The World Sikh News dwells on the gen­e­sis of the con­flict in Gur­d­wara Rich­mond Hill which yes­ter­day led to a phys­i­cal fisticuff within the precincts of the Gur­d­wara Sahib.

Fol­low­ers of the fifth largest re­li­gion in the world, one of the youngest -only 550 years old, are still to come to terms with man­ag­ing their re­li­gious place of wor­ship -the Gur­d­wara in mod­ern times in a mod­ern way. In the last hun­dred years or so, Sikhs have not evolved their own sys­tem of Gur­d­wara gov­er­nance.

Over the years, the com­mu­nity has grown in size a lit­tle but has spread world­wide. Our fond­ness for big­ness has re­sulted in huge Gur­d­waras bought out of loans from banks. Ear­lier tra­di­tional meth­ods of gov­er­nance based on hon­esty, love and re­spect for the re­li­gious ethos has been re­placed with elec­tion­eer­ing, some­times la­belled as elec­tion and se­lec­tion.

We had a happy two weeks for the Sikh world. Coun­tries across the Amer­i­cas -the US and Canada in many ar­eas were ob­serv­ing Sikh Na­tional Days and her­itage months. The Na­tional Sikh Cam­paign in the US is spend­ing a whop­ping 1.2 mil­lion dol­lars on the #WeAr­e­Sikhs cam­paign to counter ha­rass­ment and hate. Over-en­thu­si­as­tic Sikh or­gan­i­sa­tions are cel­e­brat­ing Tur­ban Days by ty­ing tur­bans on non-Sikh heads. Sikhs are go­ing to go the whole log in or­gan­is­ing mam­moth Sikh Day pa­rades in the US, Canada and UK, to dis­play num­bers, raise slo­gans ir­rel­e­vant to the lis­ten­ers, eat and waste tonnes of food.

The Gur­d­wara in Rich­mond Hill in New York serves the Sikhs liv­ing in the re­gion and they con­gre­gate reg­u­larly on Sun­days and Gur­purabs -birth an­niver­saries of Gu­rus. Yes­ter­day, this biggest and the old­est Gur­d­wara in the US saw ugly fights within the con­gre­ga­tional cen­tre. This is not the first time that this has hap­pened here. This Gu­rud­wara has al­ways been place for power strug­gle and the rul­ing party tries hard to keep the con­trol af­ter their tenure is com­plete. Typ­i­cal, is­n’t it!

How elec­tion­eer­ing in­flicts a deep-rooted mal­ady can be gauged thus: in the first in­stance the con­gre­ga­tion of an area is di­vided be­tween mem­bers and non-mem­bers of the Gur­d­wara -so if you are not a mem­ber, you do not have a say at all. Fur­ther­more, the mem­ber-San­gat di­vides it­self into groups -slates or par­ties -ow­ing al­le­giance to the leader and group and not to the Guru or the Gur­d­wara. The groups then spend thou­sands of dol­lars to “reach out” to the mem­ber-San­gat for votes, then cor­rupt them­selves with Gur­d­wara funds, not sat­is­fied with “sewa” of one term, they con­test again and again with more funds and more zeal, if they do not win, they go to courts and em­broil them­selves and the Gur­d­wara funds in le­gal fees and re­lated mat­ters. If the po­lice come to the Gur­d­wara to con­trol them, they al­lege in­ter­fer­ence in Gur­d­wara af­fairs. All this leads to the Gur-San­gat -those who love the Guru to ei­ther shy away from the Gur­d­wara or min­i­mal par­tic­i­pa­tion in the gov­er­nance. Those who are aware are scared of the war­ring fac­tions be­cause ul­ti­mately it boils down to one fac­tion ver­sus the other, not what is good or less good in any pro­posal re­lat­ing to the re­li­gion or its gov­er­nance.

Each Gur­d­wara wants to out­shine the other not in terms of con­tri­bu­tion to the San­gat, but in terms of size of the build­ing, the scale and va­ri­ety of food in Na­gar Kir­tans and pa­rades, ul­ti­mately lead­ing to the Sikh youth -the next gen­er­a­tion keep­ing away, be­com­ing ag­nos­tics or athe­ists, be­com­ing patits -apos­tates or putting a greater re­spon­si­bil­ity on con­cerned par­ents to in­stil Sikhi amongst their chil­dren or it leads to set­ting up or­gan­i­sa­tions and groups to hold Gur­mat camps, events to align chil­dren and youth to Sikhi and while do­ing so, these or­gan­i­sa­tions do not talk well about the Gur­d­wara, con­fus­ing the young and dis­tanc­ing them from their el­derly in a per­ni­cious and sys­tem­atic man­ner.

The facts em­a­nat­ing from New York make dis­turb­ing read­ing and Sikh Gur­d­wara ad­min­is­tra­tors world­wide can eas­ily iden­tify with them. In 2010, for­mer Pres­i­dent Tehal Singh united all groups and de­cide to se­lect next pres­i­dent to bring all groups to­gether and save monies on elec­tion. Bhupin­der Singh Boparai was pres­i­dent for a year, fol­lowed by Gur­dev Singh Kang for an­other.

How­ever, since 2010 there has never been fair elec­tions. In 2012, then elec­tion com­mis­sioner who was sup­port­ing the Pres­i­dent re­jected most of the ap­pli­ca­tions from the op­po­site party to en­sure that the then Pres­i­dent re­mains in power. In 2014 there were no elec­tions as the rul­ing party filed court cases and kept on de­lay­ing the elec­tion. Fi­nally, in 2016, the court or­dered both par­ties to con­duct elec­tions.

An elec­tion com­pany was hired to con­duct elec­tions. Is­n’t that clas­sic! Tehal Singh, Bhupin­der Singh Boparai, Dhillon, Ra­jin­der Singh and their team sub­mit­ted nom­i­na­tion pa­pers and elec­tions were sched­uled for 23 Oc­to­ber 2016. For­mer pres­i­dent Gur­dev Singh Kang and his group failed to file nom­i­na­tions till the very end and at the last minute, pre­poned the elec­tions to 22 Oc­to­ber and got them­selves elected. So much for de­mo­c­ra­tic func­tion­ing! The Tehal Singh group filed a com­plaint but court has not given any de­ci­sion yet.

With this back­ground, ten­sion and tem­pers were run­ning high. On 16 April, 2017 dur­ing the Sun­day con­gre­ga­tion, when every­one was lis­ten­ing to the Dhadis -the bal­ladeers ex­tolling Sikh virtues, an un­vir­tu­ous mem­ber of one of the groups started beat­ing the other and then all hell broke loose. The fight started in the Gur­d­wara and both groups dis­grace­fully re­moved each oth­er’s tur­bans. What a con­trast! Ty­ing tur­bans on non-Sikhs on the streets of New York and re­mov­ing tur­bans within the Gur­d­wara Sahib. Shame­ful! Speak­ing to the World Sikh News, a young Sikh from the area said, “I feel sad, very sad. I don’t un­der­stand when will our peo­ple learn.”

In his mag­num opus -Ma­han Kosh, Bhai Ka­han Singh Nabha says that the Gur­d­wara is a so­lace cen­tre for the seeker of truth and peace, a dis­pen­sary for the poor and an ed­u­ca­tion cen­tre for those who need to learn. This was the sim­plest way in which our Gur­d­waras worked prior to the com­mu­nity be­com­ing “rich”, the Gur­d­waras be­com­ing “big” and the care­tak­ers be­com­ing “power cen­tre seek­ers”.

Still, there is no need to fret and fume. It is time to turn this on its head. Those who are con­cerned, let them join their heads -lit­er­ally, learn from the teach­ings of Guru Granth Sahib “Gur­mukh baiso safa bichaye…” …evolve al­ter­na­tive prac­ti­cal Sikhi-based sys­tems of Gur­d­wara gov­er­nance. Only blam­ing will not help. There is no hurry. Word hard and be part of the so­lu­tion, not the prob­lem.

Gur­d­wara ad­min­is­tra­tors across the globe may read and im­bibe the fol­low­ing from the Re­hat­nama -codes of con­duct, of Bhai Chaupa Singh Ji -a con­tem­po­rary of the Tenth Mas­ter, Guru Gob­ind Singh Ji. One of them reads, “In case a Sikh speaks ill of an­other, then he should re­gret and make up be­fore night fall.” The next one fits “our lead­ers”. It reads, “Dis­putes amongst Sikhs are to be set­tled be­tween them­selves. In case a Sikh goes to the ruler (po­lit­i­cal or ju­di­cial), he is a tankhaiya – a per­son pun­ish­able for re­li­gious mis­con­duct. Need we say more!