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SGPC submits new affidavit, but
Full Bench, DSGMC counsel clash on key issue
Mansukh Kaur/WSN Bureau
 CHANDIGARH:
Even as the SGPC on Friday submitted a new affidavit in the Punjab
and Haryana High Court, rectifying the blunders made in an earlier
affidavit while defining the term ‘Sehajdhari Sikh’, verbal
interjections from the Full Bench of the High Court gave an
indication of the gulf between how the judiciary and the Sikh
community perceived the sensitive issue that can snowball into a
major row once again.
Amid heightened
tensions and many questions raised within the Sikh community, the
SGPC as well as among the Sikhism scholars about the appropriateness
of the High Court going into the issue of defining a Sikh or a
Sehajdhari Sikh, the Full Bench comprising Justice Jagdish Singh
Khehar, Justice Jasbir Singh and Justice Ajay Kumar Mittal seemed to
have totally missed the central grouse of the community and brooked
no arguments about the very jurisdiction of the judiciary to tread
in religious territory.
Renowned Sikh
activist and senior advocate of the Supreme Court, H S Phoolka, who
represented the Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee (DSGMC) in
the ongoing Civil Writ Petition, underlined the key issue that the
court cannot allow itself to get into defining key constructs of a
religion or who could be called a Sikh, but the Bench was quick to
see it as an attempt to politicise the trial.
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Justice Jagdish Singh Khehar |
Justice Jasbir Singh |
Justice Ajay Kumar Mittal |
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It virtually
warned the counsel to desist from politicising the sensitive matter
saying that the case had nothing to do with the totality of Sikh
religion and that a question had arisen if a minority Sikh
institute
can admit a student only if he/she has unshorn hair. It asked Phoolka not to “raise irrelevant arguments” and that “this (Court)
is not a political stage” but clearly Phoolka was representing the
dominant thought in the Sikh community.
With the Bench
saying that the focus was only on “how significant are unshorn hair
to Sikh religion and nothing else”, one thing was clear that the
Punjab
and Haryana High Court in this trial was gradually veering towards a
territory which could prove to be very slippery for both, the
judiciary as well as the Sikh community.
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Advocate H S Phoolka |
Tension In High Court
Palpable tension was witnessed in the Punjab and Haryana High
Court during the hearing in the Full Bench’s Court where DSGMC’s
counsel, senior Supreme Court advocate H S Phoolka questioned
the authority of not just the Bench or the High Court but of the
judiciary itself to try and define key constructs of a religion
and said even Parliament cannot do that. At one stage, the bench
asked Phoolka to cite rulings that said so. At another stage,
the Bench warned him, after he stuck to his arguments, that “we
might stop you from pleading”. Phoolka held his grounds.
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For the record,
when Phoolka said that it was beyong the Court’s domain to ponder
over something like defining a faith and “even Parliament can’t
define faith”, Justice Khehar asserted that the bench was not
attempting a definition of Sikh and that the totality of Sikh
religion was beyond their purview. But what was not mentioned was
that any attempt to ask the SGPC to define a Sehajdhari Sikh or to
try to determine how important or unimportant were unshorn hair to a
Sikh was exactly the kind of issue that Phoolka and other Sikh
scholars across the board have been warning against.
When Phoolka
mentioned that the concept of Sehajdhari Sikh was non-existent in
the Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee Act, 1971, the Bench
held that the said Act was not applicable to
Punjab and
Haryana. “Moreever, these Acts primarily serve the purpsoe of laying
down electoral processes and don’t per se define who is a Sikh,” the
Full Bench observed.
The next hearing
was fixed for February 20.
The Full Bench’s
remarks on Friday are likely to strengthen the view of those who
never wanted the SGPC to respond to the
Punjab and
Haryana High Court’s directive in the first place to define the
Sehajdhari Sikh. Many sections at that time had said the SGPC should
simply tell the Court that it cannot submit any such definitions and
the Court can depend upon the laws and statutes and reach its own
conclusions.
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THE NEW SGPC AFFIDAVIT
A Sehajdhari Sikh is one who performs cermonies according to
Sikh rites, does not use tobacco or ‘katha’ in any form, who is
not a Patit and who can recite ‘mul mantra’. Patit means a
person who being a Keshdhari Sikh trims or shaves his beard or
‘kesh’ or who after partaking ‘amrit’ commits anyone or more of
the four ‘kurahits’. Sehajdhari Sikh and Patit are two separate
entities any Keshdhari Sikh who cuts/trims his hai and beard is
a Patit.
“A person
who cuts/trims his beard/hair although he might be performing
his cermonies like a Sikh, might not be using tobacco, etc and
could recite ‘mulmantra’, cannot be a Sehajdhari because he
cuts/ trims his hair and beard and as per the sections (of Sikh
Gurdwara Act, 1925)... he cannot be a Sehajdhari Sikh.” |
The SGPC had
earlier come in for massive flak when it had submitted a
controversial affidavit on December 5 in the
Punjab and
Haryana High Court that virually allowed those trimming/cutting
their hair to be counted as Sehajdharis till they declared
themselves to be Keshadharis. The SGPC later admitted massive
bungling in the process leading to submission of that affidavit,
sacked Sikh History Research Board Director Anurag Singh, set up an
inquiry committee to probe how the impugned affidavit came to be be
submitted in the High Court, and cleared a new affidavit that was
submitted on Friday and that was taken on record by the Full Bench.
Punjab Advocate
General H S Mattewal and his son Pavit Mattewal had come in for
strong criticism in this entire issue. Pavit, himself a clean shaven
patiti Sikh and a Legal Advisor to CM Parkash Singh Badal, had
become a party in the case and had advocated that a Sehajdhari can
keep trimming/cutting his hair. His father, a close chum of the
ruling Badals, had earlier written articles in leading dailies
advocating the right of vote for Sehajdharis, something opposed
tooth and nail by the SGPC and the Sikh community as a whole.
17 January 2009
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