Playing with fire

The controversy over the 300-year celebrations of the Khalsa has taken a dangerous turn with the escalating row between the Punjab government and some Sikh priests threatening to create divisions in society. What started as a tussle for control of a major event on the Sikh calendar between two old warhorses, Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal and the president of the Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee SGPC, Gurcharan Singh Tohra, has now developed features of a struggle between temporal and spiritual authorities. This is most unfortunate and should have been avoided. Politics and religion overlapped and intermingled through the greater part of Sikh history. So it was always on the cards that the Khalsa celebrations would revive tensions. It goes without saying, therefore, that it is essential for political and religious leaders to cooperate rather than compete. The whole affair needs to be handled sensitively and with appropriate regard for the past and the future.

It is bad enough that firebreaksbetween political disputes and religious disputes are virtually nonexistent in Punjab even today. In that context it is disappointing to find some intellectuals supporting the Akal Takht stand which accused Badal, in effect, of interfering in religious affairs. Surely a government led by the Shiromani Akali Dal is well placed in terms of its wider social responsibilities and its resources to manage an ambitious event of this kind. No doubt it is important to have the counsel of religious leaders but it cannot be anyone8217;s case that the celebrations are a purely religious occasion.

Grave provocation would have been required for the SGPC to take the unprecedented decision to dismiss a jathedar of the Akal Takht. Bhai Ranjit Singh, who was 8220;suspended8221; on Wednesday, evidently invited this drastic step by the lengths he was prepared to go to deny the Badal government the right to conduct the celebrations. By not confining himself to spiritual matters, Ranjit Singh was playing with fire. This forced Badal,acting through the SGPC, to take severe action. The jathedar is charged with disturbing the harmony among Sikh religious leaders and of using intemperate language. The latter is undoubtedly a reference to an ultimatum sent to Badal a few days ago, in which Ranjit Singh demanded commitments in writing on the official agenda at the celebrations in April. The items the government was required to adopt were the kind of inflammatory demands that had brought so much misery to Punjab in the past. They include recognition of Sikhs as a separate quom and a separate personal law. He also gave warnings of violent conflict. Although unwavering in its intention to conduct the celebrations itself, the Badal government had been careful, up to this point, not to confront the Akal Takht. It chose instead to demonstrate the wide support it enjoyed among MPs and MLAs, other jathedars and the powerful SGPC, ten of whose 15 executive committee members back Badal. But all this made no impact on the jathedar, nor wereleaders like Tohra prepared to rein him in. One must hope good sense will prevail now and the confrontation brought to a quick end.