Chandigarh: Last Friday, senior Akali Dal leader Bibi Jagir Kaur became president of the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee for the fourth time, signalling that the Shiromani Akali Dal, which is completing 100 years of existence on 14 December, is gearing up for its most challenging year.
The SGPC too is 100 years old, having been formed a month before the SAD, and controls and regulates the functioning of a majority of historical gurdwaras in Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh. Kaur, a staunch loyalist of the Badal family that runs the SAD, is someone the party needs to wade through the SGPC elections expected to be held next year, followed by the Punjab assembly elections early in 2022.
The SGPC elections are normally held every five years, and Sikhs vote to elect 170 members of the committee. These members then elect a president every year at its annual general meeting, which is generally held in the last week of November.
However, SGPC elections were last held in 2011, and the elected members have stayed on because a litigation regarding voting rights to Sehajdhari Sikhs was pending, first in the high court and then in the Supreme Court.
Since a majority of SGPC members owe their allegiance to the SAD, Kaur breezed through, polling 122 of the 143 votes cast. She replaces Gobind Singh Longowal, who was SGPC chief for three consecutive years.
When Kaur was first elected as the SGPC chief in 2000, she was the first woman to have ever held the post. Kaur has been the head of the SAD’s ‘Istri’ (women’s) wing for several years now.
However, Kaur has not been far from controversy over the last 20 years either — she was an accused in the case of forcible abortion and abduction of her daughter, who had died under mysterious circumstances in April 2000, and was only acquitted by the Punjab and Haryana High Court in November 2018.
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2021 SGPC elections crucial for SAD
In October, the Centre approved the appointment of Justice S.S. Saron (retd) as the chief commissioner for gurdwara elections, paving the way for the SGPC elections to be held in 2021. Justice Saron was appointed just days after the SAD broke away from the ruling BJP-led NDA over the issue of the farmer protests against the Narendra Modi government’s new agriculture laws, which was viewed as the first sign of bad blood between the decades-old allies.
The process of the revision of the electoral rolls is expected to begin soon and the elections will be held next year.
For the SAD, the SGPC elections will be anything but a cakewalk. The party imploded in October 2017, and its breakaway factions have been actively garnering support to corner the Badals and other leaders of the parent party. The factions include, among others, Ranjit Singh Brahmpura’s Akali Dal (Taksali), and the SAD (Democratic) floated by expelled Rajya Sabha MP Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa and his MLA son Parminder Singh Dhindsa this year.
Early in November, SAD (Taksali) and SAD (Democratic) joined hands to form a Panthic Front, which also includes Bhai Ranjit Singh, former head (jathedar) of the highest temporal seat of Sikhism, the Akal Takht; Sant Samaj founder Baba Sarabjot Singh Bedi; and former Punjab assembly speaker Ravi Inder Singh, who heads his own Akali faction, SAD (1920).
The Panthic Front aims to “free” the SGPC from the grip of the Badals’ SAD, and is focusing entirely on these elections.
SAD draws power from SGPC
The SGPC elections are now being called a “preliminary test” for the SAD before the 2022 elections, and the stakes are high for the party.
“For the panthic section of Punjab’s population, the Akali Dal that controls the SGPC is the true Akali Dal. And if the newly formed Panthic Front replaces the SAD, the panthic vote bank of the SAD for the 2022 assembly polls will be eroded too,” said Prof. Sarchand Singh, an expert on Sikh culture and tradition.
“But history has shown that the SAD has faced tougher challenges than the Panthic Front in several SGPC elections, and yet retained its hold,” he said.
Yet, there is a feeling among SAD leaders that they cannot afford to let go of their control over the SGPC, because these elections could have a direct bearing on the 2022 assembly polls.
Whenever the Akali Dal has been out of power, the SGPC has given it a powerful tool, at least on religious matters. The SGPC stole a march over Captain Amarinder Singh’s Congress government last year when it organised the inauguration of the Kartarpur Corridor with Pakistan and invited PM Modi to open it to the public.
“SGPC and the Akal Takht, which normally work in tandem, are a force to reckon with among the Sikhs, and no one can ignore or belittle their significance in political matters as well. A chief minister could be of any party but he has to bow before these institutions. So, when SAD controls the SGPC, it is actually ensuring its own abiding power,” said a member of the Panthic Front who didn’t want to be identified.
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Jagir Kaur the woman for the job
Akali Dal sources said the mild-mannered Longowal would not have been able to take on the panthic forces building up in the state in the run-up to the SGPC elections. Many in the party believe that under Longowal, the SGPC weakened as an institution, almost reflecting the weakening of the Akali Dal since the 2017 assembly polls when it lost power after 10 years.
The recent controversy regarding the missing saroops of the Guru Granth Sahib from the printing department of the SGPC, for instance, had impacted the glory of the SGPC.
Bibi Jagir Kaur, the Akali Dal believes, can hold her own when faced with trouble. During her first stint as SGPC chief in 2000, she was pitted against then-Akal Takht jathedar Puran Singh over the issue of the Nanakshahi calendar. Despite Puran Singh issuing an edict excommunicating her, she fought back and succeeded in getting him removed as the jathedar.
As SGPC president, Kaur also tried unsuccessfully to change the century-old tradition that does not allow women to perform kirtan at the Golden Temple in Amritsar.
“Kaur has the support of the liberal missionary Sikh members, as opposed to the taksali or more conservative members. But she has been told by the Akalis that she has to work strictly within the tenets of the code of conduct (rahat maryada) and not experiment with age-old traditions,” said a senior Akali leader who also refused to be named.
“Jagir Kaur is forceful in her demeanour and knows how to get her way. She is strong-willed, so she can carry out the most difficult tasks. She is someone who can stick her neck out for the party,” the leader added.
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