Missing Saroops of Guru Granth Sahib

Perhaps in history this has never happened before — the Guru Granth Sahib, whom the entire Sikh community reveres as the living Guru, because the tenth Sikh Guru, Guru Gobind Singh Ji, ended the tradition of a human Guru and bestowed the Guruship upon the Shabad, giving the Granth Sahib the status of the Guru, declaring that from that day onward a Sikh’s Guru would be Guru Granth Sahib as the living Guru.

Till today, scriptures of other religions were written by their followers after their spiritual founders left this world. But Guru Granth Sahib is the only scripture that was compiled by the Gurus themselves during their lifetime. Yet, in the last few years, even the Sikhs have limited themselves merely to performing “worship” of Guru Granth Sahib, whereas every Sikh must read the Bani written within Guru Granth Sahib and adopt it in their life.

The granthis, ragis and sewadars who were entrusted with the responsibility of making people aware of the teachings of Guru Granth Sahib do read the Bani as part of their duty, but perhaps they do not adopt it in their own life — otherwise the Sikh community would not be suffering the condition it faces today. Sikhs, due to greed, temptation and fashion trends, would not be drifting away from Sikhi. The remaining damage has been done by those politicians who have self-appointed themselves as the custodians of religion, yet are hardly affected by the continuous incidents of sacrilege or the disappearance of a large number of sacred saroops of Guru Granth Sahib.

In 2016, the mysterious disappearance of 328 sacred saroops of Guru Granth Sahib first came to light. At that time, the “Panthic government” was in power in Punjab, and the Shiromani Gurdwara Committee was also under their control. However, instead of taking strong action, they merely completed formalities by suspending one or two employees and cooled down the matter. No employee could ever have the courage to mishandle such a large number of sacred saroops alone. It is certain that many big names may have been involved behind this, and the matter may have been buried in order to protect them.

Now one should ask them — if a member of their own family had gone missing, would they have reacted in the same manner? Or do they consider Guru Granth Sahib to be merely a book, the disappearance of which means nothing to them? In contrast, the devotees who expressed their grief over the disappearance of their Guru’s sacred saroops and demanded action against the culprits — the police personnel who fired bullets at them during their protest were later promoted by the same Panthic government. Nothing could be more shameful than that.

At that time, Punjab was led by the late Parkash Singh Badal, followed by Captain Amarinder Singh and Charanjit Singh Channi. Across the tenure of all three governments, this matter remained confined to files only. Now, for the first time, Bhagwant Mann has taken legal action by registering FIRs against 16 SGPC employees. The entire Sikh community is viewing this step not only as respect for religious sentiments but also as a historic initiative to restore public trust in the justice system of Punjab.

On the other hand, those political leaders who earlier raised this issue aggressively to corner the Badal Dal are silent today — because they themselves have now joined the Badal Dal. This clearly reveals that such politicians use the Guru only for their own personal political interests.

This step of the Bhagwant Mann government has significantly improved his image among the Sikh community. What the previous three Chief Ministers — one of whom even called himself a “true Panthic leader” — failed to do, the Mann government has now done. And if the real culprits are exposed, it may bring major political advantage to the Mann government in the future, while it may further escalate troubles for the Shiromani Akali Dal.