RLUK ICIL | Sikh Heritage in Colonial Collections: The John Rylands Research Institute and Library

Um, I'm delighted to introduce today's speakers, uh, Jamie Robinson and Gurtek Singh uh, from the John Rylands Research Institute. Uh, Gurtek Singh is an honorary research fellow at the John Rylands Research Institute and uh, works in education and public relations. Apart from having a seat on the Council of five Manchester Gurdwara's, which manages community community relations and events, he's worked on various decolonization projects with University of Manchester over the last three years. Um, and these include uh, Six in the City, co-curating the ongoing Splendors of the Sikh Raj Arms and Armor exhibition at Manchester Art Gallery, the Manchester Sikh Digital Heritage exhibition, and also community engagement with sensitive items of Sikh heritage. Gurtek is currently leading a project to exhibit historical items in community spaces. Um, and Jamie Robinson manages the Rylands Heritage Imaging Lab based in the John Rylands Library uh, at the University of Manchester. He's worked in the cultural heritage sector for over 19 years and has wide experience digitizing heritage material and has carried out many projects within the university as well as across a variety of UK institutions and further afield. Um, and they will be uh, discussing an ongoing collaborative project between Manchester Sikh community and the University of Manchester Library. Um, and they will be reflecting on what it means to care for a cultural treasure that is also understood as a living being and how to establish a dialogue with communities and how that's crucial to framing colonial practice with library collections. Um, so Jamie and Gurtek, um, I'll hand over to you. Thank you. Thank you, Erica. Uh, thank you everybody at RLUK for inviting us to speak. Um, and thank you for that wonderful introduction. That's taken part of my talk away. So, before we do get into the full presentation, I want to open with an extract from a poem called here and here and here by Suhaima Manzoor Khan. So, here in every penny paired to pave the floors, each atom fused to build the doors. The library is a hideaway, its open secrets stowaways. Walls founded on theft, arches products of those made for rest. The corridors are constructed from shame, the glass of the windows is more than stained. And the books themselves turn special collections. A 210,000 pound library priced through its rarity. The money to purchase it rooted in tyranny. Another 155,000 for proper manuscripts containing materials spanning 50 languages sold in a desperate attempt to keep his father's land. But were they ever his to give? Chinese, Arabic, Samaritan, and Sanskrit, Hieratic, Turkish and scrolls in Greek and Demotic. Fragments in Syriac, Armenian, and Coptic. Texts on palm and blue board, proper and Egyptian hieroglyphic. A feast of spoils from a global grip. Knowledge and writing like flowers picked. An assemblage of naked souvenirs to our sorrow. Islamic literature is looted from the libraries of Lucknow. The Sri Guru Granth Sahib rested from hands in war merely for storage and ostentation. For all the intrigue in the world cannot pass for true appreciation. So, that poem was actually commissioned by the John Rylands Library for the 2023 exhibition "We Have Always Been Here", which explored the marginalized histories and voices embedded throughout the Rylands extensive collections. It responds to both the author's own research into the collections and to the institution's wider legacies rooted in the transatlantic slave trade. One of the items mentioned in the poem is the focus of our talk today. The library holds one of the oldest and rarest surviving Sri Guru Granth Sahibs in the world. And over the past six or so years we've worked closely with Sikh community in Manchester and served digitize greatly expand access to and ensure that the guru is treated with the respect that it deserves. So, the presentation will briefly introduce the manuscript itself. Um, how it became part of the Rylands collections. We'll then focus on a lot of the elements of the project that we've undertaken together. Including the historic journeys of the guru from the library to Manchester Gurdwara's around the city. The issues challenge and challenges that we have faced both within the community and from the library's perspectives and where the project stands today. Hi everyone. Thanks Jamie. So, I suppose the first question is then what is the Siri Guru Granth Sahib? So, at the heart of the project has been the Siri Guru Granth Sahib, which in the catalogs labeled as Punjabi MS5. Firstly, it's important to understand why the Sikh community consider Punjabi MS5 to have such spiritual significance. In the Sikh faith, there are 10 gurus who perform the role of spiritual guides. Guru is Sanskrit for dark whilst ru translates as light. Guru is the name given for someone who brings someone from dark to light or someone who enlightens. The first guru was Guru Nanak Dev Ji who came to the world in 1469 in the Punjab region of South Asia. 10 gurus had a human embodiment whilst the scriptures alongside that of other revered saints and poets formed the 11th guru, which is the internal guru and this is named as the Siri Guru Granth Sahib. The concept of the guru is quite unique. Sikhs believe that the spirit of the previous gurus and saints resides within the Guru Granth Sahib. They believe the Guru Granth Sahib as a living soul and so it's a living Guru. In 1708, the Siri Guru Granth Sahib was declared to be the final and living Guru of the Sikh religion. Sikhs open the Siri Guru Granth Sahib daily at a random folio and the passages recited and reflected on throughout that day. The message is received as a message from a higher power. This makes the Guru Granth Sahib by far the most sacred item in the life of a Sikh. The scripture is considered to be a living Guru and so it's treated in a manner of a living person of the highest social status. The folios are not called pages but are called limbs of the Guru. Sikhs will often physically prostrate to the Siri Guru Granth Sahib as a sign of ultimate respect. The Gurdwara, meaning the Guru's door, is the natural home of the Guru and this plays a central life central role to the lives of many Sikhs. So, how did such a important Guru manuscript come to be part of the Rylands collections? As with many items in not just our library but in many libraries, we know very little about the history before it enters via colonial possession. In June 1862, London bookseller Bernard Quaritch wrote to Lord Lindsay, the 25th Earl of Crawford, a renowned collector whose private library was one of the largest in Britain sorry, in Britain, to say that he had recently acquired an exceptional copy of the Siri Guru Granth Sahib. I've just secured a most extraordinary manuscript, perfect copy of the sacred book of that gallant nation the Sikhs called the Granth. Despite all my experience as an Oriental bookseller, I have never had such a manuscript before. And as you can see in the catalog entry on on at the top there, Um, the manuscript actually being described as a manuscript is in itself an inappropriate term for the Guru. It was said to have been rested out of the hands of a Sikh priest at the Battle of Gujarat in February 1849 by an officer of the 52nd Bengal Native Infantry. Lindsay considered this to be of great curiosity and value and paid £21 for it. In 1901, the Bibliotheca Lindesiana, which was the private library of Lord Lindsay, was purchased by Enriqueta Rylands for around £155,000 and the Sri Guru Granth Sahib has remained at the Rylands ever since. Before the work that we've carried out over the past few years, there's been little evidence to suggest that the Guru was ever consulted or studied. As is the case in many other institutions who hold such items, requests to view them are often met with fear and suspicion. The uncertain provenance of the Guru, like that of other collection items, has long been suppressed along with its clear entanglement in colonialism, militarism, and imperialism. So, what I want to talk about now is what we call at the university the Sikh Heritage Project. So, this is a collaboration between a number of individuals and organizations. The projects at the Rylands would not have been possible without the amazing support of the five Manchester Gurudwaras and staff past and present including Imbal Labin, John Hodgson along with Maya Sharma at the Ahmed Iqbal Ullah Race Relations Centre. Now, the origins of the project derived from a public lecture exploring the origins of the Sikh migration to greater Manchester. The event titled Sikhs in the city quickly reached maximum capacity which demonstrated the significant demand there was for such community engagement work. In 2023, we began the development of a Sikh digital archive. The project was the initiative of the University of Manchester and the local Sikh community. There were contributions from the local gurdwaras within greater Manchester, as well as the Race Centre based at Manchester Central Library. We planned for the archive to span across different time periods of Sikh heritage in the city, and we hosted a number of workshops to encompass the different themes. The purpose was threefold. So, the first was to create a platform where the Sikh community can access heritage held in the university from their computers or mobile devices. The second purpose was to engage with the community and give them the space to contribute their thoughts and ideas to the items and the digital archive. The third purpose was to give the community an opportunity to share their invaluable subject knowledge on these historic items and help expand the overall understanding and debate surrounding these items. The first workshop was centered around the Sikh scriptures held at the Rylands. We invited the Sikh community from across the city to look at the historic Guru Granth Sahib, as well as other scriptures including the historic Siri Guru Granth Sahib and the Buddha Sahib. The second workshop was also hosted by the Rylands and we explored more secular items of Sikh and Punjabi culture, including arts and literature. The third workshop was hosted by the Manchester Art Gallery and we explored armor and weaponry from the Sikh and low the Anglo-Sikh War, sorry. In the fourth workshop, we openly invited the community to bring in items they held to be rich in personal or community heritage and we digitized them. This was done in recognition of the dwindling numbers of the early Sikh migrants and to help capture their stories. The difference with this session, however, was that it was situated at a local Gurdwara, the Siri Guru Gobind Singh Gurdwara in Wally Range. The collections and digitization team traveled to the Gurdwara and set up their community set up their equipment in the community space. This was an unprecedented feat as it had never been done before by the university. It resembled a milestone in the project and established and the established relationship between now existed. Overall, the Sikh Digital Archive was deemed by both the community and the university to be an overwhelming success. It brought a new level of understanding to the items and community engagement. It also further developed the relationship between the university and the Sikh community, not just within Manchester, but I would say around the UK as well. So, we'll go into a few of those project milestones in a bit more detail now. The first before any work could be carried out was the sorry, it was the very important conservation stage. So, the initial extensive conservation of the Guru was carried out in 2021 over a period of about 6 months by one of our expert conservators, Laura Snow. Before treatment began, Laura consulted very closely with Poppy Seva, a charity dedicated to preserving Sikh heritage, alongside members of the Sikh community about transport throughout the building, appropriate handling to ensure the Guru Granth Sahib was treated with the utmost respect. The work took place in a dedicated separated room from the collection care studio, which was cleaned daily. Shoes were removed, hair was covered, and Laura refrained from alcohol throughout the treatment period. No animal products were used, and each evening the Guru was wrapped and led to rest once the conservation work had been finished. Before conservation, the Guru was in an extremely fragile condition as you can see in the images here. Uh the outer leaves of the manuscript were particularly brittle and had fragmented. And in the past, this condition had actually been used as a reason to restrict access to the Guru, um and it was withdrawn from view. Following on from the uh conservation work, the same protocols were used during the digitization process by myself. Uh so, again, the digitization was carried out in separate room from the main studio, and it was only I that was doing the work on it. Um it was carried out over two complete days, um and hard enough for me to do for 1 day or for 2 days, I would refrain from alcohol for several days before and during the process. Again, like Laura, removed my shoes and kept my hair covered. And when work was paused or finished for the day, again, Guru was fully covered and returned to its proper cushions. After consultation with the community, it was agreed that flash lighting could be used. It was photographed using a Phase One IQ4 150 million pixel digital camera, and that produced 930 extremely high-resolution images. Uh the experience itself was actually deeply humbling, and I felt honored to be trusted with this such an important item. Uh that's then led on to kind of shape and change my understanding of how, why, and for whom we digitize. The digital record that is currently online is available to everybody on Luna, our digital platform, as an open-access item, um and a full PDF can be downloaded. The record includes clear provenance information, and also has extended rights guidance listed. Um so, the that reads the University of Manchester Library has made these images accessible under a CC BY-NC-SA license. However, we respectfully ask that users do not print images of the Guru Granth Sahib from the platform. Sikhs consider the Guru Granth Sahib to be the living embodiment of the Guru. So, any printed version of that text would also be treated as an embodiment and should be handled accordingly. In addition to the full text, all of the end bands, macro shots, we also digitize each individual fragment of text that was collected during the conservation process. Numbering at a few hundred actually had text written on. These fragments are also understood to be part of the Guru and classed as limbs. And the images that you can see here on screen is a digital reconstruction of where some of those fragments have come from. So, again, working closely with Poppy Seva, we were able to identify those areas. And part of the ongoing conservation work is to physically reinstate those fragments back onto the relevant pages. As we mentioned earlier, the community has been involved in a lot of different processes through the digitization, conservation, and storage process. And the community generously donated what's known as a palki sahib to the library. So, this is used during any readings from the Guru Granth Sahib and it serves as a platform and is understood as seat for the Guru. As part of the digital exhibition, we've recently we carried out both 3D photogrammetry using multiple images and digital structured light scanning to create an accurate 3D model. So, this is one of our photographers, Sami, using one of our 3D scanners that we have access to called a Leo. It's quite quite a beast to use on your own. So, we enabled enlisted the help of another photographer and a library trolley. This is how we got an accurate model just by kind of wheeling a photographer around the space. That's going to be online as part of the exhibition, which we'll talk about in a little while. As well as the park itself, community members also donated a group some really beautiful handmade rumalas, which are the sacred cloths used to cover and protect the Guru. On the right, you can see how the Guru is now stored in the library. Previously to this project, um it was just on a shelf as any other book or manuscript would be in a collection. You can see that um this is now actually stored on the uppermost shelf of one of our um secure storage areas with a dedicated canopy and the rumalas there next to it. So, on this next section, I want to talk about community engagement and the history of the Sikh community or a bit of about the history of the Sikh community in Manchester. So, engaging with the Sikh community can bring great rewards and benefits. It can help build and develop relationships, which can increase dialogue and allow for great greater cooperation. It should also help develop an understanding of items which are not previously known through knowledge exchange. This can help facilitate research across the wider field. Engaging with the community, however, is not always easy and it can bring challenges. These challenges uh we managed to overcome through perseverance and patience. Whilst there was a clear demand for from the local community for access to the 300-year-old Guru Granth Sahib, we knew there would be inevitably challenges. The first challenge we faced was that there often just isn't one community. There are often many small communities which often bring different viewpoints. Through thorough and clear communication and extensive engagement, we managed to gather these different perspectives and found a middle ground. A second challenge we had was the influence of national Sikh organizations within Manchester. To overcome this, we brought them into the event by explaining what we were trying to achieve, the reasons for it, and explained our methodology. We managed to secure the backing of several high-profile and influential Sikh organizations who endorsed the event. We allowed them to put their logos on the poster to help reassure the local and the national Sikh population. The third challenge we had was the status of the historic Guru Granth Sahib in modern Sikh society. Traditionally, Sri Guru Granth Sahibs were all handwritten and so were all rather unique in their appearance. But the modern Guru Granth Sahib, however, was standardized in the late 19th century with the rise of the printing press. This means that the Guru Granth Sahib created That means that Guru Granth Sahibs created within the last 120 years have mostly been printed and are all identical to one another. As a result, many Sikhs, especially in Britain, are unfamiliar with the appearance of handwritten Guru Granth Sahibs. Even in India, many historic Guru Granth Sahibs have either been lost, destroyed, or are in private collections and difficult to access. A lack of interaction with these historic Guru Granth Sahibs has resulted in a lack of understanding on the topic. The fourth and final challenge we had was how the Gurdwara should present this Guru Granth Sahib. We overcame this by engaging with the highest Sikh body, Sri Akal Takht Sahib Sri Akal Takht Sahib in Amritsar, and we sought advice off them. We even invited representatives to the Rylands when they were in Manchester for another event. We found them to be quite understanding and supportive and they gave us advice in how we should present this Guru Granth Sahib. This dialogue essentially allowed us as organizers to have reassurance that we had the support of the local Sikh community, the national Sikh community, and the international Sikh community. From a library perspective, there were very different and also equally challenging problems. These could include it did include, sorry, time, team different teams' capacities, and financial resources. There was also a risk that if one of the main contacts at the library left, the project would stall, which would damage trust and relationships. Decisions perceived to be against the community interests can have a similar effect. So, it's vital to maintain the momentum. We should also not expect any in-depth advice from the communities for free. Where possible, people should always be prepared for their time and expertise. We consulted and engaged widely rather than than and relying on a single group, so that a broad range of viewpoints and experiences were represented, as Gurch had just suggested. Um we as a library needed and anybody doing any of these types of projects needs to be prepared to feel uncomfortable, to have very difficult conversations, and definitely to be okay with making mistakes along the way. Embracing key collaboration has been incredibly rewarding and our partnership with the Sikh communities has been both enlightening and deeply valuable. Be open-minded about repatriation, but in this experience, this has not been a major concern for the local Sikh communities. There is no room at all for complacency or self-congratulation. We still have a long way to go, and we are not even sure what that final destination will look like or whether there even is one. As Gurtej previously mentioned, one part of the project was digitization that that was held outside of the library within one of the local communities in Whalley Range in Manchester. And this was to to directly engage with the local community. Members were invited to bring up to five items to connected to their personal or family history. And the Rylands team, including myself, met with other specialists and other colleagues from the Ahmed Iqbal Resource Centre digitized their items, recorded detailed information, and gave each owner options for how their images could be used. Ownership of the images remains entirely with the contributors. This approach enriched the project with more personal and locally rooted material, placing community histories of Sikh in Manchester alongside items from the Rylands collections. Although there was some understandable caution at first, once we explained the project, many people were very keen to take part. And some even returned home to collect items for inclusion in the project, including portraits off the wall, passports and driving documents, and lots of really incredible family photography. This does serve as a pilot, and unfortunately we've not been able to run anything similar yet, but we are still open to visiting other Gurdwara's across Manchester to feed into the project into the future. So, what was the result of all this careful planning? So, we successfully brought the historic Siri Guru Granth Sahib to Siri Guru Gobind Singh Ji Gurdwara in Manchester on the biggest calendar event of the year, which is Vaisakhi. For the first time in over 175 years, the Guru was brought back and venerated within the Sikh community on Saturday the 13th of April 2024. It was a highly successful event with an estimated 3,000 visitors in 4 hours. Visitors came from across the UK for this event and it was covered nationally and internationally by ITV, BBC Radio 4 and The Sikh Channel. Right, so we've always stressed that a community project such as the Sikh digital exhibition needs to be a long-term project with forged >> [snorts] >> So, we always stressed that a community project such as the Sikh digital exhibition needs to be a long-term project which forges and builds upon relationships. It shouldn't be a one-off event but something which is incorporated into long-term planning. Working with the five Gurdwaras in Manches- in the Manchester region has always been part of this planning and the input of each institution respected. Sri Guru Nanak Devji Gurdwara was the first Gurdwara opened in Manchester and was one of the earliest in the UK. The committee that always supported the project including specifically the installation of the new fabric canopy and the Balaji Sahib which is the wooden throne in which Jamie showed earlier in which the Guru is seated. Uh when we were approached by the Gurdwara to mark their 75th reopening, we liaised with the community as with the committee to celebrate 70 years of Sikh heritage in Manchester. The planning was built on celebrating and showcasing local Sikh history and culture through the Sikh digital exhibition. The Gurdwara had requested that they wanted the honor of having the presence of the historic Sri Guru Granth Sahib for this occasion. A party of five individuals, the traditional number to accompany the Guru to transport the Siri Guru Granth Sahib to the Gurdwara. So, that's what the video is that you can see now. You can see five individuals from Gurdwara Dukh Niwaran and they're taking the Guru Granth Sahib, which he's holding above his head, out of the library and into the Gurdwara in the Musahib area. Similarly to the Vaisakhi event, the Guru was collected and transported by the community themselves rather than by the university staff. The Guru was received by the Gurdwara from Chand Nagar in the blowing of the traditional horn horn and a small firework display in the distance. The historic Guru Granth Sahib was that seated next to the standardized modern reception of the Guru and passages were recited throughout the day. Other aspects of the exhibition were also on display including an an accompanying interpretation of the Guru and the contents on digital screens. The Rylands also exhibited historic books on the theme of the Sikh history including the first translations of the Siri Guru Granth Sahib as well as Punjabi history including the court and camp of Ranjit Singh. The Race Centre also continued their support for the project by exhibiting some of the history they recorded on Sikh migration as well as their collections of contemporary books in the center. As with all the events to date, the feedback of the session was overwhelmingly positive and the event further expanded the boundary of what is possible when there is meaningful engagement, careful planning, and faithful commitment between an institution and a community. So, if we shift forward to more recently, so in early 2026, the Sikh Digital Exhibition launched. This exhibition and our Manchester Digital Exhibition platform brings all the elements of the project together including the Guru Granth Sahib and items donated by the community, all the manuscripts and printed items from the Rylands, Race Centre, the Manchester Art Gallery that encompass Sikh history alongside images taken from the digitization day. This free-to-access platform allows visitors to explore Sikh and Punjabi collections, and it currently has three key themes, which are religious text, the Sikh and British Empires, and community engagement. Religiously significant texts such as the Guru Granth Sahib and Sri Dasam Granth are accessible through the platform, as well as rarely seen images, texts, and maps. The images are displayed in high resolution, as you can see, allowing for easy digital access from anywhere in the world, which is important for scholars of Sikh, Indian, and Pakistani history and culture. The aim is that the platform will be expanded to include Sikh and Punjabi migrant histories to the region, and many Sikhs hope that the creation of this platform will encourage other institutions to make historical items they may hold more accessible. We uh would also like to approach, engage with, and encourage other institutions across the UK that hold Guru Granth Sahibs and other uh such significant texts of the Sikhs, given that the engagement and knowledge exchange with local communities has had such a positive impact for everyone involved. So, uh as was mentioned in the introduction, in the autumn of 2024, Manchester Art Gallery, now bed led by Inbal Livne, the former curator of diversifying collections at the Rylands, began working on a new exhibition on Sikh and Punjabi items. With the assistance of myself, the Manchester Art Gallery collaborated with the five Gurudwaras of Manchester and the wider Sikh community. We launched Splendors of the Sikh Raj exhibition, which focused on arms and armor taken from the Punjab region, again following the end of the Second Anglo-Sikh War. The items are currently under the legal oversight of Manchester City Council. The difference with these items here, however, are some of these items were previous previously displayed in an exhibition in the aftermath of the First World War, but have not been publicly displayed in the last century. The reaction from the Sikh community was a combination of support for the exhibition, but also surprised as many queried how long the items had been held in the region. And the launch of this exhibition gained significant traction including from ITV News. The exhibition's just been extended to close in February 2026, but questions remain on how these items are accessed following the conclusion of the exhibition. Um across 2025, the Rylands Heritage Imaging Lab were approached by Manchester University Press to contribute to a special edition of the the bulletin of the John Rylands Library. Uh established in 1902, almost as old as the library itself, the bulletin is a a prestigious peer-review journal published by MUP. For more than a century, it showcases research that complements the library's world-renowned special collections. And this edition marked the bulletin's shift to open access and is freely available to everyone. So, Gurmukh and I published an article on the work that we've been doing as part of the publication which we you can read alongside others by following the QR or the link on the screen now. So, the Strigol's Gospice is by no means the only manuscript held at the Rylands with contested provenance. We have at least seven Ethiopian manuscripts that we know of that are are sure spoils from the Battle of Magdala on the 13th of April, 1868. One on the screen now on the left even bears an inscription with the name, rank, and soldier that stole it. Recently these items have also been digitized. However, not with the same community engagement as the Sikh Heritage Project. We have other collections whose provenance is not fully understood and what considerations like those of the Guru Granth that might need to be made. Like this image from 2005 up in the top right-hand corner of a Pali manuscript that had been on online for a number of years suddenly found out in a rather inappropriate manner. We've since removed any images shown collections in this in this way. There is no answer to fit everybody. Everybody's different. All cultures are different. And it's imperative that different communities are engaged from the outset so meaningful, long-lasting relationships can be forged. And dialogical practice can be carried out on contested collections in libraries. A culture of cooperation, collaboration, and custodianship rather than ownership of contested items is key to move forward with a decolonial mindset when working with library collections. Now, thank you very much. I'll apologize now for the little um technical glitch. It was obviously fine when we tested it. But I'll stop sharing my screen and we can have a look at answering some questions. Thank you so much um Gurdek and Jamie. I see that there's uh five questions that have been left in the chat already. So, I'll leave it to you to uh answer these. Um and everyone feel free to keep on adding uh any questions you may have to the Q&A uh by pressing the Q&A button at the bottom of the screen. Thank you. Okay, I'll uh I'll answer the first question there. So, it's the question is what sort of items did local people bring for digitalization and are they special within the community? I think every single item that people brought was definitely special within the community. They all told stories of how they became part of Manchester. Um it was journeys. Um it was assimilating into British life. We had things like I said like passports and driving licenses alongside um other kind of personal letters, photographs, and a lot of In fact, all of the items kind of told that story of how those people came to be in Manchester. But Isaac, I don't know if you've got anything to add to that. So, with that it was we left it more to the community themselves in what they valued. So, we didn't really encourage say passports or anything in particular. So, yeah, we had a range of um range of items brought in. I think we had some sort of uh like newspaper adverts with horoscopes and you know uh palm reading from relatives. So, we had a range of items. I thought it was quite interesting as well, you know, to sort of sometimes it could come across a little bit patronizing to say we're only interested in this. So, I think where maybe where we did a little bit okay there is we just left it for the community to bring in what you deem to be significant to you, your family, and your community. What do you want digitizing? What do you want future generations um to see in the future? Um yes, Isaac. I think the other questions you are going to be able to uh handle a little bit better than me. Can you get those up? Uh I'm struggling a little bit, to be honest with you. So, I saw a question on the Sikh Heritage Charity. Um which one was that? Um Was it Bodhi Saver? Do you Do you want me to read it out to you, Gur Sek? The first The first question >> for Shall we do that? Okay. Yeah, sorry. Um Um Gur Sek, I think the question that you're referring to is a question in general chat that someone posted and they asked if you could provide a link to the Sikh Heritage Charity that you mentioned in the presentation. Um so, if either of you could pop that in the general chat at some point um or send it to us later and we'll circulate it via email. I'll I'll do that now while you do the questions, Gur Sek. Um and then uh moving on to the next question. Uh so, some Jacqueline Writer asks if the Sri Guru Granth Sahib is considered to be the living embodiment of the Guru, how difficult was it to get permission to conserve it assuming this involved adding materials like blue paper, et cetera, and how was that agreement negotiated? So, I feel when the project started, I'm sure Jamie would agree with me with this, is the Sri Guru Granth Sahib was in a really bad condition in that the paper was sort of fragmate fragmenting and breaking and it just wasn't stable at all. When the folios, the limbs, were being turned, it was sort of breaking. And so, essentially, it was the question of if it's being used, it's being damaged. And so, I think the repair work wasn't really a question. It needed some sort of conservation. It needed stabilizing. Now, the university did it through the conservation team and I feel that was supported by the community and it was funded by the university and I think the community welcomed that because I think they saw there was some benefits to this where the university were offering expertise um something which the local community not necessarily they couldn't do but it sort of done them a favor in the funding and the the skill sets involved and the university collaborated with seek organizations such as both these ever such as basics of CP such as new home Cynthia and that meant organizations who were skilled [snorts] in the conservation work of the city group residents supported the projects because they were directly involved in the projects and I think that was just another example of the benefit and the beauty of collaboration worked with community groups. If you get everyone in and around the table you will get support or in theory should get support because they are part of the decision making process and so I think the community was reassured as well that the university and the staff members took steps as Jamie mentioned such as not using animal products but refraining refraining from for example alcohol during the period in which they was reassured because steps [snorts] were taken and so I feel they were satisfied with that so overall I don't think it was contentious that the university did the conservation work and I think it was looked at in a positive way. Thank you and there's another question that uh sort of relates to this decision-making process with uh Sikh communities. Uh so, Sharon is asking, "You mentioned the challenges involved in working with several Sikh communities together. Can you expand a little on this and say a bit more about how you resolved any conflicts uh and where and how they arose?" So, the challenge with this project, even though the Siri Guru Granth Sahib had been at the university at the Rylands since the early 1900s, it wasn't well documented that it was there. So, when we started this project to try to make the Guru Granth Sahib more accessible, I would say maybe 10 15 people max within the community knew of its presence. Who always made a point that this Guru Granth Sahib's there, but it wasn't really common knowledge. But, the 10 or 15 people who knew about it always persisted, "We know it's there and we want community uh access." Now, in the bulletin, we talk about an instance where members of the community actually came knocking on the Rylands, and such uh was the suspicion of the management that they had a security team put on standby just in case there was any trouble. Now, the challenge for us, whilst we were trying to open up engagement both physically and digitally, many of the community didn't know it was there, and so it was a bit like, "Here's the Guru Granth Sahib. Do you want access? But, by the way, we're telling you for the first time it's there." And so, the response from a lot of the community was, "Well, what's it doing there? Where's it come from? How long it's been there? Is it a Guru Granth Sahib? How do you know it's a Guru Granth Sahib? but where it's been done, what research has been done? Is the university just trying to give it back? And that was the questions constantly presented to the university. And I feel they're all valid, genuine questions. And so we overcame them by just having lots and lots of conversations with different organizations and whilst in the grand scheme of things, the project moved quite quickly. We I feel we had a lot of meetings where we spoke to people, but we weren't expecting decisions on the day. We weren't expecting a response on the spot. It's you know, we're welcome to have a conversation and everyone maybe go home and talk to relevant stakeholders and come back to us. And I think that was important. One of the challenges which still remain with this is because it's a handwritten Guru Granth Sahib and it's not a standardized printed version. We did mention this in the in the tour. Some people view the Guru Granth Sahib as with a bit of suspicion and they question well, what role does it have in the 21st century? And views do differ on that. There are I would say a minority of people that say, "Look, we can't regard this as a Guru Granth Sahib today, but we can view it as a historic Guru Granth Sahib." But then other organizations such as WOTIS have a base at the 16th century. Representatives from Amritsar and Dhanda Mitak Sol, they come and said, "Well, actually it needs to be given the same respect. It needs to be treated the same." And so we took that. We went on the safe side and said, "Look, if people regard this as a Guru Granth Sahib, that's the respect we're going to give it and we're not going to devalue this in any way. Right, and that leads That leads me to Linda's question there. What you were just saying about getting different organizations around the table, cuz she's asking whether you can say a little bit more about how you created a coherent understanding of the Sikh community, given the fact that it is, as you say, several communities rather than a homogeneous one. So, I feel this project benefited from the established community relations between the Gurdwaras. So, there was already a network in place between the Manchester Sikh community in that there was a history of maybe 30 years of them collaborating together, the five Gurdwaras, and doing events. So, they do the annual parade across Manchester city center, where it goes from each of the five Gurdwaras, and ultimately ends up in Manchester city center. There was also um events that happened previously in the Whitworth Art Gallery, in Heaton Park. And so, I think the project benefited from that preexisting network, because we were speaking to five Gurdwaras in one meeting, rather than speaking to five individual Gurdwaras. And there was already harmony between the Gurdwaras, so I feel in that respect, the project benefited there. Um but in terms of other organizations that were influential, that was a case of welcoming them to the Rylands, and hosting them, and sort of explaining what items there were, and the project. So, with the exception of the Gurdwaras, other organizations had to be dealt with individually, and then we sort of communicated all the positions and viewpoints that already existed, and we built a picture up over a few years. Right, that makes sense. Thank you. Um Jamie, I think the next question is for you. This is a question um from Emma King uh and she says, "You mentioned needing to have difficult conversations during the project. What advice would you would you would you both give?" This question for both of you, sorry. "Would you both give to other organizations doing similar work to help them prepare for difficult conversation and what supports do you think needs to be in place for staff?" That's a very very good question. Um I think a lot of the difficult conversations that can come out of this, it's not necessarily just conversations that you have to have with the communities. Um it's conversations that you have to have with your institutions. Um it's conversations that you need to have with other staff um that might be a little bit more stuck in the ways perhaps um and aren't as open to these kind of projects. I think it's things are definitely changeable within the university special collections kinds of environments, you know, these these types of um manuscripts and collections are university assets, you know, they're they're a valuable thing to a university um and a lot of the time sometimes they might not be able to see much further than those pound signs. Um so bringing up any questions of kind of repatriation of items is an incredibly difficult question to to bring up um at at certain meetings. Um but on a more kind of engagement with the community level, I think it's it's a lot of the times taking a step back and you have to let the community be the main voice in these kinds of projects. You know, a lot of people that are um responsible for these collections are responsible, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they know what to do with these kind of things. So, bringing in community members with more knowledge about these items uh is is only going to benefit everybody. And I think it's the idea of just being open and trying to discover the avenues and coming over those questions as they come up um through the process. You know, there's a lot of different collections. There's a lot of different communities. Like I said, there isn't one answer that's going to fit everybody. But, I think just really kind of slowly going through that process. You know, this is taken many years to get to the position that it's in now, and it's still not finished, and I don't really think it ever will be finished. There's no real answer. Um and as far as getting stuff prepared for things like this, um I'm I'm really not sure on that one. What um it's I think it's it's having that knowledge and understanding that we are the custodians of this knowledge, and we are the custodians of these objects rather than the the keepers. We need to let people come to the wrong conclusions and work with us on answering some of the questions about what we do with these really contested, difficult collections and items. Thank you. Um Kartik, is there anything you wanted to add um to Jamie's response? I feel the big challenge with anything like this is not necessarily just the Rylands, but in any organization part of the world is always um the staff and the funding, [snorts] you know, about having capacity. Um do the staff have you know, subject knowledge, or are they willing to engage in such projects? Because I feel some institutions may see projects like this that involve the community as being a little bit high risk. You know, you're sort of initiating conversations and you don't ultimately know what the outcome will be. And you know, the other question is funding. Funding's a a massive question with with anything, you know. What are the commitments of the organization? What are their priorities? And I would say you know, there is a model that we've done and for other organizations they might benefit from, you know, sort of adapting the same or a similar approach, but equally they might turn around and say, "Actually, that might have worked for you, but it might not work for us and we can take what you've done and reflect and review and adapt it to our own communities." And that the focus of our talk has been on Sikh collections, but as Jamie said earlier, you know, it can be used with any community group on um any heritage items. You know, it it can be transferred. So, um yeah. All right, thank you. I think we've got time for one last question. Um so, uh Roma is asking, "What do you guys feel are the key takeaways from this project for any future projects at the University of Manchester regarding inclusivity and decolonization? Is there a particular learning you would want other individuals or organizations who want to do something similar to take on as advice?" That's a a good question to end on, I think. Um I I guess I kind of said a couple of these things um earlier on about um the the difficult questions. I think it's the key takeaway is letting the community be the be the voice of this. We're we're just kind of helping facilitate this kind of project, I guess. Um we don't know much about the Guru Granth Sahib for example, you know, nobody ever cataloged it properly. Like I said earlier, it was just kind of left in a cupboard and kind of hidden away. It had its issues, people knew it shouldn't be there. And I think it's the key takeaway was just being really honest about everything. Giving that provenance information, saying yes, we do understand that it's not supposed to be here. What can we do with the community to kind of do something about that, you know? The question of repatriation did come up over the course of this, but the community deemed that holding it within the library and then allowing the full access that you would give any manuscript or any book to be studied. But with the kind of the concept they're putting like with the holy scripture, um when the gurus, um consulted, we set up a room for the consultation, which has the floor covered. Only the delegates that want to see the manuscripts are allowed in there. So, it's it's adding in new processes into our existing processes that enable things to be consulted by a wider range of people and in the the correct way. I think that's probably one of the key takeaways that I It's It's allowing access and giving access in the in the correct respectful manner. So, if I could add to that, I would say for any organization that sort of does a similar sort of project, I would say work with multiple groups, gauge community opinion properly. I feel the mistake that an organization can make is they speak to one group and they form a relationship with one group and that's it. And then whilst the intentions of that group might be honest, there might be other groups that say, "Well, we feel left out. We feel that you've made a special relationship and we're not happy. And equally, that one organization that you're speaking to might not get 100% of everything right. Well, equally, as with any community, there are slight differences in opinion. You don't want to sort of isolate anyone because it could sort of backfire and go wrong. I think it's important to work with multiple organizations and just gauge viewpoints before you take any first steps. Um and equally, sometimes the project can move quite quickly at times, but in other places, it can move quite slow, especially starting out and setting up. And it's about letting the community take the lead and not sort of setting hard deadlines which sort of force communities into corners like, "We want to do this event, but it has to be done within this funding frame because that's when the funding's for and it needs to be done in 3 months or it needs to be done in 6 months because that's when the money runs out." And I feel that's important because I feel the relationship needs to be organic in that everyone's involved, everyone's valued. I don't think for example, the library or the university or the museum should be saying, "We want this as a project. We want to have this on our CVs and it needs to be done in the next few months. So I think it's about sort of feeling your way through the project and working out what's best for all parties involved. Yeah, and so on that as well just to to be to be brave and challenge the kind of the norms. Like for example, when the guru was taken out of the library up to the Saki Festival like that was one of the most amazing things that I've ever seen. And you know, like 5 or 6 years ago, 10 years ago, if somebody came to the library and said, "Oh, we want to take your your priceless guru manuscript out of the library and use it in a celebration." Like I I kind of I imagine what a few people in the chat are thinking would be the kind of you know, the higher-ups response to that. But like that and that allowing that to happen was really special and has really meant a lot to the community as well. So I think yeah, be be brave and challenge everything within your institutions.