CHANDIGARH: The Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) chief, Gurcharan Singh Tohra, on Feb.13 called upon Writers, journalists and intellectuals to raise their voice against the government’s move to scrap the Gurdwara Act.
Speaking at a function organized M Connection with the release of Ajit Singh Sarhadi’s book Punjabi Subedi Gatha” at the Sector to Government Museum and Ant Gallery here, the SGPC chief maintained that every Congress Prime Minister and Chief Minister (of Punjab) has talked about scrapping the Act at one Stage or the others.
These political leaders, he said, were perhaps not aware of the historic perspective of the Act. The Sikhs at the time of partition sided with India because of the Gurdwara Act which they had got from the British rulers after a lot of Struggle. The Sikhs left behind more than 174 of their historic shrines and suffered huge losses, economically and otherwise, at the time of the partition.
The Act was unique in the sense that only an elected body managed affairs of Sikh shrines in the country. There was no such provision elsewhere, he said.
After the partition on persistent demands of the Sikhs, the government introduced legislation in Parliament and passed an Act for the management of gurdwaras in Delhi. The act stipulated that elections were to be held every four years.
“But no elections have been held there since 1980,” he said.
Tohra also assailed a section of the society in Punjab which was still not prepared to accept Punjabi and Punjabi at. “It was this section which was responsible for the present turmoil. In the south there was strong regionalism. For example regionalism in Madras was above nationalism, The Sikhs have always been great nationalists, and they have maintained their independent identity and want their culture, language and allegiance to the land to be preserved. While on the other hand, the government was Out 10 destroy these characteristics and paint Sikhs as secessionists,” he said.
He said that the SGPC would work on revival of the Sikh reference library which was destroyed during Operation Bluestar. The SGPC would also organize a function to felicitate Ajit Singh Sarhadi, a scholar, historian and legal luminary, who had done pioneer work on the Punjabi Suba movement.
Barjinder Singh Hamdard, Managing Editor, Ajit, said that AjitSingh Sarhadi has written the history of Punjabi Suba by remaining an active character in the movement. His book provided not only an insight into Sikh history but was also an excellent document.
Harbhajan Halwarvi, Editor, Punjabi Tribune, said that the book ‘was useful in the sense that it not only talked about the historical perspective of the Punjab problem but “gives us food for thought for the problems to come up in the coming times.”
Manjit Singh Calcutta, Surinder Singh Virdi, Man Singh, Rawel Singh, all trustees of the daily Ajit and Dr.Attar Singh were among the other speakers,
Ajit Singh Sarhadi said that the Spirit of sacrifice had made the Sikhs and the Panth strong.
Article extracted from this publication >> February 19, 1993
