Tuesday 3 March 2009

Ranbir Kaur

Ranbir Kaur was the first Sikh woman to join the US armed forces in 2003. She went on a one-and-a-half-year mission to Afghanistan. She had joined the National Guards at the age of 17. She was born in Nijjran village of Jalandhar district, Punjab, the young fighter reached the US as a seven-year-old after her father Mahan Singh, pursuing the American dream, secured a green card in 1990. She was brought up in an isolated town called Earlimart, in California, her brush with the uniform dates back to 2001 when she was a freshman (Grade IX) in high school at Delano, which was the closest city. In 2003, the daughter of a Sikh grape grower faced the ire of white supremacists, who posted spam emails terming her recruitment as a means to seek citizenship. However she was already a US citizen, and the young girl set about proving her detractors wrong through hard training. During the 2005 Katrina hurricane in New Orleans, the devout Sikh was instrumental in the recovery of the Guru Granth Sahib after the New Orleans gurudwara was submerged. United Sikhs, an organisation, had sought her assistance and Ranbir had got everybody moving after she announced that the living Guru of the Sikhs was under water. Amid random shootings, air force rescue experts David Cruz and Tom Bausmas had rescued the scriptures in an operation that lasted 22 hours.

Famous Sikhs has been informed by Dr Jaspreet Mundeir, that Ranbir Kaur was not the first Sikh woman to be in the US army as she herself served before Ranbir did. However we believe Dr Mundeir served as a medic and this entry states that Ranbir served in the armed forces so to our knowledge she is still the first Sikh woman to have specifically joined the armed forces. We may occasionally get things wrong so thank you for getting in touch with us, so if you know any different then please do get in touch with us.

3 comments:

  1. it's a humbling story,well done.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I salute her and to our prestigious religion.....From Dr.Navdeep Bains-navdeepbkn@yahoo.co.in

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  3. Good job
    Very good site.....
    One suggestion
    Maybe you can add the name
    of Brig Kuldip Singh
    Chandpuri, Maha Vir Chakra
    recepient in the epic
    Battle of Longewala on
    which the superhit hindi
    film BORDER was made. The
    first ever Sikh war hero
    on whom a movie was made

    ReplyDelete