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Tell sangat how money was used, judge tells
Livingston gurdwara
WSN Bureau

LIVINGSTON: The controversy over building of a community centre style place within the gurdwara premises and allowing alcohol and dancing these continues to be a long drawn out one and now a judge has ruled that the gurdwara leadership must let the sangat review the financial records for nearly a decade.

For Mohani Thiara of Livingston and about 50 other sangat members, this was an almost total victory. They had sued the Peach Street gurdwara in December asking they wanted to see how the sangat’s money was being spent. The issue was fuelled by plans of the Gurdwara’s board to build a multimillion-dollar community center adjacent to the place where the Guru Granth Sahib is installed. What raised the ire of the sangat was the fact that the gurdwara authorities planned to allow dancing, meat and alcohol, saying the facility was not integral to the gurdwara and will fetch money.

The project did not move forward, though a vacant spot for it remains behind the gurdwara.

In the lawsuit, Thiara and other Sikhs demanded financial statements, board of directors’ meeting minutes and membership lists, the last of which collides with constitutional protections. Merced County Superior Court Judge Ronald Hansen ruled on Friday that the membership lists requested will remain confidential because of the constitutional right to freely associate. Releasing them could infringe on that, as well as the right to privacy, he said.

Also, the court would have to decide who’s a member, which mixes gurdwara and state matters. “It would be inappropriate,” Hansen noted. “This court cannot go there.”

However, the financial records beginning in 2000 and meeting minutes from the gurdwara’s founding in 1981 can be released with certain provisions. The gurdwara leadership was also directed to give the records to Mark Cohen, the sangat’s Fremont-based attorney. The attorney will let his clients review them but they won’t be allowed to make copies. Any auditor must follow the privacy guidelines as well or be held in contempt of court, Hansen said. “We will be bending over backwards to be discreet,” he was quoted in a media report after the hearing. Also, any discussions at meetings that deal with religious issues, such as marriages and other ceremonies, must be blacked out for privacy.

Gurdwara leadership’s attorney Jakrun Sodhi, based in Modesto, argued in court that the incomplete bylaws filed with the State Franchise Board nearly 30 years ago were never adopted and that the gurdwara has no members, only a following of Sikhs.

The gurdwara leadership of course continues to maintain that it was in the right and nothing has been done inappropriately.

The way the entire row has gone on underlines the importance for the Sikh community to frame better, possible universal, bylaws for gurdwara management and evolve a good working core model of gurdwara budgeting.

12 March 2008
 

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