MELBOURNE: Give a Sikh three guesses on where the largest gurdwara in the world is located and he would probably start off with Amritsar, move on to the UK and wind up with Canada. Melbourne in Australia would be a most unlikely guess, but as it happens the right one, at least by one way of measuring sizes of the dimensions of the main prayer hall.
Melbourne’s northeastern suburb of Black bur is home to a Gurdwara with what the company that set it up Gurdwara Melbourne claims is the largest prayer hall. The gurdwara as the Sikhs call it, was completed in March this year.
More renowned gurdwaras like the Harmander Sahib in Amritsar have much larger complexes, Baldev S. Sangha, who retired as company secretary in March, admitted, but insisted that no other gurdwaras had as large a prayer hall, the operative part of the temple which houses the holy ‘book. The prayer hall in its present form, reduced by a partition, measures roughly 140 feet by 70 feet and can comfortably seat2,000 people, Sangha said. This can easily be extended by ‘at least” 200 feet by 70 feet simply by removing the partition, he added, if the management decided not to stick to a rectangular format, it could be converted into an even larger I shaped hall.
The gurdwara cost about $1.5 million to build, according to Sangha though some of this amount, around ‘$300400,000, came in the form of free gifts of material and voluntary Labour from the Sikh community.
The job of setting up the Gurdwara started in 1993. It essentially, involved refurbishing an existing building on White Horse Road brought from Australia Post. Part of the money to pay for the new temple came from selling an older one in Ferntree Gully.
Sangha acknowledged that the idea of selling a place of worship would be ‘outrageous in India, the land from which the Sikhs originate, but pointed out that this was because most gurdwaras in India had a historical significance and in many cases were associated with one of the gurus of the faith.
The gurdwara in Ferntree Gully, on the other hand, had itself been set up by refurbishing what was earlier a Presbyterian church.
Soon after the new gurdwara in Black bum was set up, Sangha said, the company had been offered $3.5 million for the place by another church group. However, Sangha added, “We have no intention of selling the place,”
The Melbourne area has about 5,000 of the roughly 16,000 Sikhs in Australia and the community did not need to be asked” as it eagerly looked forward to meeting the cost of the project, Sangha said.
Most of Melbourne’s Sikhs are professionals, traders and industrial workers.
Article extracted from this publication >> June 23, 1995
