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Sikhs
protest controversial scholar's appointment,
want probe into hiring
Indicted by Akal Takht, Pashaura Singh has been the target of ire of
Sikhs
for many years
WSN Bureau
 CALIFORNIA: Slogans of "Down, Down, Pashaura Singh" and
"Turncoat Sikh Scholar" rented the air as a large number of Sikhs,
most of them highly educated, joined an on-campus protest at UC
Riverside before a meeting with Chancellor Timothy White, all aimed
at protesting the scholar's appointment to a Sikh studies chair.
Most of the community considers him a renegade and
blasphemy-spouting scholar.
The group of Sikhs said the university should go in for a
third party probe into how he came to be hired as a Sikh and Punjabi
studies scholar.
Representatives of the group had a half-hour meeting with
White but by all accounts the Chancellor seems to have conveyed that
he has already reviewed Pashaura Singh's appointment and there was
no reason to effect any change or order any probe into his hiring.
Protesters, some of whom had come from
Corona and Fontana,
carried placards saying "UCR Sikh Chair an Academic Scam."
The Chancellor also asked the group to put in writing the
concerns of the larger Sikh community, something that the group
welcomed. Dr. Baljeet Sahi, an
Altadena veterinarian who led the protest, said the Sikh community
representatives will soon write the letter.
Sahi, who represents the Sikhs for Preservation of Sikhism
and Sikh Heritage. has been leading the movement that has been
opposing Pashaura Singh's appointment consistently since 2005.
The controversial scholar who was once indicted at the Akal
Takht and who had confessed to his deliberate crimes of intellect
was hired in 2005 from the
University of
Michigan.
He was however appointed to the chair only this summer.
Pashaura Singh's writings question the authenticity of the
Sri Guru Granth Sahib and he accords importance to questionable
manuscripts, one of which surfaced in 1987 and that he believes is a
draft of the 1,430-page document compiled by Guru Arjan. Singh says
the so-called 1245 manuscript, part of the rare book collection at
Guru Nanak
Dev University, includes sections that are blank and others that
have been crossed out, showing evidence of having been edited.
Such an idea about the scriptures being edited or changed is
blasphemous to most Sikhs and virtually negates the core belief that
the revealed word of God is the revealed word.
Sahi holds the 1245 manuscript fraudulent and said it was
obtained from a scrap dealer. Sikhs believe the so called Manuscript
1245 could have been scribbled by any of the Sikh Guru's rivals.
There have been many protests against Pashaura Singh's
appointment to the endowed chair for which the Sikh Foundation
raised $500,000. The chair is in memory of late Dr. Jasbir Singh
Saini, a
Phoenix cardiologist.
Sikhs had protested even in 2005 about his appointment. At
one stage, even Saini's widow, Saranjit Kaur Saini, had asked the
former UCR Chancellor France Cordova urging her to choose another
Sikh scholar.
Incidentally,
Pashaura Singh courted controversy even with his 1991 doctoral
thesis at the University of Toronto which was immediately condemned
and later he was indicted in 1994 by the Akal Takht, the Sikhs'
highest temporal authority, for blasphemy.
24 September 2008
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