WSN Ed­i­tor writes an open let­ter to the ed­i­tor of The Tri­bune for his ab­solutely un­nec­es­sary re­mark taunt­ing the Sikhs to keep GST go­laks in re­sponse to the SGPC seek­ing re­fund of heavy Goods and Sales taxes, as has been hap­pen­ing in the past for Gur­d­waras and other re­li­gious in­sti­tu­tions. Har­ish Khare has gone too far. WSN chal­lenges The Tri­bune and urges the com­mu­nity to rise to the oc­ca­sion.

Not so dear Mr. Khare:
Some­time in his­tory, Sikhs used to con­sider The Tri­bune as their “own” news­pa­per. Over a pe­riod of time, ed­i­tors like you have per­fected the art of rub­bing the Sikhs the wrong way -whether it is the ques­tion of hu­man rights in Pun­jab, the 1984 pogrom or the de­mand for GST ex­emp­tion.

In your 22 July col­umn, you made a silly com­ment sug­gest­ing that the Sikh com­mu­nity, cur­rently seek­ing ex­emp­tion from the GST, may place “sep­a­rate GST go­laks” in gur­d­waras in­stead of ask­ing for re­lief from the Cen­tre.

In your col­umn, Kaf­feeklatsch, you wrote that since the “gov­ern­ment can­not pos­si­bly make an ex­cep­tion in the case of one re­li­gious in­sti­tu­tion in­stead there can be a sep­a­rate ‘go­lak’ for GST?”

“With all hu­mil­ity at my com­mand but nev­er­the­less seething with anger, I ask of you, “Do you know what is a go­lak in a Gur­d­wara? Do you know what is a Sikh Gur­d­wara? Fig­u­ra­tively, it is said that the mouth of the poor is the con­tri­bu­tion box of the Guru. The metaphor es­sen­tially urges the de­vout to con­tribute for the poor and the needy. With your ab­solutely need­less re­mark, you have mocked the poor.”

With all hu­mil­ity at my com­mand but nev­er­the­less seething with anger, I ask of you, “Do you know what is a go­lak in a Gur­d­wara? Do you know what is a Sikh Gur­d­wara? Fig­u­ra­tively, it is said that the mouth of the poor is the con­tri­bu­tion box of the Guru –Gharib ka moonh, Guru ki go­lak (you are clearly nei­ther ac­quainted with Pun­jabi id­iom, nor with Sikh ethos, but can very well ask some col­league in the Pun­jabi Tri­bune to bring you up to speed). The metaphor es­sen­tially urges the de­vout to con­tribute for the poor and the needy. With your ab­solutely need­less re­mark, you have mocked the poor.

To most peo­ple, the go­lak is only a col­lec­tion box in­vari­ably kept in front of Sri Guru Granth Sahib, and devo­tees are free to de­posit any amount they can af­ford – from an amount that may seem ridicu­lously small to you to one that may shock any ed­i­tor un­able to un­der­stand why a de­vout would open his heart and pock­ets be­fore the Guru. 

Un­like at some other shrines, the Sikhs are par­tic­u­lar when it comes to en­sur­ing that no devo­tee feels forced, di­rectly or even in­di­rectly, to make an of­fer­ing. And you sug­gest a GST go­lak? The re­sources of the com­mu­nity, pooled by the San­gat, are meant to feed the poor, nurse the sick, house the roof­less and take care of guests and vis­i­tors, ed­i­tors in­cluded. It is cer­tainly not meant to pay taxes to an in­ept gov­ern­ment which is be­ing propped by writ­ers like you.

“Your off-the-cuff re­mark is not an “out-of-the-box idea,” it is un­be­com­ing of an ed­i­tor. It does not “call for cof­fee”; in­stead, it is a clar­ion call for the Sikh com­mu­nity to come knock­ing at your door and to ini­ti­ate a cam­paign to ask the Tri­bune’s man­age­ment to shunt you out of Pun­jab for con­tin­u­ously play­ing with the sen­ti­ments of the Sikhs.”

Your idea is not only pre­pos­ter­ous but bor­ders on a so­cial ex­per­i­ment to test the pa­tience of the Sikhs, com­ing on the heels of your ear­lier cof­fee idea of seek­ing a clo­sure to 1984.  It is my firm opin­ion that you are do­ing this with the grand de­sign of tak­ing a tem­per­a­ture of the com­mu­ni­ty’s sen­si­tiv­i­ties as you speak on be­half of the gov­ern­ment by say­ing that the gov­ern­ment can­not pos­si­bly sin­gle out any com­mu­nity for such re­lief.

Your off-the-cuff re­mark is not an “out-of-the-box idea,” it is un­be­com­ing of an ed­i­tor. It does not “call for cof­fee”; in­stead, it is a clar­ion call for the Sikh com­mu­nity to come knock­ing at your door and to ini­ti­ate a cam­paign to ask the Tri­bune’s man­age­ment to shunt you out of Pun­jab for con­tin­u­ously play­ing with the sen­ti­ments of the Sikhs.

In the Mon­day edi­tion of Pun­jabi Tri­bune, the trans­la­tion of your snob­bishly ti­tled “Kaf­feeklatsch,” you com­pounded your sin in the ver­nac­u­lar too.  Clearly you have a prob­lem with the de­mand for a GST ex­emp­tion for Lan­gar. I grant that as an in­de­pen­dent com­men­ta­tor, you have a right to your view, but then state it ex­plic­itly like any other colum­nist in­stead of us­ing the po­si­tion of ed­i­tor-in-chief as the bully pul­pit to sug­gest that Sikhs should put up a GST go­lak in the gur­d­waras. 

Read your lines once again, in Pun­jabi, but this time with a mod­icum of shame:

“ਇਸ ਦੀ ਬਜਾਏ ਇਹ ਸਲਾਹ ਦਿੱਤੀ ਗਈ ਹੈ: ਸ਼ਰਧਾਲੂਆਂ ਨੂੰ 17 ਫੀ ਸਦੀ ਵਧੇਰੇ ਦਾਨ ਕਰਨ ਲਈ ਕਿਓਂ ਨਾ ਕਿਹਾ ਜਾਵੇ? ਸ਼ਾਇਦ, ਜੀਐੱਸਟੀ ਲਈ ਵੱਖਰੀ ‘ਗੋਲਕ’ ਵੀ ਲਾਈ ਜਾ ਸਕਦੀ ਹੈ! ਇਹ ਤਾਂ ਇਕਦਮ ਵਿਲੱਖਣ ਵਿਚਾਰ ਹੈ ਅਤੇ ਇਸ ਤੇ ਤਾਂ ਕੌਫ਼ੀ ਪੀਣੀ ਬਣਦੀ ਹੈ। ਆ ਜਾਓ, ਮੇਰੇ ਨਾਲ ਕੌਫ਼ੀ ਦਾ ਪਿਆਲਾ ਸਾਂਝਾ ਕਰੋ!” 

Are you se­ri­ous? Or cof­fee has hit you too hard?

Do you to know what the GST law says? The Min­istry of Fi­nance no­ti­fi­ca­tion no. 2/​2017-Cen­tral Tax Rate, dated 28 June 2017, at se­r­ial num­ber 98 men­tions that “Prasadam sup­plied by re­li­gious places like tem­ples, mosques, churches, gur­d­waras, etc.” is wholly ex­empt from Cen­tre GST.  What do you say to that? Thank God, the gov­ern­ment did not seek your opin­ion on this, and you were eased out of the PMO in less than ideal cir­cum­stances. With some­one like you in any po­si­tion of in­flu­ence, the no­ti­fi­ca­tion would have read dif­fer­ent. 

Prasadam can be ex­empt, but may be tech­ni­cally, for prac­ti­cal rea­sons, Cen­tral GST or State GST can­not be ex­empted but the gov­ern­ment in its wis­dom, like the var­i­ous re­liefs to NGOs un­der the In­come Tax Act, can give re­funds to all re­li­gious in­sti­tu­tions – bi-an­nu­ally or an­nu­ally – and not just for the Sikh Gur­d­waras which ap­par­ently seem to be give you a lit­tle too much pain.

I am wait­ing with fin­gers crossed to see how many of the main­stream and other Sikh lead­ers bear with such re­marks as you have made how many will de­vour your caf­feine.

Ear­lier, apart from Sim­ran­jit Singh Mann and Kan­warpal Singh, no one took you to task for your colum­n’s de­vi­ous thought that the Sikhs should “per­mit” a clo­sure on the is­sue of 1984 mas­sacres. Ar­gu­ing that “on the eve of every Lok Sabha elec­tion, a few ‘in­ves­tiga­tive’ jour­nal­ists come up with ‘new ev­i­dence’,” you had ridiculed the heroic ef­forts of re­spectable men and women by call­ing them “the Phoolkas of this world who have made a ca­reer — and, now an elec­toral ca­reer” out of pur­su­ing 1984 cases.

“Do you to know what the GST law says? The Min­istry of Fi­nance no­ti­fi­ca­tion no. 2/​2017-Cen­tral Tax Rate, dated 28 June 2017, at se­r­ial num­ber 98 men­tions that “Prasadam sup­plied by re­li­gious places like tem­ples, mosques, churches, gur­d­waras, etc.” is wholly ex­empt from Cen­tre GST. What do you say to that? Thank God, the gov­ern­ment did not seek your opin­ion on this, and you were eased out of the PMO in less than ideal cir­cum­stances. With some­one like you in any po­si­tion of in­flu­ence, the no­ti­fi­ca­tion would have read dif­fer­ent.”

Now we know whose side were you on when you were of­fi­ci­at­ing as me­dia ad­vi­sor to Prime Min­is­ter Man­mo­han Singh. And you were tasked to man­age the im­age per­cep­tion of Man­mo­han Singh!!! The Con­gress party has some­thing to think about.

Those mem­bers of my com­mu­nity who think they need The Tri­bune and The Hin­dus­tan Times (de­fam­ing the Sikhs by com­mit­ting blas­phemy) for their me­dia cov­er­age and would con­tinue to give you lever­age and free­dom to ex­er­cise ed­i­to­r­ial li­cense and in­ter­fere in Sikh af­fairs in the man­ner that you are do­ing, I want to say that cow­ardice does not help. They should see through the black­mail that you hold out.  They should rise out of such ap­pre­hen­sions and rather black you out than to in­cul­cate the fear that mass cir­cu­la­tion pa­pers like yours can black them out. 

Hav­ing “suc­cess­fully” taunted the Moslems and in­ter­fered with their so­cial cus­toms and re­li­gious rites, you and oth­ers are like you seem to be aim­ing at the Sikhs. His­tor­i­cally, we have never taken lightly peo­ple who taunt us.

True to the Sikh faith

Jag­mo­han Singh
Ed­i­tor, The World Sikh News