Indian Sikh community in Lagos hosts indigent persons for harvest festival

A Lagos-based group of Indians, from ancient Sikh community, which is into various social services, through its feeding the poor program, has fed more about 100 people in Ilupeju area of Lagos State at the weekend, as part of activities to commemorate the Indian tradition of celebrating harvest among the country’s nationals who are resident in Lagos.

The festival is held in high esteem among farmers in India. However, the Sikh community, all over the world, runs free community kitchens, which provide meals to all and it is funded by volunteers. In traditional Indian society, people of high and low caste were rigidly segregated, but the Sikh community kitchen is carried out to combat the social problem.

The Group Leader, Sikh, Lagos chapter, Navdeep Lamba, stated that it was a tradition of the community to feed poor people, just as it fed more than 50 people in Lagos, and that the gesture was timely to have come during a period when Indians were celebrating the annual harvest festival. Lamba explained that the common goal of every members of the community was to ensure that equality was maintained and extended to the poor people without discrimination. 

He disclosed that Indians in Nigeria, who were members of the Sikh community, came up with idea of replicating the same mission of the group as practiced in their home country. “The community feeds people every Saturday in Ilupeju. We initiated the program last year with just five people and it has since grown large with more people coming.”