By Canadian Bazaar
LOS ANGELES: `Hollywood dentist’ Dr Amarjit Singh Marwah, who passed away last week at the age of 99, has left an unparalleled legacy for the thriving Indian community in the US.
A resident of Malibu, dentist to many Hollywood celebrities, including Elizabeth Taylor and Gregory Peck, and a neighbour of Barbara Streisand and Martin Sheen, Dr Marwah was the grandpa of the Indian Americans in the true sense of the word. Because when he landed in New York in August 1950 to study on a Guggenheim fellowship, there were hardly any Indians in the US.
“When I arrived here, there were virtually no Indian families in New York or the whole east coast. On the west coast in California, there were 20 families in El Centro, 20-odd in Yuba City and about 10 in Fresno. That’s about all,” Dr Marwah had once told this correspondent in an interview at his Pacific-front Malibu ranch.
Nobody in America knew about yoga and transcendental meditation at that time, he said.
“Since most Americans had never seen a turbaned Sikh, they used to call me Young Santa Claus. In their eyes, I was the younger version of Santa Claus with a black beard,” Dr Marwah had recalled.
He said, “When Prime Minister Nehru came to New York in the mid-1950s, I was among a handful of Indians who met him. There were only two Indian names in the US at that time – J.J. Singh Wallia and Bhagat Singh Thind.”
He also recalled working for the election of the first Asian – Dalip Singh Saund – to the US Congress in 1956.
“When Saund contested from California’s congressional district of Palm Springs, Imperial Valley and Riverside, I took two months’ leave from my teaching job in Chicago to campaign for him. Saund hid his full name to get the Democratic ticket under the name of D.S. Saund. He won because he was very fair and his wife Marian was white. When we went to people to seek votes, Saund would put his wife and daughter in front of us.”
After finishing his higher studies at the University of Illinois in Chicago, he got another fellowship to do his doctorate in dental surgery from Howard University in Washington DC.
Recalls his Washington roommate Dr Shamsher Singh Babra, “I knew Marwah from Lahore’s Sikh National College where Parkash Singh Badal was also my classmate. I had just landed in DC. Both of us rented a house as his wife had not yet joined him in the US.”
After finishing his doctorate, Dr Marwah became a professor at the University of Illinois even as he started a part-time practice in 1956.
Relocating to LA in 1962 to become the city’s first Indian doctor to practice, Dr Marwah slowly established himself as the `Hollywood dentist.’ He bought a 14-acre Malibu ranch on the Pacific Coast and started living in the neighbourhood of Hollywood celebrities, including Barbara Streisand and Martin Sheen.
At his ranch which had a helipad and a stable, he played host to the who’s who of Hollywood and India, including former Indian President Giani Zail Singh and former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
As his clout grew and more Indians came to LA, Dr Marwah helped establish the Indian American Society and the Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Foundation in the early 1960s.
To celebrate the 500th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak in 1969, he donated a building to turn it into Los Angeles’ first gurdwara. Known as Hollywood Sikh Temple today, this shrine later got another donation of $250,000 from Dr Marwah to raise a new building.
The crowning glory of his life came with his appointment as a commissioner of LA by his mayor friend Tom Bradley in 1974.
As a commissioner, Dr Marwah chaired the Cultural Heritage Commission for 18 years and declared about numerous city sites as historically significant. The Hollywood Walk of Fame and Grauman’s Chinese Theatre got this status under his signature.
For his services, Los Angeles City honoured him in 2019 by renaming the intersection of Vermont Avenue and Finley Street to Dr Amarjit Singh Marwah Square.
Back in Punjab, he established KK Marwah Girls College in Faridkot in memory of wife Kuljit Kaur Marwah, and donated Rs 50 lakh to build an auditorium at Mahindra College in Patiala.
With his friend and Punjab & Sindh Bank founder Inderjit Singh, Dr Marwah also co-founded the Bank of Punjab in the 1990s.
