At least the educated section of the Sikh community would hang its head in shame over the ‘punishment’ meted out to Mr Surjeet Singh Barnala, the former Punjab chief minister, by the Akal Takht. Three points are notable in this episode, one of the sorriest in the history of the Panth. First, Mr Barnala has been ‘punished’ by the so-called high priests for a “crime” which does not figure as a crime in the Sikh tradition. Mr Barnala, it may be recalled, had last year refused to dissolve his faction of the Akali Dal under ‘orders’ from the acting jathedar of the Akal Takht which the jathedar was not entitled to issue in terms of the Sikh tradition. Second, the former chief minister has been punished precisely when he had agreed to resign as president of the Akali Dal (L) in order to help promote the same goal of Akali unity. Third, he has been humiliated in a manner which smacks of medievalism and must offend every human being with modern sensibility.
We must also confess that we are somewhat baffled over Mr Barnala’s willingness to accept the kind of humiliation he has, somewhat because we are aware that he had agreed to clean the shoes of devotees at various gurdwaras as an act of expiation in 1986 when he had done no more than fulfill his minimum obligation as chief minister, he had ordered the police to go into the Golden Temple in Amritsar after the extremists had used the shrine not only as a sanctuary but also as a platform to declare the formation of Khalistan. Though the terrorist leaders had escaped by the time the police acted, that could not possibly invalidate the action. Even so, a case of sorts could be made for Mr Barnala’s surrender to the priests in 1986; it was, for example, said that his action, even if justified, hurt the feelings of the Sikhs and as a Sikh it was his duty to assuage those feelings. But no such argument is available either to his tormentors or to him in the present case. The ‘punishment’ now is a straight case of medieval mentality being installed in offices of great social and religious influence on the one hand and weakness of will on the other. The episode raises two wider issues, one arising out of the Akali leaders’ surrender to the priests and the other relating to the title of such leaders to rule in a state where around 40 per cent of the total population is non-Sikh. But we do not wish to press these issues if only because we are not able to think of a solution.