The spell of a God-like figure’
So, who was this allpowerful leader? Amar Singh’s own legend says he was orphaned in 1941 at eight months old and began studying under a Sikh leader called Isher Singh aged 12.
Sikhism has no universally recognised hierarchy, which means temples identify their own spiritual leaders. One branch emerged in Nanaksar, near the Punjabi city of Ludhiana, under Nand Singh and his successor Isher, whose followers consider them to be the 11th and 12th gurus of Sikhism.
Isher mentored young Amar, and trained him to be a religious singer. As a result, some of Amar’s followers consider him the 13th guru, and call him ‘‘Sant’’. Amar once told a court in Canada that he didn’t wish to be called Sant, but wouldn’t stop his followers from using the title (and, indeed, use it on official temple literature).
Amar Singh was before that court over the title to land owned by a follower of his named Surinder Sharma. The court ruled that she’d left the land to Singh believing that if he did, he would cure her cancer and build a temple on the land. Instead, she died and he put it up for sale.
Overturning the gift in favour of her family, the Supreme Court in British Columbia found she had been in the thrall of Amar Singh. ‘‘She believed that he had powers which might be described as supernatural: she believed he was a Sant.’’
The judgment said Amar’s followers saw him as ‘‘someone specially gifted to intercede with God on behalf of the faithful’’.
Singh has control of 13 temples, with one each in the US, Canada, New Zealand and Australia, two in England and seven in India. The New Zealand temple opened in March 2005, though its parent trust dates to 1989, with Amar Singh its founding trustee.
Its latest accounts show net assets of $10m (a related educational trust has net assets of $1.6m). The trust owes about $4.7m to the temples in the UK, Canada and the US, and in turn is owed about $900,000 by the US and India, ‘‘related by the fact the chairperson is the common influential figure’’. They also show a generous faithful, who donated some $325,000.
At the helm of this empire was, Rajvinder described it, a chairman who despatching daily verbal instructions via emissaries – and kept those branch offices siloed, only able to correspond through him.
‘‘It’s hard for me to explain,’’ Rajvinder said. ‘‘It’s like fitting a circle into a square. The way religious organisations work is very different; one has to understand the spiritual leader has absolute power.
‘‘He is considered a living God to us… imagine starting your day bowing down to him and touching his feet. By bowing down to him, it means… we are submitting to him entirely. I was made to take an oath on my children’s life that I would take every instruction. That is the kind of psychological pressure I was under.’’
Amar was ‘‘on a religious pedestal where he can do anything’’.
Messages to Amar Singh, the Nanaksar trust, and former temple trust chair and current trustee Ranbir Singh Sandhu were not returned before deadline.
Yes, says Mark Vrankovich, the director of Cultwatch, Rajvinder’s defence was entirely feasible. ‘‘That this sort of controlling pressure would have a powerful influence on the actions of a cult member, and could even push them to break a country’s laws, is quite credible.
‘‘This needs to be balanced with personal responsibility .... but if you really believe that someone who is the voice of God is issuing commands to you from God, then... the laws of the land are going to seem quite secondary.
‘‘[But] people should not underestimate the extreme relentless pressure some cult leaders and their lieutenants can bring on a cult member. It can be incredibly intense.’’
Immigration lawyer Alastair McClymont has considered Rajvinder a friend for 20 years, and he subscribed to the view that Rajvinder had been an almostinnocent dupe. ‘‘Any discussion with Raj would end with him saying he had to talk to the trustee [Amar] to see what he wants to do… it was almost as if the leader had some sort of divine wisdom which trumped everything else, it seemed a little bit mad.’’
McClymont said Rajvinder was devastated by the fallout from his crime. He thought Rajvinder had been scapegoated by INZ, who knew the real offender was Amar. But he also knew his friend had made a stupid, and he said, deeply uncharacteristic mistake.
At court, Rajvinder’s friend Harinder Pal Singh compared his friend’s ‘‘blind faith’’ to that of a Gloriavale follower but said his friend had ‘‘woken up, by experience, by the axe falling on him,’’ and pleaded for mercy. ‘‘Don’t write off the human being,’’ he said.
But Iqbal Singh, a former devotee who ran the temple’s social media before leaving, disillusioned, for Australia, reckons Rajvinder was understating his own pull, organising events, hiring staff, dealing with officialdom and running the temple childcare centre.
‘‘If Baba Amar Singh gave him a gun and asked to kill someone – I bet he wouldn’t. I can 100% guarantee that Baba Amar Singh has final say in most of the things that he’s aware of, but not everything – Rajvinder on his own authority has done many things alone.’’
Iqbal said Amar should be banned from New Zealand, the temple finances investigated, their immigration record examined and INZ should tighten the religious worker category.
McClymont agreed the religious visa category was ‘‘weak… a loophole to be exploited’’, and thinks INZ is reluctant to question religious organisations and so take their applications on face value.
Last year, Stuff spoke to six visa applicants the temple had sponsored; all alleged senior temple officials had broken immigration law, and had persuaded them to sign blank sheets of paper before coming to New Zealand, with agreements (including debts) added later without their knowledge. The migrants said they paid premiums for visas with the promise of residency (which didn’t eventuate), and two said they faced a civil case in the Indian courts for alleged debts to the temple which they denied.
In court, Rajvinder admitted: ‘‘I must have signed more than 400 sponsorship forms, no questions asked. I didn’t even know who these people were.’’
One of those 400, Tarsem Singh, remains in limbo. He’s been given permission to work and has a job as a line mechanic at Kiwi Rail, but INZ has served him with a Deportation Liability Notice. He fears the unreliable Punjabi bureaucracy means he won’t be able to obtain a passport in his real name, and he hasn’t seen his wife since a visit home in October 2019, and has had no luck securing her a visitor visa.
Tarsem also has an Employment Relations Authority case against the temple, alleging they exploited him and made him work for free as a handyman, charges the temple denies. That hearing continues next month.
INZ wouldn’t answer specific questions about Tarsem, nor why they never charged Amar Singh with any offending.
Instead, in a statement attributed to associate deputy secretary Catriona Robinson, INZ said it ‘‘confirms there is no current criminal investigation into Tarsem/Simranjit Singh, and that he is currently able to remain and work in New Zealand. At this point in time we are unable to comment further about his case as it is ongoing.’’
Tarsem was still wary of the man who got him into this mess. ‘‘I believed he had special powers,’’ he said of Amar. ‘‘I know the truth now.’’
Tarsem’s friend and advisor, Harpreet Singh, says he fears for Tarsem’s safety if he’s deported back to India because of Amar Singh’s political influence. ‘‘I definitely know he will get in trouble because he’s put his story in front of the public.’’
The ultimate cult leader, Jim Jones (who led 909 of his Jonestown followers to their death in Guyana in 1978 by ordering them to drink cyanide-laced juice) earned a mention in the closing address by Rajvinder’s lawyer, Lester Cordwell.
‘‘Considering what blind faith over the centuries is responsible for, it is not hard to accept ... someone of Mr Singh’s intelligence would be blinded by someone who was effectively a God-like figure, a self-proclaimed Godlike figure,’’ declared Cordwell. ‘‘He wouldn’t be the first intelligent person to follow orders blindly, to have been part of a cult, effectively.’’
He reckoned if Amar was in New Zealand, he’d be the primary defendant. He wanted a discharge without conviction for Rajvinder because, otherwise, ‘‘the mana which he has spent so long cultivating would be diminished overnight’’.
Gray, the prosecutor, wanted deterrence and denunciation in the sentencing, arguing migrant exploitation needed such stern warnings, Rajvinder could simply have walked away much earlier, and ‘‘the buck has to stop somewhere’’. The shame and stigma of conviction was the ‘‘normal consequence of committing a crime.’’
Rajvinder had admitted his guilt at the earliest opportunity. But he was pursuing a discharge in the hope of saving his job with police, his financial advisor’s registration, and most importantly, his standing in the Sikh community. ‘‘I wouldn’t be able to shake [people’s] hands in the same way.’’
Judge Moala asked if he was minimising his role. No, said Rajvinder, he took full responsibility but was trying to explain the circumstances.
‘‘Now, I’ve come out of that and worked in professional places, I can understand that it is not the way to work.’’
Deferring her decision, the judge said she struggled to see how someone so intelligent had simply been following orders. Rajvinder was due to learn his fate on Friday morning.
Instead, sentencing was deferred, again, until March 31, when he will discover whether his unique argument persuaded Judge Moala, and he can pick up the pieces of his life and reputation.
‘‘He is considered a living God to us… I was made to take an oath on my children’s life that I would take every instruction. That is the kind of psychological pressure I was under.’’
Rajvinder Singh