HSGPC demand about identity as much as politics

The Congress is believed to have included the demand for a separate gurdwara management body to win over the Sikh vote. According to the 2001 census, Sikhs account for about 5.54 per cent of the Haryana’s population.

What is also well known is that Haryana’s Sikh vote has traditionally been mobilised by the SAD(B) for Devi Lal and then his son Om Prakash Chautala’s party. After 1984, the anti-Congress vote headed in that direction even more. By all accounts, the 2005 Assembly elections — also the one in which the Congress manifesto included the demand for a separate gurdwara management body for Haryana — constituted a break in the story. According to a CSDS survey, 50 per cent of the Sikh vote in Haryana went to the Congress in 2004, and only 35 per cent to Chautala’s INLD.

But the Akalis are not holding their fire. They locked horns with the HSGPC (ad hoc) on the facts: in the SAD(B) version, from 2003-2008, the SGPC got Rs 14,63,29,449 from all the Haryana gurdwaras and spent Rs 27,88,79,000 in the state — nearly double the amount collected. They also emphasise the body’s ‘national’ character. “The SGPC represents the entire Sikh community,” says SGPC chief Avtar Singh Makkar.

They also blame the controversy on the Congress: “The Congress has a history of trying to weaken the  Akalis” says Parkash Singh Badal, Punjab Chief Minister. “Today it is a separate body for Haryana, tomorrow it could be separate bodies for the Majha, Doab, Malwa.” says Sukhbir Singh Badal, president of SAD(B).

They invoke a proud history — of the gurdwara reform movement that led to the SGPC’s, “the only body of its kind in India and the world”.   

This is a story of the growing centrality of the gurdwara in the community — the simple dharamsaal of the 16th and 17th centuries, which apart from being a religious centre, was a community hub and panchayatghar.

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