New Delhi, (Samajweekly) After the management and maintenance of the Kartarpur Sahib Gurdwara was on Friday transferred from the Pakistan Sikh Gurdwara Prabhandhak Committee (PSGPC), a body run by the minority Sikh community in Pakistan, to the administrative control of the nine-member Evacuee Trust Property Board (EPTB), a non-Sikh body, the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) termed the move as “subjugation”.
While the VHP condemned the move, it’s working President Alok Kumar said, “The argument that PSGPC shall continue to be a part of the management of the gurdwara is fallacious as among the nine members of the ETPB, not even one is a Sikh. The Project Management Unit formed under the ETPB will also look after the accounts of the gurdwara, and thus, there shall be no autonomy for the PSGPC to run it as per the ‘rahat’ and ‘maryada’.”
Kumar further alleged that the move amounts to “subjugation” of one of the most revered gurdwaras in the world to the government and “in effect” to the people of another faith.
“The Union Ministry of External Affairs has lodged protest against the move. The VHP joins in the protest and demands that the Pakistan government should leave the gurdwaras to be managed by the Sikh community in Pakistan,” the VHP added.
It was at the inauguration ceremony of the Kartarpur Corridor in November last year that Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan had spoken about promoting unity and humanity and tried to woo the Sikh community by saying that he was extremely pleased to see the happiness on the faces of Sikh pilgrims who had got their long standing demand fulfilled.
Now just a few days before the first anniversary of the corridor’s opening, Khan has stamped his approval on the Ministry of Religious Affairs and Interfaith Harmony’s order of allowing ETPB to take over the administrative control of the historic gurdwara.
