Re­cently, In­dian and Pak­istan me­dia and Sikh so­cial me­dia plat­forms were in­un­dated with news of threat by one So­hail Butt At­tari of La­hore to close the his­toric Gur­d­wara Sha­heed Ganj and open a mosque there. Bhupin­der Singh who vis­ited there last year places the sit­u­a­tion in per­spec­tive.  This his­toric shrine com­mem­o­rates mar­tyr ex­tra­or­di­naire Bhai Taru Singh, who was then barely 25 years old and got his scalp re­moved in­stead of cut­ting his un­shorn hair, set­ting a clas­sic ex­am­ple of “Sikhi ke­san swansa naal nibhe” -let one live the life of a Sikh in every breath with un­shorn hair. WSN ob­serves that the his­toric­ity of this Gur­d­wara and the end­less court bat­tles for it had many lessons for the Babri Masjid-Ram Jan­mab­hoomi dis­pute which were by­passed by the In­dian po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship and the In­dian ju­di­ciary.  WSN en­dorses the call of the au­thor and urges read­ers to par­tic­i­pate in the col­lec­tive Sikh diplo­matic ef­fort to drive home the Sikh view­point. 

MAULVI SO­HAIL BUTT AT­TARI, SAID TO BE CARE­TAKER OF the Dar­bar Hazrat Shah Kaku Chisti and who runs a shop in Landa Bazar, La­hore, along with some lo­cal ac­tivists, in a video posted on July 26, 2020, on Face­book, threat­ened to take over the Gur­d­wara Sha­heed Ganj Bhai Taru Singh and its ad­join­ing 4-5 canals of Gur­d­wara land, claim­ing that it ac­tu­ally be­longs to Mazar of Mus­lim prophet Hazrat Shah Kaku Chishti and ad­join­ing Masjid Sha­heed Ganj.

The Cur­rent Flash­point:
So­hail Butt At­tari who is an ac­tivist of Dawait-e-Is­lami (Be­raillwi) has threat­ened, “Pak­istan is an Is­lamic na­tion that be­longs to the Mus­lims.” In the video, he fur­ther adds, “Dur­ing the par­ti­tion of 1947 when Pak­istan was formed, some 20 lakh Mus­lims sac­ri­ficed their lives and now these Sikhs(us­ing deroga­tory lan­guage) are re­sort­ing to hooli­gan­ism. This is an Is­lamic na­tion, how can they do that. All his­tor­i­cal records -ad­min­is­tra­tive and his­tor­i­cal show that the site be­longs to us.”

Ap­par­ently, this is not hap­pen­ing all of a sud­den. In the Pak­istan news­pa­per Dawn, on 12 April 2020, Ma­jid Sheikh re­ported, “That rul­ing held the ground till 2012 when a group of Naulakha Bazaar shop­keep­ers led by a cer­tain So­hail Butt en­croached on the land of Gur­d­wara Bhai Taru Singh and the Sha­heed Ganj Gur­d­wara. They have taken over 90 per cent of the land by cur­tain­ing it off. The Sikh lead­ers of La­hore and Pak­istan have tried in vain to rea­son.”

Now af­ter the re­cent in­ci­dent, the Pak­istan Evac­uee Trust Prop­erty Board (ETBP) has lodged a protest to DIG Po­lice on July 27, 2020, re­gard­ing the ‘rep­re­hen­si­ble act” and named So­hail Butt in the com­plaint.

The is­sue is far from re­solved. So­hail Butt is at­tempt­ing to en­croach on the fa­mous Sikh his­tory land­mark and make it part of a Masjid that does not ex­ist. The pos­si­bil­ity of prime prop­erty in the old com­mer­cial dis­trict be­com­ing part of the com­mer­cial hub of Landa Bazar could not be ruled out con­sid­er­ing that So­hail Butt too has a shop in that mar­ket. How­ever, other mo­tives can­not be ruled out ei­ther which only time will tell.

His­tory of Gur­d­wara Sha­heed Ganj:
The Sha­heed Ganj com­plex in Naulakha Bazar, La­hore where the Gur­d­wara stands is as­so­ci­ated with Gur­d­wara Sha­heed Ganj Bhai Taru Singh (Sha­heedi Asthan -place) and Gur­d­wara Shahid Ganj Singh Singhn­ian. Gur­d­wara Shahidi Asthan is a his­toric gur­d­wara where Bhai Taru Singh Ji made the high­est sac­ri­fice when his scalp was re­moved for re­fus­ing to cut his hair on 1 July 1745. A sep­a­rate Gur­d­wara Singh Singhn­ian also stands at some dis­tance, com­mem­o­rat­ing the mar­tyr­dom of Sikh men, women and chil­dren, who were mar­tyred dur­ing Mughal rule in the 18th cen­tury.

Mir Mannu, the gov­er­nor of La­hore, dur­ing 1748-53 had raised a build­ing shaped like a mosque sit­ting where the Muftis -Mus­lim judges, gave their sum­mary judg­ments af­ter giv­ing their vic­tims a straight choice be­tween con­ver­sion to Is­lam and death. The mar­tyr­dom of Bhai Taru Singh and scores of other Sikhs is am­ple proof that, in their love of the Sikh way of life, the Sikhs chose the lat­ter.

Bhai Taru Singh -mar­tyr who sac­ri­ficed life at the al­tar of un­shorn hair

There have been in­ter­mit­tent at­tempts to as­so­ci­ate Sha­heed Ganj mosque (now non-ex­is­tent) and Dar­bar Hazrat Shah Kaku Chishti (Dar­gah -tomb of a saint) to Sha­heed Ganj. One is still to see doc­u­men­ta­tion on the sub­ject though there are YouTube videos and tweets mak­ing such a claim.

In his mag­num opus ‘Lost Her­itage -The Sikh Her­itage in Pak­istan’ au­thor Amardeep Singh makes men­tion of a case brought by Nur Muham­mad in 1850, claim­ing that a mosque once ex­isted at this place. The court ruled against his claims, but fresh ones were filed in 1854, 1893, 1927, 1935 and 1938 and each time they were dis­missed by the rel­e­vant courts. The Lon­don-based Privy Coun­cil, the high­est court of ap­peal dur­ing the British era also re­jected Mus­lim claim on May 2, 1940.

“A case was brought by Nur Muham­mad in 1850, claim­ing that a mosque once ex­isted at this place. The Lon­don-based Privy Coun­cil re­jected Mus­lim claim on May 2, 1940.”

Amardeep Singh, au­thor ‘Lost Her­itage -The Sikh Her­itage in Pak­istan’ 

In 1940 in the Bom­bay High Court, Sikhs won the case which ran as Masjid Shahidganj Mosque ver­sus Shi­ro­mani Gur­d­wara Par­band­hak Com­mit­tee. The ex­haus­tive judge­ment in the mat­ter is note­wor­thy.

Sig­nif­i­cantly, in 2004 Pak­istan gov­ern­ment had re-built the Gur­d­wara Sha­heed Singh Singhn­ian which com­mem­o­rates the mar­tyr­dom of Sikh men, women and chil­dren bru­tally killed by Mir Mannu, Ab­dal­i’s Gov­er­nor of La­hore province. To this day, Sikhs re­call the mar­tyr­dom, say­ing

ਮਨੂ ਸਾਡੀ ਦਾਤਰੀ। ਅਸੀਂ ਮਨੂ ਦੇ ਸੋਏ…
ਜਿਓਂ ਜਿਓ ਮਨੂ ਵੱਢਦਾ। ਅਸੀਂ ਦੂਨ ਸਵਾਏ ਹੋਏ …
Mannu is the sickle and we are his vic­tims
The more he kills, the more we grow!

Gur­d­wara Sha­heed Ganj in the pre­sent times:
Mus­lims of La­hore did not try con­vert­ing Gur­d­wara Shahidi Asthan into a mosque af­ter the mass ex­o­dus of Sikhs in 1947. Till re­cently, though a fewer num­ber of Sikhs visit the shrine, still the place was in­tact.

In 2010, a mob in­flicted dam­age on the Gur­d­wara build­ing, the im­pact of which is still vis­i­ble. Amardeep Singh in his clas­sic book on the Sikh her­itage in Pak­istan men­tions that dur­ing his visit he no­ticed the pres­ence of fresh rub­ble along the pe­riph­ery as an in­di­ca­tion of dam­age in re­cent years.

Dur­ing our fam­ily visit in March 2019, we too no­ticed that the shrine has sur­vived for over 72 years af­ter the par­ti­tion of the sub-con­ti­nent, de­spite the fact there are very few Sikhs visit these shrines. Still, the ETPB has done a com­mend­able job of up­keep of these his­tor­i­cal places.

“It can be said that the mosque was next to Gur­d­wara Singh Singhn­ian and had no re­la­tion to the Sha­heedi Asthan -the mar­tyr­dom place of Bhai Taru Singh.”

Dalvir Singh Pannu, au­thor -The Sikh Her­itage: Be­yond Bor­ders

We learnt then also that land grab­bers are ap­par­ently ex­ploit­ing the sit­u­a­tion for pe­cu­niary gains. Yet, the de­vo­tion, rev­er­ence, and ca­ma­raderie that we ex­pe­ri­enced there are firmly etched in our mem­o­ries.

Pak­istan-based his­to­rian and so­cial me­dia ac­tivist Shahid Shab­bir claims that the mosque struc­ture was next to the Gur­d­wara Bhai Taru Singh Sha­heedi Asthan. It is be­lieved that the mosque, which was al­legedly closed af­ter the British took over and Sikh com­mu­nity won a court case, was built dur­ing the reign of Mughal em­peror Shah Ja­han by one of his cooks and com­pleted in the early 1720s.

“Sub­se­quently, a pub­lic square and the area around the mosque were al­legedly used by the Mughals to per­se­cute and pun­ish the Sikhs and peo­ple from other com­mu­ni­ties who would refuse to con­vert. They were pub­licly ex­e­cuted. Taru Singh was also per­se­cuted here,” says he.

“It is be­lieved that the mosque, which was al­legedly closed af­ter the British took over and Sikh com­mu­nity won a court case, was built dur­ing the reign of Mughal em­peror Shah Ja­han by one of his cooks and com­pleted in the early 1720s.”

Shahid Shab­bir, his­to­rian and so­cial me­dia ac­tivist

Dalvir Singh Pannu, au­thor of ‘The Sikh Her­itage: Be­yond Bor­ders’ also be­lieves that the mosque was next to Gur­d­wara Singh Singhn­ian and had no re­la­tion to the Sha­heedi Asthan -the mar­tyr­dom place of Bhai Taru Singh.

As quoted in an In­dian Ex­press re­port, Pak­istan-based his­to­rian Im­ran William, who is work­ing ex­ten­sively on the Sikh legacy in Pak­istan, con­tra­dicts all of them. He says, “There is no doc­u­men­tary proof any­where that a mosque ex­isted at all. The five-arched struc­ture next to Bhai Taru Singh Sha­heedi Asthan was claimed to be a mosque but it was never proved. There is even a ques­tion mark on the his­tor­i­cal value of the Dar­bar Hazrat Kaku Chisti. It came up later in a struc­ture which was orig­i­nally a part of the Gur­d­wara.”

“There is no doc­u­men­tary proof any­where that a mosque ex­isted at all.”

Im­ran William, Pak­istan-based his­to­rian

A se­nior Sikh of­fi­cial from Pak­istan told The In­dian Ex­press, “There is no ar­chi­tec­tural ev­i­dence of any mosque now. The Dar­bar struc­ture is his­tor­i­cal but it was­n’t orig­i­nally a Dar­bar. It was part of the Gur­d­wara and has been con­verted into a Dar­bar only in the last few years. There used to be a thara -slab, at the spot of Gur­d­wara Singh Sing­ha­nia Singhn­ian where the Mughals ex­e­cuted Sikh women and chil­dren. If at all, the mosque was near it, the Gur­d­wara build­ing came up later but no one can pin­point where ex­actly the mosque was.”

It is his­tor­i­cally recorded that the Gur­d­wara came up in the 1760s af­ter the Bhangi Misl Sikh army con­quered La­hore and it is said that the prayers at the mosque were stopped af­ter the Sikhs took over. Later the Gur­d­wara, it is be­lieved, also re­ceived a large ja­gir (land to main­tain its ex­penses) dur­ing Ma­haraja Ran­jit Singh’s reign. It is, how­ever, un­clear when ex­actly the Dar­gah came up.

The Pres­i­dent of the Pak­istan Sikh Gur­d­wara Par­band­hak Com­mit­tee (PS­GPC) Sat­want Singh has said, “Sikhs around the world are sad to hear news about Gur­d­wara Sha­heed Bhai Taru Singh. The vi­sion of the Pak­istani gov­ern­ment, es­pe­cially of Prime Min­is­ter Im­ran Khan is to pro­mote peace and broth­er­hood. The in­ci­dent that hap­pened at Sha­heedi Asthan was an in­di­vid­ual act. There is a plot be­hind the gur­d­wara, which is the prop­erty of the Evac­uee Trust Prop­erty Board (ETBP). They plan to take that plot. This is wrong and can­not be tol­er­ated.”

“Sikhs around the world are sad to hear news about Gur­d­wara Sha­heed Bhai Taru Singh. This is wrong and can­not be tol­er­ated.”

Sat­want Singh, Pres­i­dent, Pak­istan Sikh Gur­d­wara Par­band­hak Com­mit­tee

“If we take ac­tion, it will dam­age Sikh-Mus­lim broth­er­hood. Nor will it be a so­lu­tion to the prob­lem. I have raised this is­sue with ETPB and other gov­ern­ment de­part­ments. We want the gov­ern­ment to over­come such prob­lems at its level,” ex­plained Sat­want Singh to the wor­ried Sikh world.

ETP­B’s sec­re­tary Sanaullah Khan has de­plored the at­tempt to usurp the his­toric Sikh shrine. The com­plaint filed by ETPB with the po­lice says that af­ter the suc­cess of the Kar­tarpur Cor­ri­dor pro­ject and the wide­spread ap­pre­ci­a­tion of Pak­istan for this unique ini­tia­tive at the in­ter­na­tional level, el­e­ments in­im­i­cal to the im­age of Pak­istan are hatch­ing con­spir­a­cies to slan­der the coun­try.

The ETPB has said that Suhail Butt and his col­leagues -Raza Butt, Umair, and oth­ers con­spired to pro­voke peo­ple against Gur­d­wara Taru Singh and tried to oc­cupy an empty plot next to it in the Landa Bazar, La­hore. He has dam­aged the im­age of Pak­istan at the in­ter­na­tional level and strict dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion must be taken.

“Af­ter the suc­cess of the Kar­tarpur Cor­ri­dor pro­ject and the wide­spread ap­pre­ci­a­tion of Pak­istan for this unique ini­tia­tive at the in­ter­na­tional level, el­e­ments in­im­i­cal to the im­age of Pak­istan are hatch­ing con­spir­a­cies to slan­der the coun­try.

EPTB com­plaint to DIG Po­lice

The In­dian me­dia and their coun­ter­parts on the other side of the Rad­cliffe line have at­tempted to mud­dle the is­sue link­ing it to a bi­ased cur­rent po­lit­i­cal nar­ra­tive. Po­lit­i­cally speak­ing, In­di­a’s Min­istry of Ex­ter­nal Af­fairs has ex­pressed con­cern at the de­vel­op­ment while Pak­istan For­eign Of­fice has con­demned the sin­is­ter at­tempt and re­it­er­ated that Pak­istan has an em­pa­thetic pol­icy to­wards mi­nori­ties.

The BBC Pun­jabi cor­re­spon­dent Ali Qazmi has re­ported from La­hore that an­other case was filed in the La­hore High Court. In 1980, the court, for want of ev­i­dence ruled in favour of the Sikh com­mu­nity. Since then, the prop­erty is with the ETPB.

‘Walk­ing with Nanak’ au­thor Ha­roon Khalid also af­firms that a case was filed in the La­hore High Court for re­in­state­ment of the mosque but the court ruled that, “since no one in liv­ing mem­ory could re­call of­fer­ing prayers at this mosque, it was hence a Gur­d­wara.”  It is also learnt that two more cases were filed in the La­hore High Court, but they too were dis­missed.

The Shi­ro­mani Gur­d­wara Par­band­hak Com­mit­tee (SGPC) and the Delhi Sikh Gur­d­wara Man­age­ment Com­mit­tee (DS­GMC) have de­plored the re­ported ac­tiv­i­ties and called for im­me­di­ate ac­tion to pro­tect the his­toric place.

Take Ac­tion:
Civil so­ci­ety and Sikhs world­wide must take im­me­di­ate ac­tion. In the in­ter­est of Sikh-Mus­lim affin­ity and peace in the re­gion of South Asia, which can be eas­ily be flared up with such is­sues, the soft-power of the Sikhs must en­gage ap­pro­pri­ate re­li­gious and po­lit­i­cal fo­rums for a per­ma­nent res­o­lu­tion of the is­sue. It is time for thor­oughly con­ceived diplo­matic in­ter­ven­tion for draw­ing the cur­tains to a three-cen­tury-old dis­pute, which though legally re­solved keeps sur­fac­ing time and again.

Are you con­cerned? Will you act? Take any or all of the fol­low­ing steps:

1.  Con­tinue to pray in your daily Ar­das -sup­pli­ca­tion to the Guru and the Almighty for the pro­tec­tion and preser­va­tion of the his­tor­i­cal and re­li­gious her­itage of the Sikhs in Pak­istan.

2.  Sikh pil­grims should make in­di­vid­ual and col­lec­tive ef­forts to reg­u­larly visit Gur­d­waras and his­tor­i­cal sites in Pak­istan.

3.  Write a po­lite and ac­cu­rate email to the ETPB protest­ing the step taken by Suhail Butt and com­pany, thank­ing them for their com­plaint and urg­ing them to fol­low up this to its log­i­cal con­clu­sion. The email ad­dress of ETPB is: info@etpb.gov.pk

4.  Write a gen­tle and to-the-point email or tweet to Janab Im­ran Khan -Prime Min­is­ter of Pak­istan, urg­ing him to en­sure that all ef­forts to elim­i­nate a fa­mous Sikh his­tor­i­cal marker, which is a source of in­spi­ra­tion to Sikhs, are thwarted by the gov­ern­ment of Pak­istan. His email: info@pmo.gov.pk Twit­ter:@PakPMO

5.  Write an email to the SGPC Pres­i­dent say­ing that a mere me­dia state­ment is not enough and that the SGPC must ap­pro­pri­ately take up the mat­ter with In­dia and Pak­istan. Email: info@sgpc.net

6.  Write po­lite let­ters to news­pa­pers in In­dia and Pak­istan quot­ing his­tor­i­cal and re­li­gious facts and shar­ing your an­guish and pain.

Ref­er­ences:

1. https://​in­stant.com.pk/​pak­istan/​203793/
2. https://​in­di­an­ex­press.com/​ar­ti­cle/​ex­plained/​at­tempt-to-con­vert-gur­d­wara-into-mosque-in-la­hore-how-a-pak­istan-mans-video-reignited-row-that-be­gan-in-1880s-sparked-mea-protest-6529890/
3. https://​www.glob­alvil­lage­space.com/​is-gur­d­wara-shahidi-asthan-be­ing-used-for-nar­ra­tive-war/
4. https://​www.dawn.com/​news/​1548469
5. Singh, Amardeep. Lost Her­itage: The Sikh Legacy in Pak­istan. The Na­gara Trust (2016)
6. Pannu, Dalvir S. The Sikh Her­itage: Be­yond Bor­ders

Hous­ton-based, spir­i­tu­ally-in­clined and much-trav­elled writer Bhupin­der Singh is alert to the re­li­gious and his­tor­i­cal de­vel­op­ments in the Sikh world and is pas­sion­ate about putting things in the right per­spec­tive. He has writ­ten many books and ar­ti­cles on Sikh his­tory. Bhupin­der Singh is a pro­lific writer and a reg­u­lar con­trib­u­tor to The World Sikh News.