In 1980, Didar Singh Bains pitched a plan for what he hoped can be an annual Sikh parade in his hometown of Yuba Metropolis, Calif.
However his friends, in a city of 19,000 about 40 miles north of Sacramento, pushed again, fearing violence and unrest.
“Some thought he was loopy,” recalled Karm Bains, Didar Bain’s son and a Sutter County supervisor, in a 2018 interview with NBC Information. “Persons are going to throw rocks.”
However Didar Bains thought otherwise.
“He stated it’s necessary for us to inform the individuals who we’re,” stated Karm Bains. “We’re fellow People, law-abiding residents, and we would like every part you need in your children.”
The annual celebration throughout the first weekend of November now attracts some 100,000 Sikhs and others from throughout the nation.
A farmer as soon as deemed the “Peach King” and one of the outstanding American Sikh leaders, Didar Bains died Sept. 13 in Yuba Metropolis. He was 84.
Born in a small farming village within the Punjab area of India in 1938, Bains got here to the U.S. in 1958 with $8 to his title, following his father who had left for America when Didar was 10, based on a tribute written by his daughter, Diljit Bains, in UC Davis’ Pioneering Punjabis Digital Archive.
From Imperial Valley to Yuba Metropolis, Didar Bains labored his means up the state and up the ladder. He finally settled in Sutter County, with its topography and rivers reminding him of Punjab (Punjab interprets to “Land of 5 Waters”), Karm Bains stated.
In 1962, whereas sending cash to his household again in India, Bains additionally saved up sufficient to purchase a 10-acre parcel within the south aspect of city. He quickly leaned into rising peaches.
Peaches will be notoriously troublesome to develop, Bains stated. Simply two days of frost in April worn out half the crop this yr, he stated.
Pruning, thinning and harvesting peaches have to be carried out inside a really tight time-frame, Karm Bains stated. Harvesting needs to be carried out inside a window as quick as three days.
However Didar Bains had a knack of discovering good soil. Mixed together with his work ethic and management abilities, his farm grew to lots of of employees. By 1978, he had change into the biggest impartial peach farmer in California, and maybe the world, incomes him the “Peach King” moniker.
Bains additionally expanded and diversified his farm, rising cranberries, raspberries and different crops in 13 counties all through California, in addition to Washington, Florida, British Columbia and India. His farm was the second-largest grower of cranberries for Ocean Spray, Diljit Bains wrote.
Kash Gill, Didar Bains’ nephew who grew to become the town’s first Sikh mayor in 2009, recalled his uncle leaping in a tractor at 4:30 a.m. and staying in the orchards till 8:30 at evening.
“He stated, ‘This can be a means I can see each one in every of my timber,’” Gill stated. “He would drive the tractor, so he himself can see firsthand what kind of crop he has.”
As Bains’ enterprise grew, he additionally assumed the function of a neighborhood chief. He all the time emphasised three tenets of Sikhism: residing an trustworthy life, thanking God and sharing with these in want.
His farms employed lots of of employees, a lot of them Sikh immigrants getting their first job within the U.S. Lots of these employees had fled India after 1984, when hundreds of Sikhs have been massacred in three days of violence following the assassination of Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, who was killed by two Sikh bodyguards.
As a baby, Gill would spend nights and weekends at his uncle’s home. In the course of the evening, Gill recalled, Bains would get calls from Sikh immigrants who had been detained after coming to the nation illegally and had one free telephone name to make.
“Once they got here to America,” Gill stated, “there have been solely two issues they wanted to know: Didar Bains and Yuba Metropolis.”
Didar Singh Bains
(Household picture
)
Bains additionally helped lots of of his circle of relatives members, giving them housing, jobs and even land.
He grew to become the youngest president of the Stockton Gurdwara Sikh temple in 1965h. He raised funds to construct a Sikh temple in Yuba Metropolis within the Nineteen Sixties, and based the World Sikh Group in 1984 to advocate for the neighborhood. He donated tens of millions to assist construct Sikh temples worldwide, and hundreds extra to assist a Wisconsin police officer recuperate from a mass taking pictures at a Sikh temple in 2012.
When American Sikhs have been repeatedly focused after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror assaults by individuals who perceived them as Muslim., Bains and different Sikh leaders organized a gathering with President George W. Bush.
When Gill misplaced his metropolis council bid in 2004 by a small margin, Bains informed him: “Attempt once more.” Gill finally received a council seat in 2006 and have become mayor three years later.
“I may simply see a giant glow,” Gill recalled watching Bains at Gill’s swearing-in ceremony as a mayor.
In 2014, Gov. Jerry Brown honored Bains on the Sikh Temple of Sacramento.
“Didar’s youthful than me,” Brown informed the gang, based on the Sacramento Bee. “The explanation I look youthful is as a result of I don’t work as exhausting as he does.”
In Yuba Metropolis, Bains’ legacy is in all places, even on the Walmart and Residence Depot shops that he helped deliver to the town. He helped the town develop as effectively, particularly in its western and northern ends, stated Dave Shaw, the town’s present mayor. Tens of hundreds of American Sikhs now stay within the metropolis and surrounding county.
Town earlier this yr celebrated the groundbreaking of a park named after Didar Bains — whose first title interprets to “visionary” in Punjabi.
“He had a imaginative and prescient and a mind-set of the place he needed the folks to be,” Karm Bains stated. “I hope this isn’t the tip of an period. Hopefully, it’s only a passing of the torch for the subsequent technology to come back.”
Didar Bains is survived by his spouse of 58 years, Santi Bains; sons Ajit and Karm; daughter Diljit; brothers Dilbag and Jaswant Bains; and sisters Gurmeet Gill, Resham Nagra and Surinder Dale.