170 SGPC mem­bers se­lec­tively elect an im­po­tent Pres­i­dent -Gob­ind Singh Lon­gowal, un­der clear in­struc­tion of the Akali Dal lead­er­ship gone astray from the ideals of the founders of this au­gust in­sti­tu­tion, com­pro­mis­ing prin­ci­ples and tra­di­tions, leav­ing the Sikhs in the lurch.

There are times when the flock of a com­mu­nity is un­der watch. Every 29 No­vem­ber is one such time in Am­rit­sar, when the SGPC house con­venes to elect their leader for the next twelve months. In this test, the cur­rent SGPC flock has not only failed but made Sikhs a laugh­ing stock. 

154 elected mem­bers of this au­gust body of the Sikhs, amidst slight re­sis­tance from 15 mem­bers (12 rebels from those ow­ing al­le­giance to Badal Dal, 3 from Shi­ro­mani Akali Dal Am­rit­sar), with 1 ab­sten­tion and 1 SGPC in jail, all of whose tenure is over but who con­tinue due to an anom­aly in the Gur­d­wara leg­is­la­tion, played sheep and se­lec­tively elected a vastly im­po­tent forty-sec­ond pres­i­dent, whose best qual­ity is his un­ques­tion­able po­lit­i­cal loy­alty to the pow­ers-that-be, whose name was pro­posed by a lady on bail for the mur­der of her own daugh­ter and whose name was “cleared” by a three-mem­ber com­mit­tee of the lead­er­ship of the party the pres­i­dent be­longs to, “ac­cepted” by the feu­dal lord who is presently out of power and then the Pres­i­dent was “ho­n­oured” with a Siropa by the provost of the high­est tem­po­ral body of the Sikhs, who had a few months back de­clared him a rene­gade for go­ing to Sirsa dera for votes and was awarded a pun­ish­ment.

The first words that came out of the mouth of the newly elected SGPC Pres­i­dent Gob­ind Singh Lon­gowal were one of un­flinch­ing loy­alty to Parkash Singh Badal and Sukhbir Singh Badal. The sec­ond words brought out the true colours, “I did not go to Sirsa dera for votes dur­ing the as­sem­bly polls.” Well, it is good you did not go, then why did you un­dergo tankhah -pun­ish­ment for five days at Dar­bar Sahib for which there is am­ple video footage too? Why does your name fea­ture in the list of 39 peo­ple is­sued by Akal Takht Sahib Jathedar who did the Sewa af­ter plead­ing guilty at the Akal Takht Sahib? No an­swer. 

Jathedar Gi­ani Gur­bachan Singh has jus­ti­fied Gob­ind Singh Lon­gowal’s elec­tion by say­ing that since he has un­der­gone the pun­ish­ment, there is no bar on his as­sum­ing this of­fice, or any of­fice. That is fine, but now he is chal­leng­ing the very ba­sis of the pun­ish­ment he de­vot­edly car­ried out! Who is ly­ing so openly and so fla­grantly? Sikhs want to know the truth. How­ever, in the pre­sent scheme of things, the Sikhs do not mat­ter, do they?

““I did not go to Sirsa dera for votes dur­ing the as­sem­bly polls.” Then why did you un­dergo tankhah -pun­ish­ment for five days at Dar­bar Sahib for which there is am­ple video footage too? Why does your name fea­ture in the list of 39 peo­ple is­sued by Akal Takht Sahib Jathedar who did the Sewa af­ter plead­ing guilty at the Akal Takht Sahib? No an­swer.”

We will prob­a­bly need some­one more than an­thro­pol­o­gist Joyce Pet­ti­grew who did a study on Sikh pol­i­tics in the last cen­tury and so­cial sci­en­tist Pramod Ku­mar who mon­i­tors Pun­jab from var­i­ous an­gles, to un­der­stand the mind of fa­ther-son Parkash Singh Badal-Sukhbir Singh Badal. Why on earth should they choose a lame-duck Pres­i­dent, which an­noy the masses, cre­ate fis­sures in their own party, di­lute the sig­nif­i­cance of the Sikh re­li­gion by anoint­ing some­one who is a one-time tankhaiya and whose cre­den­tials are ques­tion­able and whose only qual­ity is un­ques­tion­able loy­alty to the fa­ther-son duo lead­ing the Akali brigade? Why, oh why?

The only ex­pla­na­tion is that of my old hu­man­ist friend from Kolkata, who while vis­it­ing Pun­jab said, “the whole at­mos­phere smacks of feu­dal­ism and ma­te­ri­al­is­tic fear of los­ing sta­tus. The so­cial vein, the po­lit­i­cal strain, the re­li­gious do­main -all show noth­ing but a to­tal al­le­giance to the feu­dal lord. Just as the In­dian state does not tol­er­ate dis­sent, Pun­jab’s feu­dal party lead­ers brook no in­ner-party dis­sent.”

The whole ver­nac­u­lar and Eng­lish me­dia in Pun­jab is rife that Sukhbir Singh Badal did what he did as he wanted to “side­line Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa” in San­grur, where he and his son were a force to reckon with, did not like Sewa Singh Sekhwan from Gur­daspur as he used every party fo­rum to dis­cuss and de­bate party moves and felt em­bar­rassed that the last in­cum­bent Pres­i­dent Prof. Kir­pal Singh Ban­dur­gar made unilit­eral ap­point­ments and ex­pressed po­lit­i­cal opin­ion. All of these are anti-feu­dal meth­ods and sit­u­a­tions, is­n’t it? Is there any other ex­pla­na­tion? We would love to lis­ten to some­thing else.

Re­act­ing to the SGPC Pres­i­den­t’s elec­tion, Dal Khalsa spokesper­son Kan­warpal Singh said, “The de­gen­er­a­tion is com­plete. The SGPC headed by a con­tro­ver­sial per­son is a new low. It shows bank­ruptcy of lead­ers in the Akali Dal. He warned that the new com­mit­tee should get ready to face a stiff op­po­si­tion from Pan­thic quar­ters.”

Sukhdev Singh Bhaur, lead­ing 20-odd SGPC dis­si­dents in a quickly put to­gether Pan­thic Front, did put a hin­drance to the se­lec­tion of the Pres­i­dent by call­ing for an elec­tion, but, ac­tu­ally ended  lend­ing cre­dence to the un­de­mo­c­ra­tic elec­tion.

On Face­book and Twit­ter, in­di­vid­u­als and ac­tivists are spew­ing venom against the new pres­i­dent and the SGPC.  Re­mark­ably, the fa­ther-son duo re­ac­tion is typ­i­cal, “Sikhs be damned”. For them, only their pol­i­tics is of a para­mount con­cern.

154 mem­bers vote for one per­son with­out a whim­per, the SGPC house elects all mem­bers of the ex­ec­u­tive with­out a chal­lenge, dis­cusses or­di­nary is­sues, avoids de­bate on sub­stan­tive is­sues in­clud­ing cel­e­bra­tions of Parkash Purab of Guru Gob­ind Singh on 5 Jan­u­ary as sug­gested by the SGPC mem­ber from Anand­pur Sahib -all this amidst Bole So Ni­hal Sat Sri Akal! Where is the Sat -the truth!

Since his elec­tion, the one-time as­sis­tant of for­mer Akali Pres­i­dent -Sant Harc­hand Singh Lon­gowal, sig­na­tory to the still un­ful­filled Ra­jiv-Lon­gowal Ac­cord of 1985, SGPC Pres­i­dent Gob­ind Singh Lon­gowal is be­ing seen at the wrong places at the wrong times. Vi­ral videos are adding to his and his par­ty’s woes. How­ever the oft-re­peated Akali re­frain is mad­den­ingly ap­pro­pri­ate, “Saanu dhu­ur­dda pi­ara hai, dharm nahi.” -In our scheme of things, what the party thinks, or within the party, what one group thinks, that is key and dear to us, not what the dik­tat of the re­li­gion says! So much for Akali democ­racy!

When Gob­ind Singh Lon­gowal looks into the mir­ror, will he be able to see eye to eye with SGPC stal­warts -Sar­dar Sun­der Singh Ma­jithia, Baba Kharak Singh, Mas­ter Tara Singh, Jathedar Ud­ham Singh Nagoke? In a sea­son of dwarfs, why should Sikhs ex­pect gi­ants? Given the ap­a­thy of the Sikhs in gen­eral and the in­ternecine bat­tles in which the whole Sikhdom -home­land and Di­as­pora, is en­gaged, leav­ing the ground free for the dwarfs, we get what we de­serve, is­n’t it?

““Ki fayda, ki oh sud­ha­range?” What is the use? Do you think they will change? Well, I don’t think so, but let’s keep the ball rolling, till we have a bet­ter choice!”

The Ex­ec­u­tive Com­mit­tee of yes-men in­cludes Raghu­jit Singh Virk -Se­nior Vice-Pres­i­dent, Harpal Singh Jhalla -Ju­nior Vice Pres­i­dent, Gur­bachan Singh Kar­muwala -Gen­eral Sec­re­tary and Mem­bers of the Ex­ec­u­tive Com­mit­tee -Saj­jan Singh Ba­jju­man, Ad­vo­cate Bhag­want Singh Sialka, Lakhbir Singh Arain­wala, Gurmeet Kaur Ka­purthala, Gurtej Singh Dhad­dhe, Hardev Singh Rogla, Ravin­der Singh Chakk Muk­er­ian, Gurmeet Singh Booh, Baba Gurmeet Singh Trilok­wala, Navtej Singh Kauni and Am­rik Singh Shah­pur. 

The SGPC chief will be pre­sid­ing over a Rs. 1100 crore bud­get to main­tain Gur­d­waras and al­lied in­sti­tu­tions and like all his pre­de­ces­sors has pro­fessed to ar­rest the tide of apos­tasy and drug abuse. When a jour­nal­ist wanted to know what steps will he take dif­fer­ent from his pre­de­ces­sors. No an­swer. How?  No an­swer. When? Any­body’s guess!

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As is my wont, some­times, I read out what I have writ­ten to my fam­ily. When I read the above lines to my wife, she re­sponded, “Ki fayda, ki oh sud­ha­range?” What is the use? Do you think they will change? 

Well, I don’t think so, but let us raise a voice, till we have a bet­ter choice!