It was never a gurdwara,” insisted Gangtok lawyer Jorge Namka. “It is still a Gurdwara,” replies retired Colonel Dalwinder S. Grewal. The bitter controversy reflected in these views can be traced back to 1987, when Grewal, then a battery commander, sponsored the construction of a small ‘gurudwara’ on the pristine shores of Gurudongmar Lake, 18,000 feet above sea level. was on the Indian border. Tibetan Plateau. Grewal and his men were inspired by the belief that the beautiful lake, its name and the local traditions surrounding it must be associated with Guru Nanak. A few years later, another Sikh officer posted in the area oversaw the expansion of this building, and reportedly destroyed a small votive structure, known as a sangfur, which was used for incense and butter lamps. is done for. Meanwhile, down the road in the Lachen Valley, a Sikh JCO helped set up Gurdwara Nanak Lama Sahib, now in the town of Chungthang. This, too, was inspired by the belief of the plainsmen that the local legends about a great ‘Guru Rinpoche’ were evidence of Guru Nanak’s stay in this valley.
Even the name of Changthang is often interpreted as a corruption of ‘place of healing’. good place.
The native Buddhists of Lachen may have been irritated by the spread of the soldiers’ narratives. Particularly when places traditionally associated with Guru Rinpoche Padmasambhava, the famous missionary credited with bringing Vajrayana Buddhism to the Himalayas and Tibet in the 8th century, were associated with 15th-century miracles by Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism. Even Changthang’s name was often interpreted as ‘corruption’.changa place, good place.
cover story , The Mandir Wapsi movement
While this may sound like a bad Punjabi joke, local representative Anung Lachenpa, the ‘Pippon of the Lachen Jomsa’ was apparently not amused. In a statement published in 1987, which is now one of the documents presented in legal dispute, Pippon objected to “the construction of a temple belonging to another religion” which destroyed the “sanctity of this sacred lake” (gurudongmar). and invoked it. The desire of the Lachen-pa tribal community to “preserve our ancient Buddhist tradition”.
Long ago, the state forest department conducted a survey and declared the structure of the holy lake an “unauthorized construction”. In 1998, the Chief Secretary recorded his opinion that the ‘gurudwara’ was in violation of both the Forest Conservation Act of 1980 and the Places of Worship Act of 1991, leading to the appointment of a committee to investigate the growing local dispute. By 2001, a clear resolution was reached, granted to hand over the building at Gurudongmar to the (Buddhist) Lachen Monastery, which would appoint a caretaker monk for the summer months when the site was habitable (given the excessive height). ) while the military will provide “logistical support”.
From this point, however, the narratives on both sides shift to the familiar template of the more famous ‘temple-mosque’ disputes. The Buddhist party claims that unidentified people (non-Buddhists) began setting up “objects” when the Gurudongmar structure was inaccessible. Sikhs accuse locals of desecrating holy items by depositing them on the road in Chungthang and preventing pilgrims from reaching the holy lake. By 2017, the dispute reached the Supreme Court, which ordered a return to the status quo. This was followed by a writ petition in the High Court of Sikkim, filed by ‘Shri Guru Singh Sabha’, in which they claimed that it was a gurdwara, a petition to which the respondents, ‘Sikkim State and others’ ‘ had protested.
Since then, the temperature of this high-altitude dispute has been increasing continuously. In 2019, the Sikkim government, in the interest of “national security”, opposed the live telecast of the court proceedings, while Grewal complained of “Chinese spies” provoking Lachenpas. In 2020, the then central government minister for food processing, Harsimrat Kaur Badal, tweeted her plea for the protection of what was described as a “historic Gurdwara Gurudongmar Sahib”. And, in February this year, in the run-up to the assembly elections in Punjab, Home Minister Amit Shah reportedly held a meeting with the Jathedar of the Akal Takht in Amritsar, where “security of Sikh shrines”, including Gurdwara Gurudongmar, were discussed.
Perhaps all these places—lake, cave, rock, tree—could have been silently worshiped in the name of more than one god or guru. But why the vision?
Meanwhile, in Arunachal Pradesh’s Mechuka town, 500 km east of Gurudongmar, representatives of the native Memba community, who are also Buddhists, have sought the government’s assistance to retrieve ‘Pema Shelfu’, a sacred cave that was theirs. It is claimed to have been illegally furnished by army men with Sikh religious symbols and revamped ‘Taposthan Pemoshubhu’. And in remote Ladakh, at the other end of the Himalayas, similar shrines are the focus of quiet but persistent confrontations between local Buddhists and Sikh representatives. A sacred rock—once known to Buddhists as ‘Lama Guru’ and now housed in the military-run ‘Pathar Sahib Gurdwara’—and a tree, once known as ‘Tsug Tor’—now A famous lama has risen from the stick. Declared as the miraculous toothbrush tree of Guru Nanak by the adjoining ‘Gurdwara Datun Sahib’. Perhaps all these places—lake, cave, rock, tree—could have been silently worshiped in the name of more than one god or guru. But why the vision? Whether Sikhs or Buddhists, they now seem destined for the monumentalism of brick and mortar, paint and marble that defines our national sect of competitive communalism.