members of the community. For approximately 10 years, community members poured into his home daily to meditate and pray with him during the early morning hours before sunrise. He had many spiritual experiences during these years, and many of his companions were privileged to be able to have a taste of some that during their sessions with him.

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Bhai Kulbir Singh was married to Bibi Harkiran Kaur for 25 years.  He is survived by his two sons, Nihaal Singh and Gurjant Singh.