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Mangling the Religion
Sach Kanwal Singh
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How The Mini Parliament Of The Sikhs Has Been Hijacked By
Vested Interests. This Special Report takes a macro look at the
entire gamut of functioning of the SGPC and brings out what is
wrong. It argues for a thorough engagement at all levels to save
the institution from those manning it
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 You
want to recall the glorious period of contemporary Sikh history, try
the origins of the Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee (SGPC). A
child of the Gurdwara Reform Movement and an example of what
positive resistance and a return to the roots struggle can achieve,
the setting up of the SGPC is a lesson on how a minority can save
its identity, freedom and institutions with a simple tactic: just
plain honest sense of purpose and leadership.
You want to
study how not to run an institution, how institutionalizing
administration of the affairs of a minority can lead to worse ways
of control and muzzling of ideas, and how institutions that go
haywire can wreck even the most glorious of legacies, study the way
the SGPC is being run for the last few years. Pay particular
attention to who gets to call the shots and why, and how the men and
women tasked with managing its affairs are selected/elected, and you
would have a study in contrast.
One of the most
respected and widely accepted body of the Sikhs, basically a premier
Sikh gurdwara management panel but whose role over the years has far
outgrown its stated objectives, represents today a pathetic picture
of what a good institution could have been.
To just start
pointing out the aberrations, so far even the name Shiromani
Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee needs to be clarified. Legal records
of the SGPC itself are run in the name of a central board.
Elections to the
SGPC General House, comprising some 185 members, are conducted with
the help of a government panel called Gurdara Election Commission,
and so far only the Akali Dal has fought these elections on its
party symbol. For many years now, the party led by Parkash Singh
Badal and now his son Sukhbir Singh Badal, thanks to the clout it
enjoys in terms of political reach, money, muscle power and the
killer instinct, has been winning most seats.
 Such
is the cult of personality in the Akali Dal, and the same has
permeated to such an extent into the SGPC culture, that all major
decisions are almost a family matter for the Badals.
Elections to the
top office posts of the SGPC are organized every year, and members
of the general house elect the SGPC president and other office
bearers. By now, the Sikhs know well that basically the Badals
select a man, send a slip of paper in an envelope that is opened
right on the spot and a usual cry of Bole So Nihal follows. This
becomes the choice of the Panth.
It is
immediately followed by the chosen one thanking the Badal family
members, the SGPC members, the sangat and the Akal Purakh, very
often in that order.
It was no
different this time. It wasn't expected to be.
But the fact
that a Sikh organization in times of crisis for the community, and
with a budget of Rs 400 crores and hundreds of gurdwaras,
educational institutions, social forums, hospitals and inestimable
real estate resources, men and money power, simply sits on it all
and exploits the resources for the benefit of the Akali Dal and its
top brass, has been perturbing the Sikhs for a long time now.
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With Rs 400 crore budget, and wide cceptability as a
representative organisation of the Sikh community, the Shiromani
Gurdwara rabandhak Committee was custom-made to not just
represent but advance the religion, and take it through the
labyrinths of a discourse with modernity. Instead, the SGPC
today is a handmaiden of just one family, a bunch of
power-hungry people and is manned either by the irreligious or
the unscruplous. Complete lack of democracy and good governance
practices have now reduced it to real madhouse. No wonder, those
who man it take pride in calling it a Mini Parliament. In
reality, it is as badly run as the Indian Parliament.
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The challenges
facing the community are many, and tough. Apart from the daily
quibbles over Maryada, there have been partisan and bitter debates
on on the subject of Dasam Granth, All India Sikh Gurdwara Act,
status of Takht Sahibans, appointments of top clergy, issues of
resource distribution between Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh,
an increasingly widespread tendency at apostasy, the culture of
derawad, the issues of place of priestly class in Sikh society, the
role of missionary colleges and seminaris, and sundry other matters.
Stepping back
from such issues, there are larger issues of the Sikh community's
interface with the neo-liberal economy's realities that affects the
religion and its administration in interesting ways.
The issue of
virtually every village in Punjab having separate gurdwaras, the
prevalence of caste as a construct within the Sikh society, the
increasing distance between the Sikhs and the Dalits, the poor
handling of the trouble caused by Sirsa dera's fraudster sadh and
the affect it has been having on Sikh-Dalit relationship, are all
issues that one would have thought would come in for serious
discussion within the SGPC.
Instead, we are
treated every year to the sorry spectacle of the SGPC leaders
assuring us that the affairs of the religious body are being run
"exactly as per the wishes of the Akali Dal leadership." This year,
Avtar Singh Makkar, propped up as the leader of the urban Sikhs, a
non-Jat, and a spineless man to boot, educated us that the SGPC
affairs have always been decided by the Akali Dal leadership and
even asked the reporters, "Why do you have any doubt about it?" No
one had any doubts, but Makkar will go down in history as the man
who spoke the shameless truth with a straight face without
flinching.
That is a better
achievement than any Tohra.
The Diaspora
Sikhs will do well to just compare the functioning of the SGPC to
the way they have been trying to run their community affairs. The
new team at Surrey is working on how to involve youth and children
in community activities. It is seeing education as a way out. The
Fremont Sahib gurdwara team is working on how to pull out the
gurdwara administration from huge debts and integrate the sangat
into the day to day functioning of the community life in gurdwaras.
The El Sobrante gurdwara is paying attention to the growing role of
the community and thus trying to add infrastructure to the gurdwara
while trying to take along the local residents.
As all of this
happens, the SGPC takes a cautious decision that suits the Badals:
stay away from the Guruta Gaddi celebrations since the Badals' write
may not run all over. So it just makes a token presence, then walks
away. When the Sikhs the world over were fully immersed in
religiosity and a great chance was there to ensure that the issue of
education could be brought to the heart of all community debate, the
SGPC simply decides to squander it all away.
The continuous
effort to keep Bibi Jagir Kaur near the power center of the Akali
Dal and the SGPC is also questionable considering the charges she is
facing in courts of law, and her perceived role in the murky affair
of the death of her own daughter. Even Cherie Blair had to blush,
but not the Akali leadership.
 Mismanagement
and malfeasance in the SGPC has been spoken of ad nauseum by now.
Sometime back, there was renewed talk in some circles about
underlining the need for structural and organizational changes but
the machinations of the Badals have taken the force out of the sails
of such a revolution.
Now we have a
situation where the Akali Dal president Sukhbir Singh Badal
announces from any available stage that his party is fielding four
candidates for the Delhi Assembly elections and two of them will be
fighting on BJP symbols. "Earlier, all were fighting on BJP tickets
but this time two will fight on the Akali Dal's own symbol," he
said.
Next time, you
don't even have to make an allegation that the Akali Dal is in
league with the RSS. Just quote Sukhbir Singh Badal. The novices are
candid, though due to stunted intellectual growth.
Surely, if there
is nothing wrong with the Akali Dal candidates fighting on BJP
symbol, there can;t be much wrong with BJP candidates fighting on
Akali Dal symbol. What now is the hassle for any BJP member to fight
elections to the SGPC under an Akali Dal symbol?
And where goes
the authority of Akal Takht amid all this debate when we all know
who calls the shots? No one family, no matter how powerful, can
appropriate to itself the entire decision making for the community.
It is time the community talks back, reacts back, and takes its
affairs into its own hands. Otherwise “Koorr Phire Pardhan Ve Lalo”.
One of the most
definitive ways in which the lack of democracy and accountability
gets underlined is the way the budget making exercise of the SGPC
takes place. The Rs 400 crore budget is transcribed in four thick
volumes, made almost unreadable thanks to the talent of the drafting
team. Then it is presented before the general house and in less than
a minute, someone belts out the war cry of "Bole So Nihal." As "Sat
Sri Akal" echoes around the Teja Singh Samundri Hall, the budget is
declared passed.
How would have
the mahant system been worse than this?
When was the
last time you heard a discussion in the SGPC about how to cleanse
the system, how to formulate norms about who can be a member, how to
end politicization of the religious affairs body? Or how to make
budgeting procedures more transparent by opening ways of reviewing
and auditing of the budget?
The Sikh Nation
must get its act together to pull the SGPC from the morass it has
slipped into. Every gurdwara, every forum of the Sikhs should be
debating the issue in its weekly gatherings. We need seminars,
workshops, debates on how to save the SGPC. It is not about the
Badals or the Makkars, it is about us.
26 November
2008
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