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INSIGHTS INTO SHASTARVIDIYA
ABOUT ME
MATHS TEACHER. MARTIAL ARTIST.
My name is Gurpreet Singh Dhillow. In our martial school I am known as ‘Gopi’ from my home town nickname of ‘Gupy’ [pronounced with a thick black country accent]. Unknowingly and unwittingly I hadn’t realised that ‘Gopi’ was a term commonly understood within traditional Indian culture meaning milkmaid - and as always with these things the name has stuck! A great start to learning an ancient battlefield art I know...
At the time of writing, I am a 34 year British born Sikh from the Midlands. I came across Shastar Vidiya whilst in further education where I studied mathematics at Warwick University as a 21 year old. At the beginning my only reason for wanting to meet the master Gurdev Nidar Singh was not at all to do with the art he was teaching, but the then controversial views
he expressed about Sikhism.
The first thing he inspired me to do as an educated young man was go away and read for myself. He told me on day one: ‘you’re a fool if you believe everything I say, you’re equally a fool if you dismiss it all. So how do you not be a fool?’ [to be honest he didn’t use the word fool, but something far stronger!].
Anyhow, inspired by him I did just that and here began one of the many positive changes I was inspired to make. Up to this point I had not read any books of any type. At school I was always a 'maths-geek' and despite being in top set for maths I was near bottom for English. I simply refused to read. One story I tell my students now (as a secondary school teacher) is how I was once caught truanting English lessons as a 15 year old only to be found in a mobile classroom reserved for sixth formers sitting on my own doing extra maths. Back to my point, my lack of enthusiasm for reading meant I had not read anything by the age of 21. This changed drastically as, inspired by the Gurdev, I began a journey I have been on since to read as widely as possible. Initially, I read lots of non-fiction - mainly on topics around Sikhs and their martial heritage. But later I developed a real passion for reading and since my late twenties have been going back and reading all the things I should have done: literary classics such as Orwell’s 1984, To Kill a mockingbird with many more to go.
I was also suitably inspired to actually learn Shastar Vidiya (SV), the focus of this blog. Though truth be told at first this was just a by-product of wanting to be round the larger than life inspirational character of the Gurdev, as well as the senior students who were amazing guys too, many of whom are now family to me. In those days we could literally spend 3 or 4 hours after class [a class that was itself 4 hours long] standing in car parks, in sun, rain or snow, just listening to the Gurdev impart thousands of years of knowledge passed down to him. He truly is, as well as being one of the foremost martial arts masters in the world, a true polymath.
As the years went by my reasons for being in the Akhara [martial school] flipped around. As I grew as a person, matured and found my own identity, which I think is something we all go through, my attention turned toward the martial art itself. Being fortunate enough to live only 25 minutes away from the Gurdev I perhaps have been uniquely placed to gain hundreds of hours of contact time with him. This is one reason why I feel the responsibility and obligation to do what I can to help spread the art, as well as the substantial pressure to validate the time and energy he has put into me by being the best I can in this art.
In my relatively short time I have seen Shastar Vidiya grow from a few local lads training in my locale, and a niche group of people discussing it on the internet, to a globally recognised and critically acclaimed art. It's been a fantastic journey to be part of and in some ways it's a shame I didn't start writing a blog such as this years ago.
I feel privileged to have had a front row seat on this journey, and as Gurdev is still in the infancy of spreading this near extinct art globally, I believe my skills and attributes best lie in combining the knowledge imparted to me by Gurdev Ji with the skills of teaching/learning/communication I have gained professionally in order to show the art from its foundation upward for us mere mortals to step upon it's infinite path.
