By any reckoning the Sarbat Khalsa convention in Amritsar has been an impressive success. Indeed, it could mark an important landmark in the history of Punjab and the Sikh community. The overwhelmingly Sikh audience was large, the conduct of all those participating in it dignified, and the message emanating from it sound and constructive. For all this, the organizers of the gathering deserve warm praise. A great deal has been said already, and more will doubtless be heard in days to come, about the Congress party’s support to, if not sponsorship of, the convention. But it can be nobody’s case that the Sikhs who travelled in large numbers from far and near to the venue of Sarbat Khalsa were forced to do so or did so because of the lure of subsidized or free transport. On the contrary, they did so despite opposition by the Akali Dal-SGPC leaders who, backed by the five head priests, tried hard to organize a boycott of the convention; it was in pursuance of this design that the highly respected Jathedar of Patna Sahib, Baba Man Singh, was sought physically to be prevented from going to Amritsar. Eventually, however, he as well as other leading sants of the Sikh faith, including Sant Narayan Singh Kaleranwale, took part in Sarbat Khalsa. This makes nonsense of all attempts to dub the convention a Congress show.
The central figure at Sarbat Khalsa was the Budha Dal Nihang chief, Baba Santa Singh, who has been spearheading the “kar seva” to repair and rebuild the Akal Takht, damaged as a result of the military action rendered unavoidable by Bhindranwale and his killer gangs. Not only did the huge congregation endorse the Baba’s decision to take the lead in this respect but also presented him a “saropa”, or robe of honour, for his signal service. This should be answer enough to those who have been trying to malign the “kar seva”, led by Baba Santa Singh, as some kind of “sarkar seva”. What is more, the convention’s plain-speaking about the ignominious role of the SGPC leaders in allowing the Golden Temple complex and other gurdwaras to be converted into fortresses of heavily armed terrorists, separatists, criminals, and proclaimed offenders helps to place squarely the responsibility for the desecration of the holy Sikh shrines where it really belongs. Whether the excommunication of the SGPC president, Mr GS Tohra, was the right thing to do is debatable, but it has to be viewed in the context of the fact that the game of excommunication was first started by the five head priests.
The voice of reason and sanity raised at the Amritsar convention – its warning to the Sikh masses against the cry of Khalistan being raised from foreign lands merits attention – should normally have evoked second thoughts and introspection among the Akali and SGPC leaders and the head priests who have become a front and a facade for the Akali-SGPC intransigence. But true to type these elements have chosen to stick to the path of confrontation. Their reaction to Sarbat Khalsa has been to convene a “world” conference of Sikhs next month. This only underscores the need not to have any truck with those unwilling to repudiate their separatist and extremist stance and certainly not to let the Sikh shrines return to the control of the SGPC in its present form. The Amritsar convention’s call for a suitable amendment of the Gurdwara Act therefore deserves the most serious consideration.
In fact, if this country’s commitment to secularism is to mean anything at all and the kind of tragedy into which Punjab has been plunged is to be prevented from being re-enacted elsewhere in similar or different contexts, it is imperative that the nexus between religion and politics be broken. This ought to have been done from the word go when this country opted to be a secular democracy. But under a mistaken notion of secularism the doctrine of equal respect by the state for all religions has been allowed to be exploited, cynically and on a steadily mounting scale, for unabashedly political purposes. It is absolutely essential that Sikh shrines, or holy places of other religions for that matter, are used only for religious purposes and the Akalis or other parties should conduct their politics from other non-religious premises. For this purpose not only the Gurdwara Act but also the laws on Hindu religious endowments and the Muslim Wakfs will need a close scrutiny and revision.