World Sikh News ed­i­tor writes an open let­ter to Sar­dar Gob­ind Singh Lon­gowal, Pres­i­dent of the Shi­ro­mani Gur­d­wara Par­band­hak Com­mit­tee (SGPC) seek­ing an­swers to a range of dis­turb­ing ques­tions re­lat­ing to the Sikh Ref­er­ence Li­brary.

Dear Sar­dar Gob­ind Singh Lon­gowal
Wa­he­guru Ji Ka Khalsa
Wa­he­guru Ji Ki Fateh!
I hope the SGPC lives up to its word that it will not re­lo­cate the Sikh Ref­er­ence Li­brary -a proud cen­tre of her­itage within the Dar­bar Sahib -Golden Tem­ple Com­plex. I hope you are not play­ing pol­i­tics with the Sikh peo­ple.

Weeks ago, when the SGPC ex­ec­u­tive passed a res­o­lu­tion to re­lo­cate it, there was up­roar and protests, though on a very small scale. I un­der­stand that this move was set in mo­tion by your pre­de­ces­sors, but whether you have shelved the plan or whether you want to build an­other li­brary out­side the com­plex, be­cause you need more space for pil­grims pour­ing in the thou­sands into Dar­bar Sahib is some­thing only you and your ex­ec­u­tive can an­swer. Let it be un­der­stood that no space con­straint can be rea­son enough to shift the his­toric Sikh Ref­er­ence Li­brary. 

I find it dis­turb­ing that there is hardly ever any pub­lic de­bate on such sub­stan­tive is­sues be­cause as a com­mu­nity we are more in­ter­ested in other is­sues. Mat­ters of study, art, lit­er­a­ture, ar­chi­tec­ture, ar­chae­ol­ogy, preser­va­tion of her­itage are rocket sci­ence, not de­serv­ing at­ten­tion.

Nev­er­the­less, this move by the SGPC has brought forth per­ti­nent ques­tions. Will you please an­swer them? You owe it to the Sikh San­gat. 

Why is there no men­tion of the Sikh Ref­er­ence Li­brary on the SGPC web­site? Why do we do not have a web­site ded­i­cated to the Li­brary? When was the last time that the painted board at the en­trance of the li­brary was changed? Do you know that there was lady called Princess Bamba, daugh­ter of Ma­haraja Duleep Singh of the Sikh His­tor­i­cal So­ci­ety, who was in­stru­men­tal in set­ting-up of the Sikh Ref­er­ence Li­brary in 1945!

“Has the SGPC fol­lowed up on the dis­clo­sures of CBI In­spec­tor Ran­jit Nanda who turned whistle­blower in 2003 and who made star­tling rev­e­la­tions of how ma­te­r­ial from the Sikh Ref­er­ence Li­brary was then packed into 165 gunny bags and taken away?”

Has the Sikh Ref­er­ence Li­brary re­tained the arte­facts, books and doc­u­ments looted and pil­fered by the In­dian Army af­ter it stormed and plun­dered the army at the end of the as­sault in June 1984? Ac­cord­ing to the Jus­tice Tarkunde re­port, the army burnt a sec­tion of the li­brary and looted it be­tween 6 June and 14 June long af­ter the as­sault was over. Can the SGPC come out with a doc­u­ment about the real sta­tus of the doc­u­ments in view of its cor­re­spon­dence with the gov­ern­ment of In­dia at var­i­ous lev­els?

In the year 2000, the then De­fence Min­is­ter George Fer­nan­des -a friend of the Sikhs, had pointed out that the ma­te­r­ial taken by the army was handed over the CBI. Where is the ma­te­r­ial to­day?

Some ma­te­r­ial con­sid­ered sedi­tious by the loot­ers was de­stroyed. Do we have a log of that? SGPC as a cus­to­dian of the Sikh her­itage is pri­mar­ily re­spon­si­ble and ac­count­able to the San­gat for this. If yes, what was de­stroyed? If not, why not? 

Has the SGPC fol­lowed up on the dis­clo­sures of CBI In­spec­tor Ran­jit Singh Nanda who turned whistle­blower in 2003 and who made star­tling rev­e­la­tions of how ma­te­r­ial from the Sikh Ref­er­ence Li­brary was then packed into 165 gunny bags and taken away?

The as­sur­ance of Pres­i­dent Ab­dul Kalam in 2003 and the di­rec­tion of the Pun­jab and Haryana High Court in 2004 have not borne fruit. Has the SGPC given up?

The SG­PC’s ac­count­abil­ity is not lim­ited to a few bags of grain that may be pil­fered by a greedy of­fi­cial or the main­te­nance and up­keep of inns and in­cre­ments in al­lowances to SGPC mem­bers and salaries of em­ploy­ees.

“How many vis­its of his­tory, art, cul­ture, so­ci­ol­ogy, an­thro­pol­ogy, re­li­gious stud­ies stu­dents from var­i­ous uni­ver­si­ties and de­part­ments of col­leges are or­ga­nized by the SGPC every year from Pun­jab and out of Pun­jab?”

By the way, who is the li­brar­ian of the Sikh Ref­er­ence Li­brary? Af­ter the il­lus­tri­ous lit­er­ary gi­ant and po­lit­i­cal writer Devin­der Singh Dug­gal, who cu­rated the Sikh Ref­er­ence Li­brary for years like a mother tak­ing care of her chil­dren and who died, un­able to bear the loss done by the army, how many renowned aca­d­e­mi­cians were made li­brar­i­ans? Cur­rently, who is the cu­ra­tor and li­brar­ian of the Sikh Ref­er­ence Li­brary?

What ef­forts has the SGPC done to pop­u­larise the his­tory and util­ity of the Sikh Ref­er­ence Li­brary? Since it was set up in 1945, what steps have been taken to en­hance the li­brary, digi­tise all its con­tent and make the ma­te­r­ial eas­ily ac­ces­si­ble?

The Sikh San­gat may not be cu­ri­ous but I am keen to know how many pil­grims visit the Sikh Ref­er­ence Li­brary? How many books/​doc­u­ments/​news­pa­pers are ref­er­enced every month from the li­brary?  

What is the bud­get al­lo­ca­tion over the years for the Sikh Ref­er­ence Li­brary? What ef­forts are made by the SGPC to per­suade pil­grims to visit the li­brary?

How many SGPC mem­bers visit the li­brary and know the de­tails of the place? Can you make it com­pul­sory for SGPC mem­bers to study at least one doc­u­ment from the Sikh Ref­er­ence Li­brary every month?

I am re­ally cu­ri­ous to know how many re­search schol­ars have used the Sikh Ref­er­ence Li­brary since June 1984. Has any of their works based on the ref­er­enc­ing that they may have done there, been pub­lished?

How many vis­its of his­tory, art, cul­ture, so­ci­ol­ogy, an­thro­pol­ogy, re­li­gious stud­ies stu­dents from var­i­ous uni­ver­si­ties and de­part­ments of col­leges are or­ga­nized by the SGPC every year from Pun­jab and out of Pun­jab? 

Are there di­rec­tion boards any­where in the com­plex di­rect­ing pil­grims and vis­i­tors to the Sikh Ref­er­ence Li­brary?

What steps have been taken to en­sure that all the rare man­u­scripts and doc­u­ments are fully digi­tised be­fore they are lost again to the va­garies of time or dumped some­where by some nin­com­poop em­ployee of the SGPC?

I know that an­swers are not easy but an­swer we must. We have de­stroyed a lot of phys­i­cal her­itage. The path­way lead­ing to Dar­bar Sahib has made the spir­i­tual cen­tre into a tourist at­trac­tion. With­out books and Granths at the Sikh Ref­er­ence Li­brary, the cul­tural de­struc­tion would be­gin. I hope you do not want to go down in his­tory has some­one who has presided over this. An­swer the ques­tions and there will be so­lu­tions, be­fore it is too late.

Jag­mo­han Singh
Ed­i­tor, World Sikh News

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Post Scrip­tum: I do not ex­pect an­swers from the SGPC Pres­i­dent. Will the SGPC “chief” sec­re­tary Roop Singh an­swer it for us? Will any­one else an­swer?