On 13 No­vem­ber, SGPC gen­eral house re-ap­pointed Gob­ind Singh Lon­gowal as pres­i­dent. Ac­tu­ally Sukhbir Singh Badal did. What does this elec­tion mean to the Sikhs? Well, noth­ing! How much does the SGPC care for the Sikhs and mod­ern de­mo­c­ra­tic gov­er­nance? Well, who cares! Will the Sikh Gur­d­wara Act 1925 be amended to ful­fil as­pi­ra­tions of the Sikhs? Un­likely, at least for now! What should the Sikhs do? Plan and pre­pare to re­take the SGPC back into the Sikh do­main.

When the SGPC gen­eral house – a house of zom­bies elected, rather ap­pointed Gob­ind Singh Lon­gowal for the sec­ond time in a row with­out dis­cus­sion and de­bate.  9 new ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee mem­bers were nom­i­nated amidst ab­sence of Sukhdev Singh Bhaur and his group, ab­sence of Jathedar Sekhwan, walk­out by Bal­winder Singh Bains and Jathedar Mo­hin­der Singh Hus­sain­pur and op­po­si­tion by in-house mem­ber Ki­ran­jot Kaur.

All the SGPC mem­bers ow­ing al­le­giance to Shi­ro­mani Akali Dal Badal are a bunch of loy­al­ists, who do not pos­sess vo­cal chords, who are dumb­struck most of the time and who stand in awe of their lead­er­ship for they have a lot to hide in terms of their own weak­nesses of nepo­tism, in­ef­fi­ciency and blind party al­le­giance. 

The SGPC mem­bers and the ex­ec­u­tive does not even bother to be po­lit­i­cally cor­rect. They sim­ply give a damn. Oth­er­wise how can you ex­plain that a day prior to the gen­eral house meet­ing, in a to­tally un­eth­i­cal and un­de­mo­c­ra­tic de­ci­sion, the ex­ec­u­tive de­clares, “all pow­ers to ap­point the SGPC pres­i­dent have been given to Sukhbir Singh Badal -the Pres­i­dent of the SGPC.

Every year, two times in a year, they squat be­fore Guru Granth Sahib for two to three hours in the pres­ti­gious Teja Singh Samundri Hall. As soon as they sit, they sup­press their con­science, be­numb them­selves and only look to the stage so that they can raise their hands when the name of the “the cho­sen one” is an­nounced. Then sud­denly they get their vo­cal chords back in ac­tion and blare loud Jaikaras hail­ing the ap­point­ment of the new Pres­i­dent of the SGPC. The other time they meet in the year is to adopt the multi-mil­lion bud­get, of course, once again, with­out dis­cus­sion and de­bate.

“All the SGPC mem­bers ow­ing al­le­giance to Shi­ro­mani Akali Dal Badal are a bunch of loy­al­ists, who do not pos­sess vo­cal chords, who are dumb­struck most of the time and who stand in awe of their lead­er­ship for they have a lot to hide in terms of their own weak­nesses of nepo­tism, in­ef­fi­ciency and blind party al­le­giance.”

Sorry for the harsh words, but all SGPC mem­bers have been re­duced to zom­bies who blindly ac­cept and fol­low the dik­tat of the party lead­ers with ab­solutely no con­cern for Sikhs and Sikhism. They have for­got­ten ..lekha rab man­ge­siah….God will hold you ac­count­able.

When these zom­bies, led by their Big Brother Zom­bie -the pres­i­dent-elect and “the car­rier” of the mes­sage of “the cho­sen one” are con­fronted by the likes of Bibi Ki­ran­jot Kaur, Bal­winder Singh Bains and Jathedar Mo­hin­der Singh Hus­sain­pur, they get em­bold­ened and seize the sit­u­a­tion. They will not even hes­i­tate to re­sort to the con­clud­ing prayers -Anand Sahib, to si­lence the speaker like Ki­ran­jot Kaur who wanted to raise im­por­tant and sig­nif­i­cant is­sues. None of the zom­bies said that what was be­ing done was wrong.

They seem to say, “If we don’t speak be­cause we can­not speak or are not al­lowed to speak”, “how the hell can you speak?”. That is the only ex­pla­na­tion for the un­de­mo­c­ra­tic treat­ment meted out to Ki­ran­jot Kaur. Whether she should con­tinue to be em­bar­rassed within the sphere of her party is for her to de­cide.

The res­o­lu­tions adopted by the SGPC yes­ter­day are rou­tine mun­dane res­o­lu­tions, with no back­ground in­for­ma­tion and with idea or ref­er­ence to fol­low up plans. Adopt­ing res­o­lu­tions is a rit­ual and it is like the many rit­u­als that have crept into the re­li­gious life of the Sikhs and the man­age­ment of re­li­gious af­fairs of the Sikhs.  As they do not take stock of the res­o­lu­tions that they adopt from year to year in the gen­eral house or in the SGPC ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee meets, they eas­ily for­get what they did last time.

Gob­ind Singh Lon­gowal, his team and all SGPC mem­bers have for­got­ten that they have done grave in­jus­tice to the sanc­tity of Akal Takht Sahib and the deco­rum of the func­tion­ing of the Akal Takht Jathedar. Talk­ing about res­o­lu­tions, it is ex­tremely dis­turb­ing that it does not pain the SGPC lead­er­ship that 18 years ago, the then Jathedar Akal Takht, Gi­ani Jogin­der Singh Vedanti, had asked the SGPC to lay down the norms of ap­point­ment, re­moval and sphere of work of Jathedar of Akal Takht and other Takhts. What has hap­pened since then? Noth­ing. Is this crim­i­nal neg­li­gence? It is more than that!

“The pre­sent house of the SGPC has much to an­swer to the Sikh na­tion. It is upto the com­mu­nity, in its wis­dom to rise to the oc­ca­sion and hold them ac­count­able for the par­don to the cultist pseudo-saint Gurmeet Ram Ra­heem of Sauda Sirsa Dera.” 

Shi­ro­mani Gur­d­wara Par­band­hak Com­mit­tee is largely re­garded as the mini-Par­lia­ment of the Sikhs. Though it does func­tion as such, his­tor­i­cally speak­ing it has been the har­bin­ger of new pro­grams and poli­cies for the com­mu­nity and has al­ways been the torch-bearer of the in­ter­ests of the com­mu­nity in the face of the most try­ing cir­cum­stances and in fac­ing the worst kind of re­li­gious and po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship of In­dia chal­leng­ing it. 

To­day, the hon­esty, in­tegrity and sin­cer­ity of elected SGPC mem­bers (elected in 2011 and as such their term was com­plete in 2016 -more of that in an­other story) is se­ri­ously in doubt as the lead­ers of the party that gov­erns this body of the Sikhs that came about through leg­is­la­tion nearly a cen­tury ago in 1925 through a leg­is­la­tion -The Sikh Gur­d­waras Act 1925, as one of the cul­mi­na­tion points of the Gur­d­wara Re­form move­ment, have se­ri­ously eroded its sig­nif­i­cance through their var­i­ous acts of in­ter­ven­tion, med­dling, cor­rup­tion and nepo­tism.

In re­cent times, the han­dling of the post and sta­tus of the Jathedar of Akal Takht Sahib, the very ex­alted po­si­tion of Akal Takht Sahib, right­fully re­garded as a unique in­sti­tu­tion – “a state within a state” that ex­em­pli­fies the unique re­li­gio-po­lit­i­cal sta­tus of the Sikh na­tion. It is im­per­a­tive on the pre­sent SGPC to take ini­tia­tive to set up a per­ma­nent com­mit­tee to build an all-ac­cept­able cod­i­fied pro­ce­dure for ap­point­ment, im­peach­ment, job de­scrip­tion for the post of Jathedar of Akal Takht Sahib.

While it is easy to hold the Jathedar of Akal Takht Sahib, the Badal Dal lead­er­ship and the SGPC lead­er­ship is re­spon­si­ble for this mess, all mem­bers of the SGPC are equally guilty of their ac­qui­es­cence of the wrong poli­cies and de­ci­sions. 

The pre­sent house of the SGPC has much to an­swer to the Sikh na­tion. It is upto the com­mu­nity, in its wis­dom to rise to the oc­ca­sion and hold them ac­count­able for the par­don to the cultist pseudo-saint Gurmeet Ram Rahim of Sauda Sirsa Dera.

“Ru­pees 96 lakhs spent by the SGPC to jus­tify par­don to Gurmeet Ram Rahim must be re­turned back to the Guru Ki Go­lak. Those on the Pan­thic fronts must ex­ert so­cial, re­li­gious and even le­gal pres­sure to get the funds back. There may be no prece­dent for this but there is al­ways a first time.”

It is my con­tention that the Sikh San­gat must ask the Pres­i­dent, the ex­ec­u­tive and all mem­bers of the SGPC (ex­cept those who parted ways like Sukhdev Singh Bhaur) to re­turn to the cof­fers of the SGPC, the Ru­pees 96 lakhs spent on ad­ver­tise­ments to jus­tify the par­don of the Sauda Sirsa dera chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim. Gi­ani Gur­bachan Singh who first is­sued the par­don and then re­tracted it has ac­cepted in his res­ig­na­tion that it was a mis­take. The new in­cum­bent Act­ing Jathedar Gi­ani Harpreet Singh has called it a gross mis­take. The SGPC house does not have the mag­na­nim­ity to ac­cept its mis­take and has cho­sen to re­main silent on the is­sue, as is their wont on many is­sue. It is pretty ob­vi­ous that the SGPC lead­er­ship has bun­gled.  The ill-spent money must be re­turned to the Guru Ki Go­lak. Those on the Pan­thic fronts must ex­ert so­cial, re­li­gious and even le­gal pres­sure to get the funds back. There may be no prece­dent for this but there is al­ways a first time.

De­spite the cries of the San­gat, this SGPC house is un­equiv­o­cally re­spon­si­ble for the en­dorse­ment of their wrong party stand on Bar­gari and Be­hbal Kalan. They have cho­sen to rightly make a big noise about the dis­tor­tions in the syl­labus books pre­scribed by the PSEB, but their si­lence on sim­i­lar mis­takes in the books pub­lished by the SGPC is in­ex­plic­a­ble. 

Sikhs in gen­eral, de­test the SGPC and the mem­bers but do not do much about it. They have all along se­ri­ously jeop­ar­dised Sikh in­ter­ests.  There is ab­solutely no doubt that the work­ing of the SGPC to­day is an as­sault to the mem­ory of stal­warts of the Gur­d­wara Sud­har move­ment who were in­stru­men­tal in ush­er­ing in this au­gust in­sti­tu­tion from the clutches of the British rulers. 

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Now it is time to get back the SGPC from the clutches of the rul­ing zom­bies who re­mind us the words of the friend of Sikhs, au­thor J. D. Cun­ning­ham, who said, “Sikhs are a na­tion of li­ons, led by a….” 

When will the a…. be­come li­ons again?