Bhai Jagraj Singh

Jagraj Singh, born Jagraj Singh Hundal in London in 1979, was a British Sikh preacher who founded the charity Everythings 13 in 2012 and, through it, Basics of Sikhi, a YouTube channel and education project that explained Sikhi in English. He grew up in Hounslow, studied at Oxford and served as a British Army officer, then worked in finance while continuing his religious work. SikhNet says he spoke about the Sikh Gurus on the streets of London and beyond.

Everythings 13 is a UK registered educational charity. Its projects included Basics of Sikhi, the Sikh Press Association and Mighty Khalsa. By July 2017 the Basics of Sikhi channel held more than 800 videos, and the project had three full-time parcharaks teaching in schools, colleges, universities, gurdwaras and workplaces in the UK and abroad.

Key moments

• 2012: he founded Everythings 13. In 2014 he founded the Sikh Press Association.
• December 2016: he was diagnosed with stage four cancer that had spread to his liver and could not be operated on. At a kirtan evening at a Southall gurdwara on 4 December, more than 1,000 people attended and thousands watched online. He said he felt ready for whatever happened, having taken Amrit about sixteen years earlier, asked people to pray that he stay close to the Guru rather than that he live longer, and urged them to act on their plans for the community without delay.
• February 2017: the Prime Minister gave him a Points of Light Award for his voluntary work with Basics of Sikhi and Everythings 13. Sikh Council UK reported that a Sikh television appeal raised over £100,000 in three hours for his proposed international information centre at Sri Harmandir Sahib, Amritsar.
• 20 July 2017: he died, aged 38. Dr Rajwant Singh of the National Sikh Campaign called his passing a great loss to the UK Sikh community and the wider Panth.

Remembered for: taking Sikh education to young English speakers online and on the street, and for the way he faced his illness in public. Basics of Sikhi kept working after his death: Wikipedia records a campaign on kirpan protections in 2019 and, by 2021, more than 2,500 videos and 170,000 subscribers.