Stockton, California

Stockton is a city in California's Central Valley, about 80 km from San Francisco, and the place where Sikh institutional life in the United States began. The Punjabi and Sikh Diaspora Digital Archive at UC Davis calls Gurdwara Sahib Stockton, founded in 1912 by the Pacific Coast Khalsa Diwan Society, “the first Sikh house of worship established in the United States”. Its founders were two farmers, Jawala Singh and Wasakha Singh, who shared a 500-acre farm. The Tribune calls Jawala Singh the “Potato King”.

Key moments

• 1 November 1911: the first Sikh congregational prayer in the country is held at Sardar Nand Singh's camp near Stockton.
• 1912: the Society, with Sant Teja Singh as its first president, founds the gurdwara. California's Senate resolution of 2012 dates it to 24 October and the Assembly's 2014 resolution to 14 October. Jawala Singh and Wasakha Singh are its founding granthis, and the Senate resolution records scholarships for Berkeley students from India, open to all.
• 1 November 1913: the first issue of the Ghadar paper appears in Urdu, with the gurdwara's financial support; the Punjabi edition follows on 9 December.
• 31 December 1913: the two granthis organise the Sacramento conclave that forms the Ghadar Party, and Wasakha Singh is elected to its central executive committee.
• 1914 to 1915: the party sends 616 members to India, 527 of them Sikhs. Wasakha Singh is sentenced to transportation for life in the Lahore Conspiracy Case on 13 September 1915.
• 1915 and 1929: a wooden building is finished in 1915 and a brick one added in 1929.

What it means today. The gurdwara is now a historical landmark of California and houses the Ghadar press. Dalip Singh Saund, who served in the US Congress from 1957 to 1963 as its first Asian American member, was the gurdwara's secretary. Stockton is where a pattern later repeated across North America first appears: farm earnings paid for a gurdwara, for schooling and for politics at home in Punjab.