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The Sikh Foundation

September 2004

Manjit Singh

 

Manjit Singh was born and raised in Bombay, India. He completed his Bachelor of Engineering, Computer from the University of Bombay in 1989. After completing his Bachelor’s, Manjit worked as a Systems Engineer for sometime with International Data Machines (IDM) in Bombay. Then in late 1990, Manjit came to the United States for further education. He received his Master’s Degree in Computer Science in 1992 from the State University of New York (SUNY) in Albany, New York.

Manjit is a devout Sikh and plays an active role in the Sikh American community. In 1996 Manjit and Jaideep Singh (a Sikh Californian) jointly founded an organization called Sikh Mediawatch and Resource Task Force (SMART). SMART started no more than an idea which came out of several brainstorming sessions between Manjit and Jaideep while they were members of  “Khalsa Net”, the only Sikh e-mailing list network available in the early 90’s. Under the leadership of Manjit, SMART has grown from being the first-ever organization that has constantly watched the media and played a key role in correcting any negative and wrong publications on Sikhism, to the largest national Sikh American civil rights organization.

After the tragic events of September 11, 2001, when Sikh Americans were suffering from hate crimes, SMART provided a leadership role and worked hard with Gurdwaras and local Sikh American groups in organizing press conferences and other events for the correct portrayal of Sikhs and Sikhism. SMART currently has an office and full-time staff in the Nation’s Capitol of Washington, D.C, with representatives across the country. SMART has and continues to play a proactive and vital role in safeguarding the civil and religious rights of Sikh Americans. It provides legal aid for Sikh Americans who face violations of their civil and religious rights, discrimination and have been racially victimized. SMART actively lobby’s in the U.S. Congress for equal and fair rights of Sikhs in America. In addition to its work of media analysis, SMART has also been instrumental in training more than 5000 US law enforcement personnel about Sikhs.  More information about SMART can be found at www.sikhmediawatch.org

It is important to add here, that in spite of all these efforts and accomplishments, Manjit continues to maintain a very low profile in the community. It is surprising that many people in the community do not know that it was Manjit who co-founded this organization and provided a leadership role in its incubating stages. We would like to add here that in order to continue on his low profile and humility path, Manjit very reluctantly approved of this publication.

In August 2004 Manjit was appointed to the Victim Services Advisory Board of the Montgomery County government in Maryland. He is a member of the Community Advisory Board for the Washington DC region of the International Channel. He has also served for two years on the Advisory Board of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. Additionally he served for two years as Member-at-Large on the Board of the interfaith Conference of Metropolitan Washington.

Manjit is a Computer Scientist by training and profession. While working at IBM, Manjit was one of the key persons responsible for designing a software program called “Key Ring Organizer (KRO)--a client software application for digital certificate management. Multiple private keys and digital certificates are securely stored and managed in disk files, Smart Cards and PC Cards. The KRO can generate, store and select keys for use in signing of digital information or authenticating the end-user to a host of secure client/server applications. Manjit currently holds the patent for this KRO software.

For the past two years, Manjit has been working for the University of Maryland University College (UMUC) as a Senior Software Engineer

 

Manjit currently lives in Germantown, Maryland with his wife and two daughters.