In­dian Supreme Court has or­dered the state of Sikkim to main­tain sta­tus quo at Sikkim’s his­toric shrine Gur­d­wara Nanak Llama Sahib at Chungth­ang, near the Gu­rudong­mar lake till 13 Sep­tem­ber on a pe­ti­tion filed by Ad­vo­cate Am­rit­pal Singh Khalsa, Mum­bai and so­cial ac­tivist Ajmer Singh Rand­hawa, New Delhi.

In a sig­nif­i­cant de­vel­op­ment which will likely put a halt to the sin­is­ter de­signs of el­e­ments who are out to take ad­van­tage of the hate cli­mate in the coun­try and make open at­tempts to grab re­li­gious places of mi­nori­ties, the Supreme court of In­dia dis­posed off a PIL filed by Mum­bai based lawyer Am­rit­pal Singh Khalsa and Delhi based so­cial ac­tivist Ajmer Singh Rand­hawa, or­der­ing the State of Sikkim to main­tain sta­tus quo till 13 Sep­tem­ber in the case of his­toric Gur­d­wara Guru Nanak Llama Chungth­ang on the Gu­rudongma lake.

The Supreme Court has given the lib­erty to the pe­ti­tioner to ap­pear be­fore the Sikkim High Court and dis­cuss the case on mer­its where a civil writ pe­ti­tion comes up for hear­ing on 13 Sep­tem­ber.   

The state of Sikkim has been di­rected to en­sure that no harm is done to the his­toric Gur­d­wara Sahib till the dis­posal of the writ pe­ti­tion as well as the Civil Writ Pe­ti­tion filed by the Sri Guru Singh Sabha in Gang­tok in the Sikkim High Court.

The pe­ti­tion­ers had pleaded that there seems to be a pos­si­bil­ity of de­struc­tion and des­e­cra­tion of the Gur­d­wara and hence im­me­di­ate state in­ter­ven­tion was nec­es­sary.

“Speak­ing ex­clu­sively to WSN, Am­rit­pal Singh Khalsa, vis­i­bly elated at the pos­i­tive re­sponse from the Supreme Court said, said that “I am grate­ful to God and Sikh San­gat that our prayers have been an­swered. Let us now pro­vide cred­i­ble doc­u­men­ta­tion to the Sikkim High Court and win the case.””

Ac­cord­ing to the stand­ing coun­sel of the State of Sikkim, the mis­chief is be­ing done by the Lla­mas and the state gov­ern­ment is not re­spon­si­ble. How­ever the court or­dered that it is the duty of the state to pro­tect the shrine. 

Speak­ing ex­clu­sively to WSN, Am­rit­pal Singh Khalsa, vis­i­bly elated at the pos­i­tive re­sponse from the Supreme Court said, said that “I am grate­ful to God and Sikh San­gat that our prayers have been an­swered. Let us now pro­vide cred­i­ble doc­u­men­ta­tion to the Sikkim High Court and win the case.”

As the com­mu­nity braces up to fight the case, plenty of video and writ­ten ev­i­dence is avail­able on the in­ter­net, in books and from the per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ences of Sikh civil and mil­i­tary in­di­vid­u­als who have been vis­it­ing the his­toric Gur­d­wara for cen­turies. 

The World Sikh News has learnt that many army per­son­nel have en­abled the set­ting up of the Gur­d­wara over the decades and the pre­sent at­tempt to empty the Gur­d­wara was taken up as presently there was no Sikh civil or army res­i­dent there and they mis­cre­ants wanted to take ad­van­tage of the cur­rent Indo-China ten­sion be­cause the Gur­d­wara is in the bor­der area and is nor­mally out of bounds.

“The state of Sikkim has been di­rected to en­sure that no harm is done to the his­toric Gur­d­wara Sahib till the dis­posal of the writ pe­ti­tion as well as the Civil Writ Pe­ti­tion filed by the Sri Guru Singh Sabha, Silig­uri in the Sikkim High Court.”

Leg­end has it though the cli­mate is bit­ing cold with tem­per­a­tures run­ning be­low zero, in a small cu­bi­cle in­side the shrine area, due to bless­ings of Guru Nanak Sahib, wa­ter is eas­ily avail­able. 

Army per­son­nel reg­u­larly vis­it­ing the shrine have said that since the last two decades, Bud­dhists and Hin­dus are at­tempt­ing to put up their flags near the Gur­d­wara Sahib and want to first make it “dis­puted” and then some­how gob­ble it up in con­nivance with the state as there is hardly any sig­nif­i­cant Sikh pres­ence in the area.

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In the past, even the SGPC has been in­volved and has made rep­re­sen­ta­tions to the Union gov­ern­ment to pro­tect the Gur­d­wara Sahib.