Feb 8, 1999

The Akal Takht jathedar's directive has added fuel to the ongoing Badal-Tohra row and cast a shadow over the Khalsa tercentenary celebrations.

By Ramesh Vinayak

For several months now, the running feud between friends-turned-foes Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal and Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee (SGPC) President G.S. Tohra has grabbed public attention. A third element was introduced in the Sikh political drama with Bhai Ranjit Singh, the mercurial jathedar of the Akal Takht, issuing a religious directive on January 25. The tussle among the Akali stalwarts threatens to snowball into a full-fledged battle for control of the Khalsa tercentenary celebrations beginning April 13.

In a pre-emptive strike against the Badal camp's moves to dislodge him, Ranjit cracked the whip on two fronts. Charging two of Badal's key supporters -- Manjit Singh, high priest of Keshgarh Sahib, and Barjinder Singh Hamdard, MP and editor of leading Punjabi daily Ajit -- with religious misconduct, he asked them to appear before the Akal Takht on February 11. Next, he sought an explanation from 131 pro-Badal SGPC members who had challenged his controversial hukamnama (edict) ordering truce between the warring factions. Coming as it did from the highest seat of Sikh prayer and politics, Ranjit's move has flummoxed the ruling faction.

For Manjit and Hamdard, defying the Takht summons would mean excommunication from the Sikh Panth. Already banished from the clergy's meetings since his spat with Ranjit four months ago, Manjit incurred the wrath of his wrath bete noire for sharing the dais in the US with those who had defied the Takht's edict on the langar issue. A bitter critic of Ranjit, Hamdard provoked the jathedar by publishing excerpts in his newspaper from a banned book containing blasphemous writings against the Sikh gurus.

With the clergy now clearly divided along political lines, the Badal-Tohra row threatens to derail the tercentenary show. "The jathedar's antics smack of politics and has set the stage for a confrontation," says state Finance Minister Kanwaljit Singh. Ironically, far from bringing about a truce between the warring Akali factions, Ranjit's December 31 edict -- seen as a reprieve for a beleaguered Tohra -- fuelled the hostilities. The Badal camp, 131-strong in the 175-member SGPC, orchestrated a tirade to seek Tohra's resignation from the SGPP and force Ranjit to withdraw the edict. But Ranjit held that the edict was "irrevocable" -- a stance that found support from the Tohra camp and the Sikh lobby abroad.

Evidently, the Badal camp's aggression against the jathedar has boomeranged. Ranjit's move, besides serving as a warning to those plotting to dethrone him, has startled the pro-Badal SGPC members. Several of them could dissociate themselves from the controversial appeal -- as 30-odd have already done -- lest they incur the Takht's wrath. Such an eventuality is likely to pour cold water on Badal's game plan to upstage Tohra.

By asking Manjit to face charges of misappropriation of donations, the jathedar has put a question mark on the credibility of the high priest of Keshgarh Sahib, which would be the hub of all Khalsa celebrations. Manjit, as Badal's man Friday, was given an important place in the entire state-sponsored tercentenary show while Ranjit was kept out. Defiance of the jathedar's directive would invite excommunication and a forced appearance before the Takht would earn the high priest a "religious punishment" -- a situation unprecedented in Sikh history. "The current wrangling may create lot of bad blood in the Panth," says scholar Kharak Singh of the Institute of Sikh Studies.

Not surprisingly, while Tohra is interpreting the jathedar's edicts as "divine", the Badal camp argues that the Akal Takht, and not the jathedar, is supreme. Having appropriated the tercentenary celebrations, Badal will have to cross swords with an Akal Takht chief intent on emerging as a key player in the show. Pitting Badal against the jathedar is the centrepiece of the Tohra camp's strategy to portray him as "anti-Akal Takht" and "anti-Panth" to hit him politically. Buoyed by the chastening of the pro-Badal members by the Takht, Tohra has called a meeting of the SPGC executive on February 15 to take Badal head on. But before that, Ranjit has called a meeting of all Sikh religious bodies on February 2 where Badal could well be upstaged.

Clearly, the ongoing Sikh religio-political drama is going to take several more twists and turns.

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