Sikkim High Court did not take up the mat­ter to­day and the case for pos­ses­sion of the his­toric Sikkim Gur­d­wara Gu­rudong­mar has been ad­journed to 13 June, 2018, while there seems to be an un­writ­ten em­bargo to vis­its of Sikh pil­grims by the lo­cal Bud­dhist pop­u­la­tion at Lachen.

As the pre­sid­ing judge was on leave, there were no pro­ceed­ings in the case to­day in the Sikkim High Court and the sta­tus quo at the Gur­d­wara Gu­rudong­mar or­dered by the Supreme Court of In­dia on 30 Au­gust 2017 con­tin­ues till the case is taken up again on 13 June later this year. 

The Singh Sabha Silig­uri, Mum­bai-based ac­tivist lawyer Am­rit­pal Singh Khalsa are pe­ti­tion­ers and Delhi-based so­cial ac­tivist Ajmer Singh Rand­hawa is an in­ter­venor in the case. Jagdip Singh from Singh Sabha Silig­uri, Chaman Singh, Har­jit Singh and Satin­der Singh from DS­GMC and oth­ers from SGPC along­with pe­ti­tioner lawyer Am­rit­pal Singh Khalsa and Ajmer Singh Rand­hawa were pre­sent in court to­day when the mat­ter was to be taken up at the Sikkim High Court. 

How­ever re­ports sug­gest that though there is an un­writ­ten em­bargo on the en­try of Sikhs into the area near the Gur­d­wara and though the premises have been sealed, Bud­dhist Lamas con­tinue to in­habit the re­gion and have made some makeshift shops, ad­ja­cent to the Gur­d­wara Sahib in vi­o­la­tion of the or­ders of the Supreme Court.

Sig­nif­i­cantly, though the DS­GMC and SGPC have been send­ing del­e­ga­tions at var­i­ous court pro­ceed­ings, for un­clear rea­sons, both the bod­ies have not joined the case ei­ther as pe­ti­tion­ers or in­ter­venors. Speak­ing to the me­dia, DS­GMC Pres­i­dent Man­jit Singh G.K. has said, “The Sikkim gov­ern­ment is in­ten­tion­ally try­ing to de­stroy the his­tory of Guru Nanak’s visit to Gur­d­wara Gu­rudong­mar Sahib and Sikhs will never tol­er­ate this.” 

Though the mat­ter is of se­ri­ous con­cern, a high-level del­e­ga­tion of the SGPC or DS­GMC has not both­ered to take the is­sue po­lit­i­cally with the state gov­ern­ment or the Union gov­ern­ment. Only lately Mem­ber Par­lia­ment Har­sim­rat Kaur Badal is said to have writ­ten a mis­sive to PM Naren­dra Modi on the sub­ject and sought his in­ter­ven­tion.

It is im­por­tant to men­tion that Union Min­is­ter S. S. Ahluwalia, who rep­re­sents the Dar­jeel­ing con­stituency seems to be help­less in the is­sue. Nei­ther on his own vo­li­tion has he at­tempted to take up the mat­ter nor has any­one ap­proached him.

“The Sikkim gov­ern­ment is in­ten­tion­ally try­ing to de­stroy the his­tory of Guru Nanak’s visit to Gur­d­wara Gu­rudong­mar Sahib and Sikhs will never tol­er­ate this.”

DS­GMC Pres­i­dent Man­jit Singh G.K.

The sit­u­a­tion on the ground, un­der the in­flu­ence of a sec­tion of the Bud­dhists seems to be de­te­ri­o­rat­ing. In Oc­to­ber 2017, when lawyer Am­rit­pal Singh Khalsa at­tempted to visit the Gur­d­wara Sahib precincts, with full per­mis­sion of the state au­thor­i­ties, that too af­ter seek­ing an or­der for the same from the Sikkim High Court. When he reached Lachen -the main halt point be­fore he would go fur­ther, his dri­ver was bru­tally beaten up by the lo­cals for “fer­ry­ing Sikhs to the dis­puted site” and the lawyer was threat­ened.  How­ever the next day, the po­lice pro­vided se­cu­rity to the lawyer and he vis­ited the Gur­d­wara Sahib to make an on-the-spot study of the place. 

 If you like our sto­ries, do fol­low WSN on Face­book.

Speak­ing ex­clu­sively to WSN, Am­rit­pal Singh Khalsa said, “It is a long drawn bat­tle and Sikhs have to buck up and do­ing their home­work well.”