Gurdwara Sahib Silat Road

Gurdwara Sahib Silat Road, also called the Silat Road Sikh Temple, stands on Silat Road in Singapore. It began as the "Police Gurdwara", the temple of the Sikh Police Contingent that the British brought to Singapore from 1881, and it kept that role as a halfway house for Sikhs arriving from Punjab or passing through to other parts of Asia.

Key moments

• 1912: the Tanjong Pagar Dock gurdwara was demolished and the small Pearl's Hill gurdwara was lost, so the Sikh police needed a larger gurdwara (the temple's own history).
• 1922 to 1924: the freehold land, 23,775 square feet, was bought for $16,800 in 1922 and the building was finished in 1924 at a cost of $54,000. About 70 percent came from the police forces in Singapore and Malaya and the rest from Sikhs in neighbouring countries. It went on giving lodging to new immigrants and people in need until the 1970s.
• 1937 and 1981: the property passed in 1937 to a ten-member board of trustees, and in 1981 that board merged with the Queen Street Sikh Temple board to form the Central Sikh Gurdwara Board, which manages it today.
• 1942 to 1945: during the Japanese Occupation many Sikh soldiers and policemen died, and the gurdwara housed and cared for their widows and children.
• On 12 October 1966 the memorial of Bhai Maharaj Singh, which stood in the grounds of Singapore General Hospital, was moved to the front of the gurdwara. Bhai Maharaj Singh kept up armed resistance to the British after the fall of the Sikh kingdom, was exiled to Singapore, and died in jail there on 5 July 1856 (SikhRI).
• 23 October 1995: the rebuilt gurdwara reopened, with its front facade kept for heritage reasons. On 14 November 1999 the National Heritage Board declared it a Historic Site, and on 3 July 2010 Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew opened a larger memorial to Bhai Maharaj Singh.

What it means today. The gurdwara runs a community kitchen seven days a week, and during the Covid-19 lockdowns it served thousands of meals a day to people of all races (Tabla). It remains the home of the memorial to Bhai Maharaj Singh, the Sikh leader whom the British deported to Singapore.