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Adieu to a Scholar
Dr. Noel
Q. King, a Sikh Scholar and World Renowned Historian, Passes Away
Dr. Tarlochan
Singh Nahal
 Dr. Noel Q.
King, a towering academician, scholar, historian, and a saintly
person, who illuminated the academic and literary circles for almost
half a century, quietly passed away on
February 1, 2009
at his home in
Corralitos,
California.
Noel Q. King was
the fifth son of Mary and William King. His family relations with
the Sikhs span almost two centuries. His great grandfather worked
for the Khalsa Army in
Punjab during
the rule of Maharaja Ranjit Singh in the first part of the 19th
century as a horse doctor. His father William King was an engineer
with the Indian Postal and Telegraphs department who laid telegraph
lines throughout northern India and up into Tibet. Dr. King's family
stayed in India until the 1940s.
The young Noel
King moved with family from place to place experiencing
multi-cultural living. Like his elder brothers he was sent at an
early age to Bishop Cotton’s school in Simla in the foothills of the
Himalayas. He grew up virtually bi-lingual in English and Hindustani
(a mixture of Urdu and Hindi), the lingua franca of the British Raj.
He frequently spoke with me in Hindustani.
He was
commissioned into the British army as a Second Lieutenant and was
already in uniform when he married Evelyn in December 1943. After
qualifying as a parachutist and being entitled to wear the coveted
red beret of the Parachute Regiment, he spent the rest of the time
in war in the 56th airborne Division Development Unit analyzing
enemy air drop methods, devising defenses against it and researching
methods of supplying ground troops from the air. As the war in
Europe
drew to conclusion, he was posted to the Indian Army to Manipur and
then at Chaklala aerodrome which eventually became
Rawalpindi’s
International Airport.
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Dr. Noel Q.
King, a towering academician, scholar, historian, and a saintly
person, who illuminated the academic and literary circles for
almost half a century |
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As an army
officer in
India, he was
also in charge of security of certain passenger trains for some time
that moved from Punjab and other parts of Northern India. He told me
that, he at one time, provided security to a Sikh leader Master Tara
Singh while he was travelling on a train. Dr. King served in India,
Burma, and Europe. Dr. King finished his first degree in history and
then a degree in Theology. He graduated First Class Honors,
specializing in Early Church History. He received an M.A. degree in
history from
Oxford
University. In 1954 he got his Ph.D. in late Roman early Byzantine
history and Patristic Theology from the University of Nottingham.
Dr. King taught
in several universities all over the world including, Punjabi
University Patiala, Guru Nanak Dev University Amritsar, University
of Ghana, University of Nottingham, Oxford University, Makerere
University (Uganda), University of Papua/New Guinea, University of
California Santa Cruz, and Senior University International.
In 1957 he moved
with his family to
Ghana for seven
years, where he set up a program of Religious Studies at the
university in Accra. In 1964 he accepted the post of Professor and
Head of Religious Studies at
Makerere
University
in Uganda.
Dr. King was one
of the very few scholars belonging to the old school of learning in
the world with a deep knowledge of Christianity, Islam, Jainism, and
Sikhism among other religions. He wrote eleven books and published
chapters in many other books. He was the Patron of Sikh Review, the
oldest Sikh academic magazine in English, published from
Calcutta.
 Dr. King joined
University of California at Santa Cruz in 1967 where he started a
department of the History of Religion where he taught history and
comparative religion until his retirement in 1991. On his
retirement, the Noel Q. King Lecture was established in 1992 to
honor the popular teacher and respected scholar. This annual lecture
is presented by the Committee for the Advancement of Religious
Studies at UCSC. Dr. King was instrumental in providing foundation
courses and a comparative framework for those interested in
religious studies major as well as those students who just wanted to
learn about religion in an academic setting. He guided many students
in their research on Sikh history and supervised theses and
dissertations on topics related to Sikh history. He was the only
Western scholar who stood with the Sikhs through thick and thin and
fearlessly wrote against those who tried to distort the Sikh history
in the name of academic research. He was honored for his services to
Panth at the Vishav Sikh Samelan (World Sikh Convention) in Amritsar
in 1995 organized by Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee and
received recognition from Jathedar Sri Akal Takhat Sahib.
He personally
guided two Sikh students Tarlochan Singh Nahal and Dr. Raghbir Singh
Bains) who received doctorate degrees in Sikhism in
North America.
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We are
celebrating the life of this great teacher, scholar and friend
of the Khalsa who held Khalsa in very high esteem. He regularly
donated money to Sikh Gurdwara
San Jose
and other Sikh institutions |
I met with Dr.
King in 1992 for the first time at
San Francisco in
an academic conference. I was impressed by his scholarship and deep
understanding of history and theology and realized that he was not
an ordinary scholar. Dr. King was a soft-spoken person. Scholarly
terms and Latin phrases describing deep theological concepts and
unique historical events came out of his mouth effortlessly and his
demeanor and presence created a unique aura that was both uplifting
and captivating.
We are
celebrating the life of this great teacher, scholar and friend of
the Khalsa who held Khalsa in very high esteem. He regularly donated
money to Sikh Gurdwara San Jose and other Sikh institutions.
About four years
ago, a young Sikh professor from
Amritsar wanted
to go to France and Canada to study French in order to better
understand the Franco-Sikh relations. She did not have the financial
resources to pay for the trip. Somehow the news made to Dr. King. He
generously donated money for that cause. It is another matter that
her trip did not materialize due to university bureaucracy. During
my research work on Miri and Piri and Sikh struggle, I visited him
typically about once a month for three years. Later, I met with him
3 or 4 times a year. I was always treated like a family member in
his home.
About three
months ago (October 2008), I received an e-mail from his assistant
Michael Harrington indicating that Dr. King's health was rapidly
failing and he urged his friends to see him because his doctor did
not give him very much time. The message was honest to the core, but
it hit me like a thunderbolt. I went to see him the next day. He was
quite weak. My last visit to him was only three weeks before he
passed away. By this time he was quite frail, but he was still as
graceful as ever in his manners and conversation. He asked me about
my family, my book project, job and other Panthic matters.
 His eldest son
Francis King , a former Diplomat in the British government, too has
a close relationship with the Sikhs in several countries. Francis
was a British diplomat in
New Delhi when
Indira Gandhi was killed in October 1984. Tens of thousands of Sikhs
were massacred in Delhi alone and their women violated in a
government sponsored carnage which continued for several days. A
Sikh family lived next door to his residence. Francis helped in
saving Sikh lives and honor.
Dr. King’s first
preference was always to stay with a Sikh family whether it was in
the US,
India, Africa, Canada or some other country because he trusted them
greatly and always felt comfortable in their company. He spoke
several languages including Punjabi, Hindi, Urdu and Latin. His
first wife Evelyn died in April 1972 at age 49 due to brain tumor.
Some time later, he married Laurie, who is a well-known novelist.
Noel is survived
by four children from his first marriage, Francis and Jerome (sons)
and Clare and Naomi (daughters), who between them have produced
Noel’s 11 Grandchildren. They in turn have four Great Grandchildren.
From his second marriage to Laurie King, he has two children –
Nathan and Zoe.
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February 2009 |
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