The recent rumblings in Sikh affairs, following shocks administered by the Sikhs of Haryana, evidently have implications for Sikh politics across the country. But they also foreground an important constitutional question. The issue is under what circumstances can a law duly enacted by a state Assembly be rescinded by the Centre, if it can be at all be annulled, since a bill cleared by the legislature can become law only after receiving the assent of the governor, the constitutional bridge between a state and the Centre. Sikh politics has traditionally hovered around the community’s gurdwaras and shrines, control over which bestows stewardship of a growing financial corpus as donations from the faithful run into hundreds of crores of rupees each year.
This politics has traditionally been conducted from Amritsar (Punjab) — the seat of the Sikh faith — and has been all but monopolised by the Akali Dal, which has dominated the Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee (SGPC), the body created nearly a hundred years ago under an law to manage and run gurdwaras. Lately, those prominent in gurdwara affairs in Haryana (which was carved out of Punjab in 1966) have clearly been eyeing control over some part of the tidy fortune that the Amritsar-based SGPC presides over.
With the obvious backing of chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda and the Congress, Haryana Sikh leaders were able to get a law passed in the state that would give them control over the management of gurdwaras in Haryana. It is this law whose constitutional validity is becoming a bone of contention, and the Narendra Modi government is said to be contemplating a presidential reference under Article 143.
Haryana Sikh leaders rightly calculate that religio-political leverage accruing from the new state law helps them gain influence in state politics as well as in Sikh affairs, thereby undercutting the influence of the Akali Dal in Haryana. This suits the Congress just fine. The party perhaps hopes that a powerful Sikh group being on its side will help it in the coming state polls due in three months, and possibly beyond. Mr Hooda, under challenge from within the Congress, not to say the BJP (a staunch Akali ally), has naturally thrown his lot with the Haryana Sikh leaders. The Centre has done well so far in using its political influence over the Akali Dal to make it desist from staging a march on a Karnal gurdwara in Haryana last Sunday.
