# Harpreet Singh Sikh Chaplain President, Harvard Sikh Center Instructor, Sikhism, HarvardX (Harvard Divinity School) ![harpreet headshot](/sites/g/files/omnuum816/files/styles/hwp_4_5__320x400/public/2025-11/harpreet.jpeg?itok=I9ujKTCk) email laptop\_windows [Dr. Harpreet Singh](https://www.harpreetsingh.org) is a scholar of Sikh textual traditions at Harvard University, where he earned his Ph.D. and A.M. from Harvard’s Committee on the Study of Religion (2012) and M.T.S. in South Asian Religions from Harvard Divinity School (2005). His research shows how Sikh and other religious communities used sacred texts, legal expertise, and spiritual networks as strategies for building sovereignty—demonstrating that cultural production itself constitutes political authority. His first book, [*The Ẓafarnāma of Guru Gobind Singh*](https://www.harpreetsingh.org/publications) (Harvard Oriental Series, 2025), establishes a critical edition of the tenth Sikh Guru's epistle to Emperor Aurangzeb, demonstrating how Guru Gobind Singh asserted his own sovereignty over against imperial claims. His forthcoming *Vernacular Authority: Language, Script, and Political Imagination in Mughal Panjab* (2026) broadens this analysis through a comparative study of how Sikh, Sufi, and Hindu communities developed competing strategies for constituting authority in early modern South Asia, treating sacred texts as constitutional documents and vernacular literature as technologies of political imagination. For three decades, Dr. Singh has built institutions that translate scholarship into community empowerment. He co-founded the [Sikh Coalition](https://www.sikhcoalition.org) in the aftermath of 9/11, growing it into North America's largest Sikh civil rights organization with a $3 million annual budget, and established the [Harvard Sikh Center](https://www.harvardsikh.org) to bridge academic research and public understanding. His institutional leadership includes serving as Co-Chair of the Sikh Coalition's Board of Trustees, Chair of the Board of Nishkam Media, and Trustee of the Parliament of the World's Religions, alongside service on Harvard's Board of Religious, Spiritual, and Ethical Life and advisory boards at the Royal Ontario Museum and other institutions. From advocating for Sikh issues in the halls of Congress and the White House to seeking justice in U.S. courts and advising cultural institutions, he demonstrates his conviction that scholarship finds its highest purpose when it empowers the communities it studies. Dr. Singh's online course [*Sikhism Through Its Scriptures*](https://www.edx.org/learn/sikhism/harvard-university-sikhism-through-its-scriptures) has seen over 54,000 enrollments from 180 countries and is open to the public. - ## Chaplaincies [Sikh Community](/chaplaincies/sikh-community)