With two pe­ti­tion­ers in the Sikkim High Court and one in the Supreme Court granted stay till 13 Sep­tem­ber, DS­GMC meet­ing In­dian Home Min­is­ter Ra­j­nath Singh, five-term-in-a-row CM-Pawan Ku­mar Cham­ling meet­ing SGPC-DS­GMC team, the dis­trict DC and SDM col­lud­ing with those hell-bent on turn­ing Gur­d­waras into Bud­dhist monas­ter­ies, the au­thor, deeply in­volved with the af­fairs, pre­sents the his­tory of Gur­d­waras in Sikkim -es­pe­cially Gur­d­wara Gu­rudong­mar. Watch: Ex­clu­sive In­ter­view

The in­glo­ri­ous sight of items of wor­ship and the holi­est of holy Guru Granth Sahib placed on the road out­side an­other Gur­d­wara af­ter be­ing re­moved from Gur­d­wara Gu­rudong­mar in Sikkim by Bud­dhist Lamas who want to con­vert the decades-old re­li­gious shrine into a Bud­dhist monastery with full state pa­tron­age and sup­port has sent shock waves in the Sikh com­mu­nity with the Sikh re­li­gious and po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship up in arms and mak­ing last-ditch at­tempts, in­clud­ing le­gal pe­ti­tions, to save the Gur­d­waras in Sikkim.

Of late there have been sin­is­ter at­tempts to take over Gur­d­wara Gu­rudong­mar Sikkim, at­tempts are con­sis­tently be­ing done to re­move all ev­i­dence of Guru Nanak’s visit to Sikkim, to take con­trol of all relics of Guru Nanak and to re­place all boards de­pict­ing Guru Nanak’s name with Pad­masamb­haba or Baja Guru.

Guru Nanak was a great trav­eller. He trav­elled glob­ally to de­liver the mes­sage of truth, broth­er­hood, equal­ity and love for hu­man­ity. In his Third Itin­er­ary –Udasi, as per his chron­i­cles, he vis­ited the Hi­malayan re­gion trav­el­ling through pre­sent-day Hi­machal, Ut­taran­chal, Ti­bet, Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan, Arunachal, China and Kash­mir. His visit to Nepal/​Sikkim/​Bhutan has been recorded in  ha­giogra­phies (Janam­sakhis writ­ten in 17th cen­tury), trav­el­ogues of Gi­ani Gian Singh (Panth Parkash (1870 AD) and Twa­reekh Guru Khalsa  (1891AD), Ma­jor NS Is­sar (1965AD), S. Surinder Singh IDSA (1968-1969), Col Dr dalvin­der Singh Gre­wal  (1970-1971 and 1987-1992 AD) re­search books pub­lished by Pun­jab Uni­ver­sity: (Trav­els of Guru Nanak: 1969 AD), Pun­jabi Uni­ver­sity: (Pun­jab Past and Pre­sent Guru Nanak Num­ber (1969 AD), Sikh Re­view (Guru Nanak num­ber 1969-1970 AD),  Trav­els of Guru Nanak in Hi­malayas and East Asia (1995 AD) and Amaz­ing trav­els of Guru Nanak (2002 AD) by this re­searcher and nu­mer­ous ar­ti­cles pub­lished from time to time. All this ma­te­r­ial con­firms that Guru Nanak vis­ited Hi­malayan re­gion in­clud­ing Sikkim.

““I feel you mix Guru Nanak with Guru Pad­masamb­hva or some of his fol­low­ers.’ The Bud­dhist Lama was em­phatic in say­ing ‘No’. He spe­cially men­tioned that it was Guru Nanak of Pun­jab only. El­ders of his sect have been go­ing to Am­rit­sar, Gu­ru’s nec­tar store, to pay homage to Guru Nanak. Their places of pil­grim­age in In­dia are Bodh Gaya as well as Am­rit­sar. When I re­quested him to show some records about Gu­ru­ji’s visit: he re­spect­fully replied, “Are not the hearts of the peo­ple true records of Gu­ru­ji’s visit?””

Lo­cal peo­ple and Lamas of Lachen, Lachung, Thanggu in­ter­viewed by Ma­jor NS Is­sar in 1965 AD, by Surinder Singh IDSA in 1968-69 AD, and by me in 1987-1988 were very con­fi­dent and cat­e­gor­i­cal in say­ing that Guru Nanak vis­ited Sikkim es­pe­cially places like Chungth­ang, Lachen, Lachung, Thanggu and Gu­rudong­mar. 

A Gur­d­wara ex­isted on ground and on map in Chungth­ang in 1968-1969 AD as recorded by Surinder Singh IDSA (Sikh Re­view 1970). I vis­ited this Gur­d­wara in 1970 and 1971 and from 1987 to 1992 AD (dur­ing my two tenures with the In­dian army) when I was posted in Sikkim. Dur­ing both the tenures, Sikkim was my area of op­er­a­tional re­spon­si­bil­ity. All lo­cal peo­ple in­clud­ing Lamas of Lachen, Lachung, Thanggu con­firmed to me that Guru Nanak had vis­ited Sikkim. 

I put across my doubt to the Lama, “I feel you mix Guru Nanak with Guru Pad­masamb­hva or some of his fol­low­ers.’ He was em­phatic in say­ing ‘No’. He spe­cially men­tioned that it was Guru Nanak of Pun­jab only. El­ders of his sect have been go­ing to Am­rit­sar, Gu­ru’s nec­tar store, to pay their homage to Guru Nanak. Their places of pil­grim­age in In­dia are Bodh Gaya as well as Am­rit­sar. When I re­quested him to show some records about Gu­ru­ji’s visit: he re­spect­fully replied, “Are not the hearts of the peo­ple true records of Gu­ru­ji’s visit?” To my re­quest for printed records, he said, “We have Guru Nanak’s life his­tory and his hymns (shabads) in our books. All these are in Ti­betan: I can show you these records’. I was help­less as I did not know Ti­betan. I de­parted from the place with a vow to learn Ti­betan so that I could know more about Guru Nanak and come back to ver­ify the de­tails. Nev­er­the­less, it was clear to my mind that Guru Nanak had vis­ited Sikkim and Karmapa lamas in their hour of need. (The Sikh Re­view, Nov 1988, Vol. XXXVI, No. 419, p.31)

There are vis­i­ble land­marks and ma­te­r­ial items de­pict­ing Guru Nanak’s visit to the place. At Chungth­ang, a boul­der, with Guru Nanak’s foot­prints, a spring, a rice field and a stick-turned-into-a-tree com­mem­o­rate Guru Nanak’s visit. At Lachen Gom­pha, a robe of­fered to Guru Nanak, a ka­man­dal and his foot­prints are pre­served in the Gom­pha. 

At Gu­ruDong­mar, the cor­ner of the lake where Guru Nanak hit the snow with the stick in his hand (daang) to pro­vide per­pet­ual source of wa­ter for the Yak gra­ziers, who them­selves told me the story of Gu­ru’s visit to the lake and of pro­vid­ing them wa­ter all the year around. This was fur­ther con­firmed to me by Lachen Lama, J.K. Bhutia, the in­tel­li­gence of­fi­cer at Thanggu and Lama of Thanggu -the near­est lo­cal­ity to the lake. All these state­ments are on record and duly pub­lished in books, re­search jour­nals and news­pa­pers. Even the Sikkim Gov­ern­ment ac­cepted this on record by is­su­ing passes for the vis­i­tors to the shrine of Guru  Nanak. The Pun­jab and Sind Bank is­sued a cal­en­dar in the 1990s about Guru Nanak’s visit to Gu­rudong­mar.

“I went through a plethora of books, writ­ten by In­di­ans and oth­ers, but could not find any ref­er­ence about Pad­masmb­hava’s visit to Sikkim. He had stayed in Hi­machal Pradesh, Nepal and Samya monastery in Ti­bet as per all avail­able records. As I men­tioned ear­lier, there was no ac­tual re­search in­sti­tu­tion in Sikkim ex­cept the In­sti­tute of Ti­betol­ogy which had con­firmed to me that it was Guru Nanak who vis­ited Sikkim. Now the In­sti­tute of Ti­betol­ogy is man­u­fac­tur­ing “al­ter­na­tive facts””

When I reached Gu­rudong­mar in 1987, a Gur­d­wara was un­der con­struc­tion at Gur­dong­mar next to the place where Guru Nanak had hit the lake, was in progress. Since I was to stay there for 3 months, I too as­sisted in the con­struc­tion.  The area was a plateau at around 18000 feet with only 10% oxy­gen. There was no civil­ian around for miles to­gether ex­cept a few stone huts of gra­ziers at a dis­tance. There was no con­struc­tion other than the Gur­d­wara Sahib and only the flag on Nis­han Sahib of Sikhs flut­ter­ing in the air.  I have been vis­it­ing the Gur­d­wara Sahib reg­u­larly till 1992. All the peo­ple from Thanggu, Lachen, Chungth­ang and be­yond pay their re­spects at the Gur­d­wara Sahib.  It was quite ev­i­dent that Guru Nanak of Am­rit­sar had vis­ited the place. Sikhs work­ing in the Army and GREF per­son­nel work­ing on road con­struc­tion nearby col­lected the funds and built the Gur­d­wara. It was not an Army Gur­d­wara but a his­toric Gur­d­wara com­mem­o­rat­ing the visit of Guru Nanak and built by Sikhs, es­pe­cially those work­ing in the In­dian army.

Since the last 40 years of their ex­is­tence, no one ques­tioned the his­toric­ity of the Gur­d­waras. Dur­ing my stay there, Sikh groups from across the world started to make vis­its to the Gur­d­wara. In 1968-69,    Surinder Singh IDSA vis­ited Gur­d­wara Chungth­ang and found only two places at Chungth­ang i.e., a Gur­d­wara and a po­lice post.  When I had vis­ited the place in 1970 for the first time, I too had found these two promi­nent land­marks of Chungth­ang. The lo­cal peo­ple were cor­dial and re­spect­ful. In 1992, Harb­ha­jan Singh Se­tia vis­ited the Gur­d­wara and there­after he vis­ited the Gur­d­wara reg­u­larly with his group till 2015 AD  af­ter which he was held up by his age (now over 85 years). He found every­thing to be fine till 1999. Gur­d­wara Gu­rudong­mar and the Sikh flag  -Nis­han Sahib, were the two promi­nent marks on the en­tire plateau. No other build­ing or flag ex­isted. 

Af­ter his visit in 1999, he told me that some flags of other re­li­gions were planted  near the gur­d­wara and a board was placed out­side the Gur­d­wara men­tion­ing it to be ‘sarv dharma mandir’. Some idols were also placed near the sanc­tum sanc­to­rum. I wrote about this in var­i­ous pa­pers (My ar­ti­cle Des­e­cra­tion of Gur­d­waras Gur­dong­mar ap­peared on var­i­ous In­ter­net fo­rums in 2000AD) on net. Get­ting in touch with the Pres­i­dent SGPC Sar­dar Gucha­ran Singh Tohra, I ap­prised him of the des­e­cra­tion of Gur­d­wara Gu­rudong­mar. He im­me­di­ately rang up the then De­fence Min­is­ter  -George Fer­nan­des,  who or­dered the Army not to al­low any in­ter­fer­ence in the Gur­d­waras. Things cooled down there af­ter. How­ever, af­ter 2012 again, idols and Tankhas of Ma­hatma Bud­dha/​Pad­masamb­hava were placed in­side the Gur­d­wara and the shape of Gur­d­wara was con­verted into a Bud­dhist Gom­pha by Lachen Lama and oth­ers grad­u­ally claim­ing that it was a Bud­dhist shrine. Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Lachen Lama started col­lect­ing of­fer­ings of the Gur­d­wara. I was as­ton­ished and deeply dis­turbed at the sud­den change since Guru Nanak’s visit to the area was never ques­tioned for forty long years. 

The de­vel­op­ments were im­me­di­ately con­veyed to the SGPC who wrote to Chief Min­is­ter Pawan Ku­mar Cham­ling. A del­e­ga­tion of SGPC was sent to Sikkim to sort out the mat­ter with Sikkim Gov­ern­ment and lo­cal lamas. The chief min­is­ter and other gov­ern­men­tal rep­re­sen­ta­tives re­mained to­tally neg­a­tive and ac­tively as­sisted the lo­cal lamas not only in tak­ing over the con­trol of relics re­lat­ing to Guru Nanak but also re­placed the sign board of the His­tory of Guru Nanak’s visit to the area with those de­clar­ing it to be Baja Gur/​Pad­masmb­hava  and not Guru Nanak who ac­tu­ally vis­ited Sikkim. 

No mon­u­ments or records of the visit of Pad­masamb­hva to Sikkim ex­isted ear­lier hence these were cre­ated post haste af­ter 2002. The In­sti­tute of Ti­betol­ogy was asked to pub­lish pa­pers and books in sup­port of their new claim. State acts were amended post haste to ad­just the change. I was too as­ton­ished to find a sud­den change es­pe­cially when Lachen Lama him­self had given me the state­ment that Guru Nanak vis­ited Gu­rudong­mar, Thanggu, Lachen, Chungth­ang, Lachung, etc. All of these has been pub­lished in my book on Guru Nanak’s Trav­els in Hi­malayan Re­gion in 1995 and Amaz­ing Trav­els of Guru Nanak in 2002. Even the then Di­rec­tor of In­sti­tute of Ti­betol­ogy had cat­e­gor­i­cally told me that it was Guru Nanak who had vis­ited Sikkim and the places are re­lated to Him. This too was pub­lished in one of my ar­ti­cles. 

Some vested in­ter­ests es­pe­cially the Lamas who have been col­lect­ing funds of their monas­ter­ies thought of these places as a good source of in­come and have prob­a­bly hatched a plan to con­vert these Sikh holy places and relics to their ben­e­fit by claim­ing them to be Bud­dhist. It is clear that vested in­ter­ests among lo­cal Bud­dhists helped this cam­paign and started a tirade that it was not Guru Nanak who vis­ited the place but Baja Guru/​Pad­masamb­hava. 

“Guru Nanak and Pad­masamb­hva gen­er­ally be­longed to the same area; Pad­masamb­hava hav­ing been born in 8th cen­tury in Swat Area and Guru Nanak in Nankana Sahib. Both these ar­eas are very close.” This kind of per­verted logic was spread through the in­ter­net by the SDM of Chungth­ang and his team. Be­ing in the gov­ern­ment, they were able to in­flu­ence the Gov­ern­ment to pass cer­tain acts in the as­sem­bly to fur­ther their claims.

I went through a plethora of books, writ­ten by In­di­ans and oth­ers, but could not find any ref­er­ence about Pad­masmb­hava’s visit to Sikkim. He had stayed in Hi­machal Pradesh, Nepal and Samya monastery in Ti­bet as per all avail­able records. As I men­tioned ear­lier, there was no ac­tual re­search in­sti­tu­tion in Sikkim ex­cept the In­sti­tute of Ti­betol­ogy which had con­firmed to me that it was Guru Nanak who vis­ited Sikkim. Now the In­sti­tute of Ti­betol­ogy is man­u­fac­tur­ing “al­ter­na­tive facts”.

I am told that lo­cal peo­ple still main­tain their faith in Guru Nanak’s visit to these places de­spite the com­mu­nal pro­pa­ganda aimed at cre­at­ing a wedge be­tween two com­mu­ni­ties. I found lo­cal peo­ple to be nice and warm dur­ing my stay from 1970s on­wards and till 1992 when I left and even in 2015 when I vis­ited the area. 

In 2014, we re­ceived in­for­ma­tion that the Gur­d­waras were be­ing con­tin­u­ously des­e­crated and con­trol of relics re­lated to Guru Nanak were to­tally taken over by these lo­cal lamas with the full com­plic­ity of SDM Chungth­ang. All the boards show­ing Guru Nanak’s visit to Chungth­ang and Gu­rudong­mar were of­fi­cially re­placed by that of Baja Guru/​Pad­masamb­hava. The then Pres­i­dent Shi­ro­mani Gur­d­wara Par­band­hak Com­mit­tee  and Chief Min­is­ter of Pun­jab wrote to  Chief Min­is­ter Sikkim, urg­ing him to stop the  des­e­cra­tion of gur­d­waras. In April 2014-15, an SGPC del­e­ga­tion also vis­ited Sikkim. Things again cooled down.

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How­ever, as we know, a fresh wave of at­tempts are on to take over the Gur­d­waras in Sikkim, be­gin­ning with the re­moval of Sikh items of wor­ship from Gur­d­wara Gu­rudong­mar and the SDM Chungth­ang or­der­ing rev­enue au­dit of the Gur­d­wara Sahib in Chungth­ang. While the SGPC-DS­GMC lead­er­ship are do­ing their bit, it is time for the Sikh San­gat to stand up. 

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