The war of the Jathedars

A face-off involving religious leaders seems set to discredit the Sikh theocratic establishment and also lead to a new climate of violence and intolerance in Punjab.

PRAVEEN SWAMI
in Chandigarh

ON Sunday, August 23, Paramjit Pannu stormed out of the West Broward gurdwara in Florida, United States, after demanding that worshippers sit on the floor for the ritual langar, or community meal, as they do in India, instead of being seated on chairs and gathering around tables for a buffet lunch. Later he returned to the session of the Florida Sikh Society with a handgun. Pannu fired nine rounds into the congregation, killing Gurtej Dhaliwal, a gas station owner who emigrated to the U.S. 14 years ago, and injuring two others. The last round of fire he saved for himself.

Pannu's bizarre act was the outcome of a bitter war within the Sikh religious establishment over the practice and content of the faith, and also reflected the depth of passions involved. In July, Akal Takht Jathedar Ranjit Singh excommunicated six Sikh leaders in Canada for having defied his edict banning the partaking of langar seated on chairs arranged around tables. The Jathedar's edict, along with his efforts to take control of the World Sikh Council (WSC), have brought him in conflict with other powerful religious figures, notably his immediate predecessor in office, Manjit Singh, the Jathedar of the Sri Keshgarh Sahib Gurdwara, another key seat of Sikh religious authority.

Politicians of the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), which leads the ruling coalition in Punjab, also stand divided on the issue, and the Punjabi newspaper Ajit, politically allied with Chief Minister Prakash Singh Badal, has come in for attack from far-right organisations. At the core of this battle are the complex interlaced politics of non-resident Indian (NRI) religious anxieties, the legacy of the Khalistan movement and the future content and direction of Sikh politics and communal identity.

PERHAPS fittingly, the langar dispute began in the gurdwara of Vancouver, in Canada's British Columbia province. Through the course of the Khalistan movement, fundamentalist Sikhs had taken control of most gurdwaras in the region, but elections held to their management bodies in September 1996 saw the far-right in full flight. The defeat was caused by the realisation that the Khalistan movement had little support in India and allegations of financial misappropriation and embezzlement by far-right managements in the name of a holy war. Figures like Tara Singh Hayer, editor of the influential Vancouver-based Punjabi newspaper Indo-Canadian Times, were instrumental in bringing about the ascendancy of the moderates. Despite a physical attack by pro-Khalistan lumpens which left him confined to a wheelchair, Hayer continued his campaign against religious fundamentalism and terrorism.

S. ARNEJA
Akal Takht Jathedhar Ranjit Singh

The moderate ascendancy provoked a right-wing backlash. Fundamentalists charged the new managements with apostasy for allowing the langar to be partaken sitting on benches. That this practice dated back to the early days of Sikh migration to North America in the last quarter of the 19th century, and had indeed continued without being questioned through the years of Khalistani control of Canadian gurdwaras, made it appear that it was the cynicism of the far-right that was mainly behind the langar controversy. But the conflict escalated. The dispute spread through British Columbia, to the affluent and well-known gurdwara at Surrey and on into the U.S. and the United Kingdom. In January 1997, a pro-Khalistan mob disrupted a gathering at the Vancouver gurdwara and began disrupting tables and benches placed there for the langar. Several people were injured in the violence that followed and the police were called in. Some persons were charged for their role in the violence and their trial is going on.

By coincidence or otherwise, Jathedar Ranjit Singh intervened at this stage. The hukamnama (edict) declaring langar partaken on chairs to be apostasy was issued on April 20. Ranjit Singh cited in his defence a 500-year-old tradition set in place by Guru Nanak, but several persons criticised the Jathedar. Moderate religious leaders in turn pointed to the cultural and historical factors that had shaped Sikh immigrant tradition in the West. Hayer, along with the president of the Surrey gurdwara, Balwant Singh Gill, president of the Vancouver Akali Sikh Society Rattan Singh, former head granthi (priest) Giani Harkirat Singh, Jarnail Singh of the Khalsa Diwan and its record secretary Kashmir Singh, were particularly critical of the decision.

The dissenters were promptly punished. On July 25, after the six persons refused to appear before the Akal Takht, Ranjit Singh declared them tankhaiya (apostates). Thus, all Sikhs were barred from business, social or marital contact with them. By extension, the purchase of Hayer's newspaper was deemed a religious offence.

Hayer, a veteran of battles against religious fundamentalism, was dismissive of the hukamnama. "We know how to fight the fundamentalists here," he said. Pointing out that Ranjit Singh had pronounced the decision with the consent of just two of the five heads of the key Sikh Takhts, the Indo-Canadian Times editor said that the Jathedar "wants once again that the fundamentalists capture gurdwaras and misuse offerings." But although a bitter debate on the issue continued among emigrant Sikhs in the West, conducted through means of e-mail and the Internet, besides violent showdowns in gurdwaras, notably at Abbotsford in British Colombia, the excommunication had no fallout in India. While some gurdwaras, particularly in urban areas, have allowed the elderly and the disabled to join the langar seated on chairs, it is not a general practice. Although Ranjit Singh had charged SAD and Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee (SGPC) leaders Sukhdev Singh Bhaur and Succha Singh Lagah with provoking the six persons to defy the Akal Takht, there was little State-level political froth.

That Jathedar Manjit Singh was less than delighted with the excommunication did not escape notice. Manjit Singh, who was the Acting Jathedar of the Akal Takht until Ranjit Singh completed serving a 14-year prison term for the murder of Nirankari sect leader Gurbachan Singh, has a distaste for the present Akal Takht Jathedar. Manjit Singh had driven the creation of the WSC in 1995 as an apex theological and political body for Sikhs throughout the world.

The battle for the control of the WSC began two months after Ranjit Singh took office in 1997. The Akal Takht Jathedar called a general body meeting of the organisation and formed a committee led by former Supreme Court Judge Kuldip Singh to amend the body's constitution. The result of the committee's findings was a temple coup that made Kuldip Singh chairman of the body in place of Manjit Singh, at a meeting attended by a dozen of the WSC's 90 General House members. Ranjit Singh fuelled the showdown by writing a strong letter to Manjit Singh, demanding that accounts for the WSC's funds be handed over to him.

The response was quick. Samsher Singh Maloya, an executive member of the WSC and the brother of one of the assassins of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, filed a suit against Kuldip Singh's appointment and the amendments to the organisation's rules. Maloya contended that the appointment violated laws regulating the working of registered bodies. Jaswant Singh Mann, who claims to be the sole legal secretary-general of the WSC, in turn proclaimed that handing over accounts to Ranjit Singh or Kuldip Singh would be illegal.

That a trust worth some Rs. 11 lakhs, and which is a self-proclaimed arbiter of a community's destiny, became a cause for litigation was not surprising, but the intensely public mode in which it was fought for was. Both Manjit Singh and the head of the Sri Damdama Sahib Takht, Giani Kewal Singh, boycotted a meeting of Jathedars called on August 18. The meeting had been called, among other things, to excommunicate Piara Singh Bhaniarawala, leader of a mystic sect, on charges of heresy. Neither Manjit Singh or Kewal Singh had any opposition to the Sikh orthodoxy's long-standing war on marginal sects, but their timing could not have been more pointed. The heads of the two Takhts outside Punjab do not normally attend meetings of the clergy, and the joint decisions of the three Takhts within the State have been seen as representing collective religious opinion. The boycott by the Damdama Sahib Takht and the Keshgarh Sahib Takht meant that Jathedar Ranjit Singh was now out on a limb: a limb, moreover, that the other Jathedars were busy sawing away.

Manjit Singh and Ranjit Singh were now joined in an escalating polemic, carried out through proxies and letters leaked to the press. Manjit Singh was charged with having secretly met Nirankari leader Gobind Singh in the offices of Ajit editor Brajinder Singh. Sikhs are forbidden from having any social contact with members of the Nirankari sect, under a 1978 hukamnama - the outcome of the fateful Baisakhi day carnage that year which heralded the rise of revanchist preacher Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale. Ranjit Singh, in turn, faced allegations that he was dictatorial, and unfit by education to occupy high religious office. Allegations of his links with pro-Khalistan figures, and criticism of his decision to accept an expensive car from a U.K.-based businessman, were also levelled. Although the SAD establishment attempted to maintain a discreet distance from the conflict, both Chief Minister Badal and SGPC president Gurcharan Singh Tohra were forced to initiate some form of rapprochement.

VINO JOHN
Jathedhar Manjit Singh.

What shape the conflict will take in the weeks to come is hard to predict. For the moment, Ranjit Singh has banned his rivals from the precincts of the Akal Takht, and continues to demand to see the WSC's accounts. Manjit Singh and Kewal Singh have said that the ban has no validity.

But the Jathedars have recognised in recent days that the controversy has served to discredit the theocratic establishment as a whole. Mediation through the SGPC is one option that has been suggested. The SGPC Act mandates that a Jathedar is merely an employee of the elected body and can be removed by it. This is an unlikely outcome, for Tohra has found the Jathedar a valuable ally in his political battle against the centrists grouped around Badal. Tohra has sought to appropriate the religious high ground, demanding of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Government that it compensate the SGPC for Rs. 1,000 crores for the supposed theft of treasures and artefacts during the 1984 Operation Bluestar. Badal is certain to be forced into competitive communal postures if the conflict intensifies.

Indeed, the heart of the crisis has been the SAD's inability to abandon its communal paradigm of politics and transform itself into a genuine regional formation. Both SAD centrists and right-wing leaders have at various times sought to exploit the Akal Takht's religious authority. Tohra, exonerated recently by Ranjit Singh of charges of consorting with Nirankaris, has used him to bludgeon opposition. At the time of the Jathedar's opposition, that consisted of gun-wielding terrorists who hijacked the platform of the Golden Temple. Now, the Akal Takht, the WSC and allied instruments such as the People's Commission on Punjab have been used to discredit the SAD centrists.

The consequence has been a climate of violence and intolerance. Brajinder Singh, whose pro-SAD newspaper has in the past condoned the honouring of terrorists and fundamentalists at the Akal Takht, is now witnessing the consequences of appeasing communalists. Copies of Ajit were burned after Brajinder Singh condemned the Akal Takht Jathedar, and the editor has been charged by far-right groups for his supposed connivance with Hindu fundamentalists. Although most Sikhs in Punjab have shown the good sense not to be associated with such enterprises, the fact remains that the terrain of political discourse is shifting from the secular to the spiritual. That this comes at a time when there are renewed signs of Khalistan terrorist activity breaking out can only add to the disquiet.

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