CRISIS IN SIKH GURWARAS MANAGEMENT

CRISIS IN SIKH GURWARAS MANAGEMENT

Over the last few years, especially after the event of Sikh genocide in 1984 in India, there have been a number of incidents in almost all the Gurdwaras of western countries where a common disease of in-fighting for the control of Gurdwara management with some violence and waste of meager Sikh resources have been occuring in courts. A similar thing has been happening in Guru Nanak Foundation Gurdwara, the premium Gurdwara of Washington DC area. The writer attended one board meeting recently (I attended the only one in my life) and was distressed with what went on there in. We have to find some solution to this menace. I have been thinking about it a lot and write down some of my observations and suggestions (for the review, discussion and approval of Sikhs at large), which if implemented, may stop the future fights in this Gurdwara and other Sikh Gurdwaras in USA.

GNFA Board Meeting of Wednesday September 29, 2004

This meeting was the continuation of the previous Board meeting. The only subject to be discussed was “to settle the issue of payment to the attorneys involved with the litigation by one group against the other group controlling the management of the Gurdwara at that time”. It looks like that a decision had already been taken in the previous meeting to pay the attorneys fees to the tune of $130,000 to $200,000. But only one member, Chairman S. Labh Singh had refused to sign the fee checks if the funds of Golak were used for these payments, whereas all other member of the Board appeared to have consented for payment with GNFA funds. It appeared that a letter to fire the chairman was circulated by the GNFA Secretary during the previous week, unless he agreed to sign the checks.

In addition to the present Board members, there were 30-40 other Sangat members who attended the meeting. The Chairman who conducted the meeting allowed some discussion on the above-mentioned controversial issue. My observations indicated that some Board members wanted to restrict the discussion and indulge in shuttlecock diplomacy by partially agreeing to the Chairman’s objections of not using Golak money for attorneys’ fees, and also to the concept of not allowing the money from the donation checks for the payment to attorneys. All other Board members were asking the Chairman if those conditions might be satisfactory to him and “would he sign the checks now?” With the objection of some Board members to restrict the discussion strictly among the Board members only rather than open to other Sangat members, the resolutions were passed quickly and the meeting adjourned

COMMENTS

I attended my first Board meeting of any Gurdwara ever and was surprised at the number of people attending this meeting and the amount of heat generated therein and the number of hours spent. I am pretty sure that all the Sikhs in attendance were committed to the cause of not using the Gurudwara money for attorneys. But it appeared that there was a lot of animosity between the two groups based on the heated words spoken there in.

Earlier in the year I had read a story “Gurdwara GNFA Management Loses Election" which was posted on June 11, 2004 by Sikh News Network

“http://www.sikhnn.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=127&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0”.

It was reported that:

“The court ordered election was held on June 6th at Gurdwara Guru Nanak Foundation of America (GNFA) and about 1575 votes were cast.

The dispute at GNFA began more than two years ago over charges of mismanagement of funds and election fraud and ended up in the Montgomery County Court. Since then, there had been several failed attempts at getting a quorum to hold elections; a court ordered arbitration attempt did not work out; GNFA charged the League of Women Voters, a court appointed independent monitor, of mishandling voter registration for which the League demanded an apology; the court appointed a second independent monitor that finished voter registration; and the election was ordered to be held on June 6, 2004.

After two years and several hundreds of thousands of dollars spent by each side on the lawsuit, the drama finally came to an end. “

It appears that these kinds of problems have been occurring in almost all the Gurdwaras of western countries and this is a common disease in all the Gurdwaras. We have to find some solution to this menace. Below are some of the observations and suggestions (for the review, discussion and approval of Sikhs at large), which if implemented, could stop the future fights in this Gurdwara and other Sikh Gurdwaras in USA.

1. The Decision by the Board in this case will encourage future lawsuits instead of discouraging them. There are two flaws in this decision.

(a) The board decided to pay for the expenses, which were incurred before this vote, which should never be allowed in any institution and may also be illegal. The decision to spend the money must be taken before the expenses are incurred.

(b) This will encourage law suites by any party out of power in future knowing very well that they can incur expenses by hiring the most expensive lawyers to win the case in courts, because the precedent has been set to pay these expenses by Gurdwara funds later on when they win the battle.

2. Golak money should include, if not all the donations, at least the;

(a) Money directly deposited in the Golak by the Sangat, and

(b) The Checks given by the Sangat to the treasurer for Ardas or for any purpose for which the Sangat member wants the Granthi to do the Ardas in any regular Diwan or any where else.

3. The Board meetings should be open to all the Sangat members who should be encouraged to voice their opinions. If this is not observed then the general members will loose their confidence (TRUST) in the Board, since Board consist of TRUSTEES. In the constitution there should be a provision, which should allow a procedure for the general members to vote out the acting Board and choose a new Board even during the year.

4. In GNFA, the one group consisted of members who were adamant on forcing the idea that the Board members should only be Amritdhari Sikhs whereas the second group consisted of those who did not believe in enforcing rigid rules of being Amritdharis to be board members (the most of the board members appear to be non-Amritdharis). Both the groups fight on these issues but want to be in the board. Both the groups have been playing games at the time of new elections every year. The reigning board members would encourage the non-compliance of the constitution rule of the required quorum of the general body, there by postponing the general body meeting and not electing new members. The previous governing body was pretty successful in maintaining control of the Gurdwara for the last 2-3 years. So the opposition sued them and both groups incurred the court/lawyers expenses of several hundreds of thousands of dollars spent by each side. What a waste of the resources of a small Sikh community? A few suggestions to alleviate this kind of problems in almost all the Gurdwaras of USA, UK etc and which will accommodate both the groups and may also solve the financial problems of GNFA.

5. To avoid future problems with quorum, the rules may be changed:

1. If the quorum is not satisfied during the first call of the general body meeting, call the next general body meeting in exactly two weeks and reduce the quorum requirement by 10%. If the new quorum limit is still not satisfied during the subsequent call of the general body meeting, call the next general body meeting in exactly two weeks and reduce the quorum requirement further by 10%and continue this process till the general body meeting is convened with the reduced quorum requirement and new elections take place.

2. Before elections take place, the candidates contesting the election must present written and oral list of objectives they plan to achieve during the next year to the entire general body.

3. Before the elections, the previous members must present orally and in writing their previous year stated and the reasons for not fulfilling their agenda to the entire general body.

4. The selected/elected board must prepare and approve a detailed (including line items budget figures to achieve the objectives, above) next year budget, which shall be evaluated at the end of the year in General meeting.

6. Since this a religious institution and board members should not merely be selected on who could pay board member fee of $1500 per year but on the following primary criteria:

Ability to recite five (Punj) Banis and necessary requisite of wearing a complete Sikh uniform (uncut hair with turban).

This will encourage board members (TRUSTEES) to be truly people of TRUST in whom the general sangat will have the full TRUST.

Man Mohan Singh Chawla
Producer of 2004 Telly Award Winner TV Prog.
"PASSION FOR TRUTH" TV Program
"PUNJABI COMMUNITY HOUR" TV Program
Web Pages: To view archived TV Programs
www.passionfortruthtv.com
www.geocities.com/~mschawla