Jerry Barrier was a historian and a scholar of Sikhism. I never met him, but I admired his work and was in touch with him over the phone and through e-mail. He was significantly responsible for taking Sikh studies forward in the US and in Canada, and also for focusing American academic interest on Punjab, India and South Asia.

His death, on June 6, did not make the news that it should have. I learnt of it late and wrote this short note on him.