As a co-pro­moter and par­tic­i­pant of the first-ever Pan­thic As­sem­bly, the au­thor, who is also the ed­i­tor of the World Sikh News, is pro­vides a ring-side view of the pro­ceed­ings as well as the fall out of the same in the last few days in news­pa­pers and on so­cial me­dia. 

I pre­sent an in­sid­er’s view and analy­sis of the two-day pro­ceed­ings of the first-ever Pan­thic As­sem­bly, which did not come a day too soon as Sikhs are dis­traught with the fail­ure of their es­tab­lished in­sti­tu­tions and there is a need for a new Sikh lead­er­ship.   

Put to­gether by ac­tivists Gi­ani Ke­wal Singh, Sukhdev Singh Bhaur, Prof. Jag­mo­han Singh, Navki­ran Singh, Kan­warpal Singh and Jaswinder Singh Ad­vo­cate, with sup­port from many vol­un­teers, to dis­cuss the is­sue of sac­ri­lege of Guru Granth Sahib in Pun­jab and the role of the po­lice in fir­ing at peace­ful pro­tes­tors three years ago in Oc­to­ber 2015, the Pan­thic As­sem­bly was an at­tempt to use the West­min­ster model of the leg­is­la­ture, yet com­pare it with the age-old tra­di­tion of the Sar­bat Khalsa when the Khalsa Panth used to as­sem­ble at the Akal Takht Sahib twice a year, to iron out dif­fer­ences and bring forth ac­cept­able so­lu­tions on mat­ters of con­cern to the com­mu­nity from time to time.

““Let’s make the Pan­thic As­sem­bly a per­ma­nent plat­form” was the call from most speak­ers, as well as from com­ments on so­cial me­dia, with many view­ing it as the “utopian so­lu­tion” to all prob­lems. Gen­er­ally the or­gan­is­ers seem pleased with the re­sponse dur­ing and af­ter the As­sem­bly.”

Talk­ing about the tim­ing of the Pan­thic As­sem­bly, young pro­fes­sional Aman­jeet Singh from Dubai was on the dot when he said, “no one can stop an idea whose time has come.”

The con­tra­dic­tions in the ap­proach were pal­pa­bly vis­i­ble dur­ing the pro­ceed­ings and were ve­he­mently pointed out by thinker and his­to­rian Ajmer Singh. He was skep­ti­cal of reap­ing in re­sults in such a sit­u­a­tion, but was ap­pre­cia­tive of the at­tempt to get to­gether and talk to each other rather than talk­ing at each other.

Nev­er­the­less, there was no wa­ver­ing in the in­ten­tion and push of the pro­mot­ers to give a full chance and op­por­tu­nity to around 80 of the 110 mem­bers of all walks of life from Pun­jab, out­side Pun­jab and the Di­as­pora who ex­pressed their opin­ion not only on var­i­ous as­pects of the sub­ject but di­gressed to other lo­cal is­sues as well.

As the ap­point­ment of the Jathedar of Akal Takht Sahib was the very next day of the con­clu­sion of the Pan­thic As­sem­bly, the body re­jected the ap­point­ment of Jathedar by the SGPC, “with­out Pan­thic con­sul­ta­tion and in the ab­sence of norms for ap­point­ment, re­moval and frame­work of work for Takht jathedars.” How­ever, how the unique char­ac­ter of the Akal Takht Sahib be­ing “a state within a state” which makes the Sikhs a unique re­li­gio-po­lit­i­cal na­tion, has been eroded by the Sikhs them­selves and how to­day there are Jathedars one too many with no pos­si­bil­ity of una­nim­ity in sight, was not touched.

“A Pun­jabi news­pa­per called “the Pan­thic As­sem­bly a step-sis­ter of the SGPC.” At the very first ses­sion, if the PA is the step-sis­ter of SGPC, then surely, be­com­ing the real one is not far away.”

As the pro­ceed­ings were tele­cast live, a few speak­ers played to the gallery. They were not par­tic­i­pat­ing in the pro­ceed­ings; they were ac­tu­ally ad­dress­ing some­one.  Sikh na­tion­al­ist rep­re­sen­ta­tives stretched the ar­gu­ment to say that a Sikh state is a panacea for all evils. They tremen­dously en­joyed their own voice. 

 Cit­ing con­spir­a­to­r­ial at­tempts by the Sauda Sirsa Dera chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim and his de­struc­tive cult, the Pan­thic As­sem­bly, con­sid­er­ing all Com­mis­sion re­ports, sought a ban on the Sauda Dera in Pun­jab and Haryana and seal­ing of all their Nam­char­cha Ghars which were dens of con­spir­acy to un­der­mine Sikhs and Sikhism and con­spir­acy pro­ceed­ings for sac­ri­lege and blas­phemy against their cultist chief. The re­cent de­ten­tion of three Premis is a pointer in this di­rec­tion.

All Sikh rep­re­sen­ta­tives from out of Pun­jab were unan­i­mous that the Sikhs of Pun­jab do not pay much in­ten­tion to their con­cerns and prob­lems and only in times of dire need that they start think­ing about them. They said, “Sikh lead­ers in Pun­jab fail to un­der­stand that every­thing that they say and do af­fects the lives and pol­i­tics of the Sikhs liv­ing out­side Pun­jab.” One speaker, how­ever rightly said, “It is time that the Sikhs liv­ing out­side the state, start con­sid­er­ing Pun­jab as their moth­er­land. It is time for them to take more in­ter­est in Pun­jab if the vice-versa is not hap­pen­ing.”

Pop­u­lar Sikh mis­sion­ary Bhai Pan­th­preet Singh pointed out the var­i­ous sac­ri­leges willy-nilly car­ried out by var­i­ous peo­ple within the Sikh com­mu­nity and how the com­mu­nity shuts its eyes to them. He called for look­ing within too as equally nec­es­sary while we are fo­cussed on look­ing out­side.  

The ire of the peo­ple was re­flected in the res­o­lu­tion for po­lit­i­cal boy­cott of the Badals. All at­tempts to evolve a po­lit­i­cal out­fit out of the Pan­thic As­sem­bly pro­ceed­ings were tact­fully scut­tled by the core com­mit­tee which had con­vened the meet­ing.

“The pi­o­neers will do well to re­mem­ber, “Rome was not built in a day.”

Lawyer ac­tivist Navki­ran Singh in a deeply satir­i­cal man­ner ques­tioned the Sikh lead­ers play­ing the vic­tim card and blam­ing ex­ter­nal forces and said, “We are our­selves re­spon­si­ble for many things and it is time to look within also.”

Young ac­tivists Gau­ravdeep Singh from Lud­hi­ana and Gurmeet Singh from Ranchi em­pha­sized the need for more youth par­tic­i­pa­tion and a more thor­ough prepa­ra­tion for such meet­ings.

Over a pe­riod of two days, de­lib­er­a­tions were con­ducted in a pretty de­mo­c­ra­tic man­ner in which some speak­ers in­sen­si­tively usurped the time of oth­ers, while many were to the point and di­rect. I must con­fess that the peace­ful and de­mo­c­ra­tic pro­ceed­ings of the day were marred by the last one hour or so when the res­o­lu­tions were dis­cussed and re­solved. All hell broke loose and mem­bers were de­bat­ing what was not within the purview of the Pan­thic As­sem­bly.

The im­ages of the Pan­thic As­sem­bly pro­ceed­ings broad­cast live by Akaal Chan­nel in­spired a lot of hope. Gen­er­ally speak­ing, Sikh opin­ion mak­ers ad­mired the de­mo­c­ra­tic struc­ture of the As­sem­bly, the man­ner­isms and pro­ce­dure. On so­cial me­dia, a few thou­sand peo­ple from across the globe lis­tened to their favourite speak­ers as well as some pa­tiently sat through the en­tire pro­ceed­ings.

Shi­ro­mani Akali Dal (Am­rit­sar) pres­i­dent Sim­ran­jit Singh Mann en­dorsed the res­o­lu­tions adopted by the Pan­thic As­sem­bly but sug­gested that it should have ex­panded the scope of the top­ics taken up for dis­cus­sion.

Tak­ing a holier-than-thou at­ti­tude, some ac­tivists through their long di­a­tribes on so­cial me­dia tried to cre­ate a wedge be­tween the or­gan­is­ers of the Pan­thic As­sem­bly and the Bar­gari In­saaf Mor­cha with­out read­ing the res­o­lu­tions of the Pan­thic As­sem­bly en­dors­ing every­thing that the Mor­cha stood for. De­spite their best ef­forts, they could not hide their malafide in­ten­tions.

A Pun­jabi news­pa­per called “the Pan­thic As­sem­bly a step-sis­ter of the SGPC.” At the very first ses­sion, if the PA is the step-sis­ter of SGPC, then surely, be­com­ing the real one is not far away.

“Let’s make the Pan­thic As­sem­bly a per­ma­nent plat­form” was the call from most speak­ers, as well as from com­ments on so­cial me­dia, with many view­ing it as the “utopian so­lu­tion” to all prob­lems.   Gen­er­ally the or­gan­is­ers seem pleased with the re­sponse dur­ing and af­ter the As­sem­bly.

I felt that the surge of sen­ti­ments arose out of a de­sire to achieve some­thing in the 2019 In­dian gen­eral elec­tions and the any­time-pos­si­ble SGPC gen­eral elec­tions. Such fo­rums can achieve some­thing only if a long term view can be taken and as far as Sikh sys­tems are con­cerned, “the di­chotomy be­tween the tra­di­tional and the mod­ern can be re­solved and haste can be avoided at all costs.”   

Launch­ing a frontal at­tack on In­dia, the Pan­thic As­sem­bly said that “the In­dian state al­lows by de­fault the ne­far­i­ous de­signs of sac­ri­lege and blas­phemy to hap­pen and then re­duces it to a law and or­der prob­lem, al­low­ing the po­lice and other forces to kill in­no­cent pro­tes­tors as has hap­pened in Kotka­pura and Be­hbal Kalan.” It is with this in mind that the Pan­thic As­sem­bly, even though, it has ad­journed sine die, de­cided to pub­lish a White Pa­per “to go into the en­tire gamut of the Bar­gari, Be­hbal Kalan and Kotka­pura in­ci­dents in the con­text of the role of the Sauda Dera or­gan­i­sa­tion and its chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim.”

Re­call­ing that sac­ri­lege of Guru Granth Sahib is not a new oc­curence, the Pan­thic As­sem­bly rem­i­nisced that “in Feb­ru­ary 2, 1986, four Sikh youth were killed in a cold blooded mur­der spree by the po­lice at Nako­dar when they were protest­ing the sac­ri­lege of Guru Granth Sahib. The Pan­thic As­sem­bly re­solved to fol­low the gov­ern­ment for mak­ing the Jus­tice Gur­nam Singh Com­mis­sion Re­port into the Nako­dar killings pub­lic.

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For­mer scribe and au­thor Jas­pal Singh Sidhu made an in­ter­est­ing ob­ser­va­tion by say­ing, “This is a step to show the ca­pac­ity of Sikhs for self-rule.”

The first steps have been taken. We will do well to serve the com­mu­nity if we re­mem­ber and work tak­ing into ac­count, “Rome was not built in a day.” “Kabul de rehn valyan lahi nitt muhima” The Sikhs as res­i­dents of Kabul “are al­ways on a mis­sion”. Let this be the mis­sion of the decade, if not of the cen­tury!