By Sarjit Kaur | MALAYSIA|
Malaysian Gurmit Kaur Deo, wife of respected politician and lawyer Karpal Singh, is featured in the second edition of the Jewels of Punjab book.
It was an honour for Gurmit who had always been in the shadows of her husband who passed away in a car accident in 2014, though she played a key role in the background.
“I’m truly humbled,” she told Asia Samachar after being feted at an event in New Delhi on Friday (20 Dec 2019). “My life was just around Karpal…giving him moral support all the way.”
The coffee-table book, ‘Jewels of Punjab – Leading Global Punjabi Personalities Volume II’, was unveiled by former Indian Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh. It pays tribute to global Punjabi personalities who have championed causes.
Gurmit’s ‘love and loss’ story is headlined ‘The Iron Lady’. She was born in 1948 in Narathiwat, the southern Thai province, where her parents had migrated from Punjab in the 1930s. She was the ninth of 13 children of Puran Kaur and Sohan Singh Gill. The family moved to Malaya when she was seven.
She married Karpal in 1970, whom she had known since they were kids in the backwaters of the then Penang.
“The story of my life can neither begin nor end without him. Had it not been for him, perhaps I would not have had a life as privileged as I have today,” she says in the book released by World Punjabi Organisation (WPO) in association with Maneesh Media.
WPO badges itself as an international body of Punjabis that is non-political comprising Punjabi industrialists, businessmen, sportsmen, journalists, artists and achievers in various fields from all over the globe.
The mention of Karpal evokes respect and admiration in many Malaysians, even his opponents in politics.
Today, two of Gurmit’s sons are parliamentarians while another is a state assemblyman in Penang, with her daughter also actively involved in politics. After the historic general polls of 2018, the couple’s second-born Gobind Singh Deo became a federal minister, a first for the Sikh community in Malaysia.
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