A Window To Perceptive Journalism

Return to the word,
the swords can wait

S P Singh

To dismiss Sardar Simranjit Singh Mann's and his supporters' clash with the armed men of the SGPC's task force as a scuffle over a minor ego issue about participation in the festivities of 500th birth anniversary of sage Baba Budha Ji will be rank irresponsible understanding of political dynamics in Punjab. To excessively focus on it as part of the continued attempts by Mann to make the point about SGPC being way too political and acting almost as a wing of the Prakash Singh Badal-led Akali Dal will be stating the obvious.

The malaise that runs is deeper than this, dangerous than it seems, and vicious than the flying turbans and the unsheathed swords that flashed at Kathunangal.

It is time for the Sikh community to hold back the knee jerk reactions to such a shameful incident, rather a series of such incidents, and to step back and look at the larger picture.

The very functioning of the cash-rich democratically-muzzled premier Sikh shrine management institution of SGPC needs a thorough re-look. The process had started happening when the late Gurcharan Singh Tohra had parted ways with Badal and the intricate web of corrupt practices in the SGPC had started to come undone. But that process stopped due to good political management by the astute Badal.

Budget of over Rs 200 crores is passed by the SGPC general house in about 2-3 minutes. The Bole-So-Nihal sloganeering takes slightly longer. The SGPC presidents routinely tumble out of envelopes sent by a political leader sitting a few hundred yards away in the circuit house of Amritsar. Published budgets of SGPC are a joke but make for bad humor.

Hopes lay in the institution of supreme temporal authority of Akal Takht, but the persons holding such positions are chosen in ways most undemocratic. Once they are ensconced, they become prisoners of political powers who put them there. Great institutions are often headed by people whose loyalties are split between the Akal Purakh and a political master, the latter often having the last word.

Even though these all are the ways of the Waheguru, the Sikh community must act in ways so that it can face the Waheguru. We will, each one of us will, be held accountable to what we did to pull back the situation from the brink. And mind you dear reader, we have reached the brink. Before blood spills in the parikarma of a gurdwara some day, before more Sikh leaders lose their turbans, before more people call more people an agent of the Congress, let us devise ways and means of engaging the other in a debate.

The rules of the game have changed since medieval times. Little in the world is accomplished by marching into a gathering with the intention of making a point forcibly, no matter how valid the point. True that Sardar Mann has been able to get the community focus fixed onto a serious problem of total mismanagement of SGPC funds and Akali Dal's muzzling control over community resources besides the pygmy statures of religious leadership, but from now on, let the Sikhs learn from the ways in which the Sikh diaspora is trying to make the larger world understand who we are.

Unsheathed swords convey far less than a well argued critique in a roomful of intelligent people worried about the community's future and its image. Mr Mann and his ilk, if they are seriously worried, must not insist in educating Badal and the task force men. There is a wider community which will respond to concerns expressed in better ways than barging into Badal's rallies held under the garb of SGPC functions.

Follow the Guru's ways. Baba Budha ji is intimately connected with the highest form of the written word -- the Guru Granth Sahib. True tribute should be in the form of our commitment to the resolve that we will continue to be engaged with the written word. We give you our word that success lies in that direction for all, even for Mr Mann. Swords can wait. ■ 

November 16, 2006

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