De­spite los­ing her­itage build­ings, so­cial, re­li­gious and Sikh na­tional archive ma­te­r­ial and arte­facts over the decades, the apex Gur­d­wara man­age­ment body of the Sikhs, also called the Sikh Par­lia­ment, has not learnt any­thing. There is no ef­fort what­so­ever to take steps to­wards the ren­o­va­tion of his­tor­i­cal build­ings, es­pe­cially those sur­round­ing re­li­gious places in­clud­ing the Mecca of the Sikhs -Dar­bar Sahib, Am­rit­sar. The Pan­jab Dig­i­tal Li­brary has ex­pressed con­cern and called for cau­tion in mov­ing fur­ther in the mat­ter and sought the im­me­di­ate in­ter­ven­tion of con­ser­va­tion­ists, her­itage ex­perts and the Ar­chae­ol­ogy and Archives de­part­ment of the gov­ern­ment of Pun­jab. WSN re­ports.

THE SUD­DEN DIS­COV­ERY OF OLD AR­CHI­TEC­TURAL BUILD­INGS dur­ing an ex­ca­va­tion by a body of Sikh se­wadars -called Kar Sewa Babas, with­out any ref­er­ence to his­tory, care about her­itage has shaken Sikh spheres who care for her­itage and cul­ture.  The spir­ited protest by Dar­bar Sahib Kir­taniye Bhai Baldev Singh Wadala was able to stop the bull­doz­ing de­signs and pro­gram of the SGPC-spon­sored Kar Sewa wal­lahs and the elite SGPC vig­i­lantes -called Task Force, who would re­sort to man­han­dling and beat­ing any­one who op­posed to the SGPC au­thor­i­tar­ian lead­ers.

The Pan­jab Dig­i­tal Li­brary, which has been digi­tis­ing mil­lions of pages re­lat­ing to Sikh his­tory, Pun­jab his­tory, Sikh her­itage and more have ex­pressed their deep an­guish at the ef­forts to si­lence those who at­tempted to stop the de­struc­tion of the her­itage site.

The PDL re­lease said, “Nearly 250 years ago a va­ri­ety of build­ings were con­structed by the Sikhs in the pe­riph­ery of the shrine. These build­ings were called bun­gas. They were, of course, sub­se­quently de­mol­ished dur­ing the widen­ing of the Parikarma -the per­am­bu­la­tion of Dar­bar Sahib, around 1944.”

“The lo­ca­tion and the na­ture of the ex­ca­vated site sug­gests that there is every like­li­hood of it be­ing a part of the his­toric Sarkar-e-Khalsa Ran­jit Singh’s bunga which was de­mol­ished by the British to make way for the con­struc­tion of a grand Clock Tower af­ter the Pan­jab was an­nexed in 1849. The de­mo­li­tion of this bunga was an act to keep mem­o­ries of Ran­jit Singh out of sight, thus mak­ing an ef­fort to keep him out of the mind of the Sikhs.”

Avail­able his­tor­i­cal ev­i­dence sug­gests that dur­ing the de­mo­li­tion of the clock tower, stairs and a pas­sage­way were found which were used by Ma­haraja Ran­jit Singh to visit Sri Ha­ri­mandir Sahib. 

In a shock­ing rev­e­la­tion, the Pan­jab Dig­i­tal Li­brary re­lease re­vealed that the clock tower stood there for more than a half-cen­tury when this too was de­mol­ished af­ter the SGPC gained man­age­ment rights of the his­tor­i­cal Gur­d­uaras fol­low­ing the en­act­ment of the Gur­d­uara Act in 1925.

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Avail­able his­tor­i­cal ev­i­dence sug­gests that dur­ing the de­mo­li­tion of the clock tower, stairs and a pas­sage­way were found which were used by the Ma­haraja to visit Sri Ha­ri­mandir Sahib. SGPC even de­mol­ished these stairs de­spite re­sis­tance from the promi­nent Sikhs.

Re­tired Pro­fes­sor of Pun­jabi -Prof. Harpal Singh who is now part of the Pan­jab Dig­i­tal Li­brary, speak­ing to WSN said, “This is all very dis­con­cert­ing. When viewed from this an­gle the place is a her­itage site of im­mense sig­nif­i­cance and must not be harmed any fur­ther at the mo­ment. Any dig­ging around this place should stop forth­with till the ex­ten­sive ar­chae­o­log­i­cal in­ves­ti­ga­tion is com­pleted to es­tab­lish its his­tor­i­cal iden­tity.”

“The Di­rec­torate of Cul­tural Af­fairs Ar­chae­ol­ogy & Archives of the Pan­jab Gov­ern­ment should in­ter­vene in view of the im­mense im­por­tance of this site as a rem­nant of the his­tor­i­cal past,”

“The Di­rec­torate of Cul­tural Af­fairs Ar­chae­ol­ogy & Archives of the Pan­jab Gov­ern­ment should in­ter­vene in view of the im­mense im­por­tance of this site as a rem­nant of the his­tor­i­cal past,” added the press re­lease of the PDL.

So­cial me­dia con­cern from Pun­jab and the Di­as­pora has forced the SGPC pres­i­dent Bibi Ja­gir Kaur to say that “in case they are her­itage sites of im­por­tance, we will stop the work”.

Au­thor of “The Other Sikhs” and a friend of Sikhs, work­ing on Sikh his­tory for the last five decades -Dr Hi­madri Baner­jee, shocked at the de­vel­op­ments, spoke to WSN say­ing, “Those who had ear­lier planned these her­itage sites, must have had a def­i­nite plan of their own, but those who have sys­tem­i­cally planned to de­stroy these Sikh her­itages, they are sim­ply de­stroy­ers and not the har­bin­gers of a new Sikh or­der.”

Davin­der Pal Singh ex­press­ing deep reser­va­tions at the ca­sual ap­proach of the SGPC said, “A lot of her­itage has been lost to ig­no­rance, cal­lous­ness, and ap­a­thy. It is im­por­tant that we pre­serve what re­mains.”

Since the last 18 years of its ex­is­tence, the Pan­jab Dig­i­tal Li­brary (PDL) -a global non-profit or­ga­ni­za­tion is com­mit­tedly fo­cused on lo­cat­ing, dig­i­tiz­ing, pre­serv­ing, col­lect­ing, and pro­vid­ing ac­ces­si­bil­ity to the ac­cu­mu­lated wis­dom of the Pan­jab re­gion with­out dis­tinc­tion to script, lan­guage, re­li­gion, na­tion­al­ity, or any other phys­i­cal con­di­tion.

Her­itage au­thor-ac­tivist and for­mer Head, Guru Ram­das School of Plan­ning Guru Nanak Dev Uni­ver­sity Am­rit­sar Prof. Dr Balvin­der Singh, while talk­ing on the phone line with WSN said, “I had per­son­ally gone and at­tempted to stop the dig­ging up of these Bun­gas in 1997 or there­abouts. I have a part of the bricks that were re­moved and con­signed as waste. I have seen how the British have saved such her­itage. SGPC should take a leaf out of the books of world-class con­ser­va­tion­ists rather than only de­pend upon Kar Sewa vol­un­teers and work­ers.”

“Kar sewa is a unique con­cept in Sikh re­li­gion but it should be car­ried on un­der the guid­ance of pro­fes­sion­als,” he added.

In his sharp re­ac­tion to the in­ep­ti­tude and crass ig­no­rance of the SGPC con­duct­ing its ex­pan­sion­ist op­er­a­tions, Prof. Dr Balvin­der Singh who has re­cently pub­lished a book on con­ser­va­tion of shrines en­ti­tled ‘Splen­did Art­works in His­toric Sikh Shrines of In­dia and Pak­istan: Con­ser­va­tion Per­spec­tive’, said, “The SGPC should not be al­lowed to make uni­lat­eral changes to any his­tor­i­cal or re­li­gious build­ing with­out the sanc­tion of an ex­ter­nal ex­perts com­mit­tee.”

 

Speak­ing to World Sikh News, Davin­der Pal Singh, the sheet-an­chor of PDL said, “We are ded­i­cated to sav­ing his­tor­i­cal archives, ad­dress­ing her­itage loss, and con­nect­ing peo­ple glob­ally by pro­vid­ing free on­line ac­cess. With more than thirty mil­lion pages dig­i­tized, PDL has cre­ated the largest dig­i­tal re­source of Pan­jab her­itage for pos­ter­ity and is fa­cil­i­tat­ing ways for any per­son to con­nect with the ‘land of five rivers’ and un­fold its lin­guis­tic and cul­tural vast­ness.”