Amandeep Sandhu - It's Becoming Clear That The SGPC No Longer Speaks For The Sikh Community
On 1 January 2016, in an unprecedented move, the SGPC sacked
four of the Panj Piyare: Satnam Singh, Tirlok Singh, Mangal Singh, and Satnam
Singh Khanda. The fifth Panj Piyara, Major Singh, had retired the day before.
However, by doing so, the prime religious institution of the Sikhs has turned
its back on the community.
The Sikh jaikara, or slogan, “Jo bole so
nihal, sat sri akal” is used in various situations. It means, “Whoever
utters the following shall be fulfilled: truth is timeless.” Two parties are
involved in the jaikara—the person uttering the first half, and the group
responding with the second. The larger the gathering, the louder is the
jaikara. When greeting others, Sikhs often evoke only the second part, one
after another. Sikhs give jaikaras to show reverence and respect in religious
settings; agreement and support in political settings; mobilize troops or
express fury when attacking an enemy; and sometimes, as evidenced on 28
December 2015 at the Gurdwara Jyoti Swarup at Fatehgarh Sahib in Punjab, as a
subversive tool to express displeasure, and silence an adversary.
It was the last day of the three-day Jor Mela, an annual
function to mark the martyrdom of the two younger sons of the tenth Sikh guru,
Gobind Singh, who were bricked alive by the Nawab of Sirhind, 310 years ago.
The occasion was the speech by Avtar Singh Makkar, the jathedar, or
the custodian, of the elected apex body of the Sikhs, the Shiromani Gurdwara
Prabandhak Committee (SGPC). The congregation kept shouting the jaikaras and
did not allow Makkar to complete his speech. It was a spontaneous defiance by
the community of its highest institutional structure. In deference to the congregation’s
anger, Giani Gurbachan Singh, the jathedar of the Akal Takht, one of the five
seats of power in Sikhism, decided to not address the congregation.
Unlike other religions, many of which are governed through
one central institution, the Sikh religion is organised along a three-tier
system, each of which acts as a check and balance on the others. The tiers
include the five takhts (seats), the SGPC, and the Sarbat Khalsa, or the
community plenary of the collective body of Sikhs. Since the community is
large, the Panj Piyare—the “beloved five”—are chosen to acts as its
representatives. The Panj Piyare are customarily nominated by the SGPC, and
their mandate is to carry out missionary work.
The public defiance at the Jor Mela shows that Sikhism, the
fifth largest religion in the world, is calling for reforms within its
religious institutions. The subversive application of the jaikara by the masses
in out-shouting Makkar comes from a long-felt need of the community to press
for reforms within its supreme religious institutions. The act conveyed that
the common people were not willing to be taken for granted any longer. It
stung.
In October 2015, the takht jathedars reversed their decision
to grant pardon to the Dera Sacha Sauda head Gurmit Ram Rahim, who had
allegedly dressed up as Guru Gobind Singh in 2007 and was accused of blasphemy.
The pardon, granted in September, was heavily criticised, and the jathedars
decided to reverse it. The Panj Piyare, who, as representatives of the
community, can have a say in such matters, summoned the jathedars. When the jathedars failed to
appear, the Panj Piyare directed the SGPC to replace them. The deadline they gave for this replacement was 2 January 2016.
On 1 January, in an unprecedented move, the SGPC sacked four of the Panj
Piyare: Satnam Singh, Tirlok Singh, Mangal Singh, and Satnam Singh Khanda. The
fifth Panj Piyara, Major Singh, had retired the day before. However, by doing
so, the prime religious institution of the Sikhs has turned its back on the
community.
The SGPC stated that the Panj Piyare are paid employees, and
the supreme Sikh body can terminate their services for violation of their jurisdiction and for issuing decrees to the
SGPC. While it is true that wherever a Sikh congregation meets they appoint
the Panj Piyaras, removing these nominees of the community after appointing
them is a volte-face by SGPC. It is a clear indication that, if questioned on
its functioning, the Sikh body will suppress the community with a heavy hand.
This behaviour of the SGPC is vastly different from the very
reason it came into existence. In the early twentieth century, through a
non-violent movement, the Sikhs freed their places of worship from the control
of the British-supported mahants, or managers. The SGPC’s formation
had been crucial to this development, and it also resulted in the Gurdwara Act
of 1925, which legally brought the control of the gurdwaras under the elected
body. At the time, Mohandas Gandhi had sent a telegram to the then SGPC leader
Baba Kharak Singh, that read, “First battle of freedom won. Congratulations.”
Over the last two decades, the Badal family, who have
continually been accused of nepotism and corruption, have significantly
strengthened their influence on the SGPC, much of whose membership is aligned
with the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), the Badals’ party. In 1999, just before the
tercentenary celebrations of the Sikh religion, Prakash Singh Badal, then and
current chief minister of Punjab, removed the SGPC’s longest tenured chief
Gurcharan Singh Tohra from his post. Tohra had held the post for 27 years. It
is an open secret that the SGPC’s leaders are chosen by infamous “parchis”
(chits) that arrive, sealed in envelopes, from Badal’s desk.
The SAD owes its
origins to the Singh Sabha movement of the late nineteenth century that began
as a movement to revive the teachings of the Sikh gurus. It seeks to represent
the Sikh community’s interests in the political arena, but has been largely
unsuccessful in doing so. In their failure to contain the people’s anger over
the recent issues of sacrilege of the holy texts, the subsequent arrests of
innocents, and the firing in Behbal Kalan, both the SAD and the SGPC have lost
their credibility with the people.
This betrayal of the community by its
institutional leadership is what led to public anger, which was exploited by the radical forces at the Sarbat Khalsa.
The blame lies with the Badals for both absolutely controlling, and not being
able to manage, the political and religious institutions of the Sikhs. In the
villages of Punjab, in public gatherings, people have begun to compare the
Badals to the British colonial powers.
In the face of such silencing, the only space where the
people can demonstrate their anguish is the ballot box. However, political
action in the state, too, is largely influenced by the Badals. In mid 2015,
boards forbidding political leaders belonging to the three main parties—the SAD,
the Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party—from entering the villages had come up,
but now parleys have begun for the Punjab elections, due to take place in
February 2017. The SAD is playing the field with a double-faced strategy
employing both father and son, Prakash Singh Badal and Sukhbir Badal.
While the
chief minister talks of amity and goodwill in the many Sadbhavna rallies the
party has organised in the state, Sukhbir Badal plays the panthic card— The
Congress, too, is unable to chart its independent campaign without toeing the
line of religious symbolism dictated by the SAD. In his rallies, the Congress
leader Amarinder Singh swears by the gutka, a small-sized religious
book of the Sikhs, pressed to his forehead. The AAP is yet to formally join the
fray. AAP leader and the Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal is slated to
address the annual Maghi Mela, a religiously significant gathering of the
Sikhs, at Muktsar on January 14.
For now, the sacking of the Panj Piyaras is a lost
opportunity for serious reform within the religion, a path that the Sikhs could
have shown to the world. In any case, the replacement of the jathedars sought
by the Panj Piyaras needs to be backed by deeper reforms to usher in a clear
distinction between religious and political affairs of the Sikh community. In
this politics of religious symbolism, competitive jaikaras and gutkas, the
political parties are flirting with the religious and communal nerve of Punjab,
ignoring the small state’s real issues: agrarian and industrial crises. To
tackle these, what Punjab really needs is a language beyond religious
symbolism.
http://www.caravanmagazine.in/vantage/sgpc-no-longer-speaks-for-the-sikh-communitysee also
