The Sikh com­mu­nity has ex­pressed strong ob­jec­tion to a re­cent judge­ment by the Jammu and Kash­mir High Court, which ruled that ‘Singh’ and ‘Kaur’ are not nec­es­sary suf­fixes for iden­ti­fy­ing a per­son as a Sikh. The judge­ment has sparked con­tro­versy and it is per­ceived as an over­reach by the learned Judge, with some call­ing it a di­rect at­tack on Sikh iden­tity and re­li­gious norms. WSN cor­re­spon­dent Ish­winder Singh Dakha re­ports.

In a rather un­nec­es­sary move, the Jammu and Kash­mir High Court, led by Jus­tice Wasim Sadiq Nar­gal, is­sued a judge­ment stat­ing that hav­ing ‘Singh’ or ‘Kaur’ as sur­names is not es­sen­tial for be­ing rec­og­nized as a Sikh.

This rul­ing arose from a case where a pe­ti­tioner, con­test­ing Dis­trict Gur­d­wara Par­band­hak Com­mit­tee elec­tions from Akhnoor and not elected, chal­lenged the in­clu­sion of non-Sikh vot­ers with­out these sur­names. Jus­tice Nar­gal, cit­ing the J&K Sikh Gu­rud­wara & Re­li­gious En­dow­ment Act, 1973, ob­served that be­ing rec­og­nized as Sikh is not con­tin­gent upon these sur­names but rather on preach­ing Sikhism.

The pe­ti­tion had chal­lenged the re­sult of the elec­tions on the grounds of the in­clu­sion of non-Sikh vot­ers with­out their sur­names as ‘Singh’ and ‘Kaur’.

The sin­gle bench of Jus­tice Wasim Sadiq Nar­gal ob­served that “The con­tention of the pe­ti­tioner, which has been raised by the ap­pel­lant/​pe­ti­tioner herein be­fore the ap­pel­late au­thor­ity, is con­trary to the de­f­i­n­i­tion laid down in the Act of 1973, which is not ac­cept­able and the same can­not be sus­tain­able in the eyes of law. There are many peo­ple, who do not have ‘Sikh or Kaur’ as their sur­names, but still they are rec­og­nized as Sikh, as they preach Sikhism”.

This ob­ser­va­tion by the Judge that “There are many peo­ple, who do not have ‘Sikh or Kaur’ as their sur­names, but still they are rec­og­nized as Sikh, as they preach Sikhism,” is fraught with dan­ger­ous im­pli­ca­tions. There may be some in­di­vid­u­als who may not be us­ing these suf­fixes as per their per­sonal choice but that does not di­lute the Sikh iden­tity ex­plicit in the name of the ad­her­ents of the com­mu­nity.

This judge­ment has led to wide­spread crit­i­cism from var­i­ous Sikh or­ga­ni­za­tions. The Sikh Col­lec­tive con­venor Jag­mo­han Singh con­demned the judge­ment, stat­ing that it paves the way for non-Sikh vot­ers to par­take in Gur­d­wara com­mit­tee elec­tions, po­ten­tially caus­ing con­fu­sion and mis­chief. He pointed out that this rul­ing co­in­cides with the on­go­ing voter reg­is­tra­tion cam­paign for SGPC elec­tions and vowed to ap­peal against it.

“In the past, we have seen how in the name of Se­ha­jd­haris, many non-Sikh vot­ers man­aged to reg­is­ter them­selves as vot­ers in SGPC. Sim­i­larly, such mis­chief is be­ing seen in some voter lists of the Haryana Gur­d­wara Par­band­hak Com­mit­tee. We can­not be by­standers to this and we will chal­lenge this so­cially and legally,” he added.

Ad­vo­cate Har­jin­der Singh Dhami, Pres­i­dent of the Shi­ro­mani Gur­d­wara Par­band­hak Com­mit­tee, also strongly ob­jected to the High Court’s de­ci­sion. He em­pha­sized that Sikh iden­tity is rooted in the teach­ings of the Sikh Gu­rus and is not sub­ject to ju­di­cial scrutiny. Dhami high­lighted the court’s over­reach in com­ment­ing on re­li­gious con­duct, warn­ing of the po­ten­tial ero­sion of fun­da­men­tal re­li­gious prin­ci­ples.

All Par­ties Sikh Co­or­di­na­tion Com­mit­tee Chair­man Jag­mo­han Singh Raina re­ferred to the judge­ment as ‘in­ter­fer­ence’. He stressed that while the rul­ing aligns with the J&K Gur­d­wara En­dow­ment Act, it ne­glects ba­sic knowl­edge of Sikhism, chal­leng­ing the core tenets of the re­li­gion and pro­vok­ing re­li­gious sen­ti­ments.

The Sikh com­mu­nity views the High Court’s judge­ment as an un­nec­es­sary and un­jus­ti­fied com­men­tary on re­li­gious iden­tity, over­step­ping its ju­ris­dic­tion.

Re­li­gious lead­ers and le­gal ex­perts as­sert that the court could have dis­missed the pe­ti­tion based on pro­ce­dural de­lays, avoid­ing any ref­er­ence to the ques­tion of Sikh iden­tity in the judge­ment. This rul­ing has united Sikh or­ga­ni­za­tions in their stand against in­fringe­ment on their re­li­gious rights and prac­tices.