Union Minister of Culture Gajendra Singh Shekhawat’s announcement in the affirmative to a query by Rajya Sabha MP Satnam Singh Sandhu in Parliament recently urging the government to undertake restoration of damaged manuscripts and literature in the Golden Temple’s Sikh Reference Library has prompted Sikh leaders and experts to demand the restoration of all books and manuscripts.
Sandhu had highlighted the historical significance of the Sikh Reference Library located in the Golden Temple complex in a question on March 13. In response, Shekhawat said the restoration could be taken up with the help of modern tools such as artificial intelligence and digital preservation techniques under the Gyan Bharatam Mission, an initiative aimed at conserving and digitising India’s manuscript heritage.
Sandhu said the library had suffered extensive damage during the 1984 Operation Bluestar at the shrine complex when the Akal Takht was significantly damaged and the Sikh Reference Library was burnt down.
The parliamentary exchange by the two BJP leaders has drawn the attention of political analysts in Punjab, who believe it showcases the BJP’s determination to intervene in state politics in more than one way. They point out that the Sikh Reference Library has always been an emotive issue and if the BJP wants to get the attention of the state’s Sikhs, this was a good way of doing so.
Already, the appointment of former diplomat from Amritsar, Taranjit Singh Sandhu, as L-G of Delhi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s large rally in Moga earlier this month are being seen as attempts to expand the party’s presence in Punjab.
Amarjit Singh, former director of the Centre for Studies in Sri Guru Granth Sahib at Guru Nanak Dev University, said it seemed that both leaders were not aware that the SGPC had long digitised all books, manuscripts, historic edicts, newspapers and other rare documents in its repository. He said the digitisation of books commenced in Punjab long back and Guru Nanak Dev University and Khalsa College were in the forefront of digitally securing its archive. Punjab has its own Punjab Digital Library in Chandigarh, he added. He said if the BJP-led Union Government wanted to earn the goodwill of the Sikh community, then it should help them by restoring books and other historic documents taken away from the library during the 1984 Army operation.
Bibi Kiranjot Kaur, an SGPC member, also said the BJP should help restore the books of the reference library.
After former library director Anurag Singh questioned the integrity of the SGPC in preserving the rare books in the library, one Satinder Singh in 2019 had filed a petition in the Punjab and Haryana High Court against the Sikh body, claiming the Army had returned the items three months after the Operation Bluestar and the SGPC officials received those on September 29, 1984. However, he said, many items are now missing from the library and some rare ‘birs’ have been sold.
Satinder had claimed that in 2023, 39 years after the operation, the SGPC had made public for the first time that 1,500 manuscripts, including 512 handwritten ‘birs’ of the Guru Granth Sahib bearing signatures of Sikh Gurus, 12,613 books and several newspapers were taken away by the Army after Operation Bluestar and never returned.
Significantly, the library had books not only in Punjabi, but also in Hindi, Assamese, Bengali, Sindhi, Persian, Arabic, Tibetan, English and French touching upon diverse subject matters and rare paintings and newspapers as old as 1876. It also contained documents relating to the Indian Independence movement.
The mystery of the missing library books remains an enigma. Politicians have loved playing politics around this sensitive issue over the decades. Claims and counter-claims over the restoration of books only added to the mystery.
The SGPC, led by SAD, has led from the front in trying to put the Congress-ruled governments at the Centre in the dock for not revealing the whereabouts of the books of the library.
In 2004, then SGPC secretary told the then Union Home Secretary N Gopalaswami that books of the Sikh Reference Library be restored to the SGPC. He claimed they had proof that all the books etc. had been in good condition when those were taken away and moved to a local youth hostel for cataloguing. Some years earlier, the CBI had returned some of the records to SGPC, which included the accession register of the library with some secret coding, said the then SGPC secretary.
Twist in the tale
A twist in the tale came 35 years after Operation Bluestar — June 13, 2019 — when the SGPC for the first time admitted that a sizeable number of rare manuscripts, which had “gone missing” from the Sikh Reference Library and Central Sikh Museum, were returned later. After holding a meeting with former and existing officials and librarians, then SGPC chief secretary Roop Singh said 205 handwritten ‘saroops’ of Guru Granth Sahib, 807 handwritten rare books, one ‘hukumnama’ (edict) and some newspapers copies were received by the gurdwara committee.
In 2019, AAP MLA from Ajnala, Kuldeep Singh Dhaliwal, held the Akali leadership responsible for hiding facts and keeping Sikhs in the dark regarding the missing manuscripts of the Sikh Reference Library. He accused former Akali CM Parkash Singh Badal and his son Sukhbir Singh Badal, current SAD president, for misguiding the Sikhs over the matter.
Dhaliwal said the CBI had handed over the first instalment of books to the then SGPC secretary Bhan Singh on October 31, 1984. And that the rest of the material was given in five parts to the SGPC. He stated that senior Badal had been Chief Minister for a record length of time, Sukhbir had been a minister in the Vajpayee government, his wife Harsimrat Kaur Badal had been a Union Minister until recently — but none had taken up the matter of the Reference Library with the Central Government.
SGPC chief secretary Kulwant Singh Mannan is of the view that the central government should return the remaining books to the Sikh body. He is not aware of the exact number of books returned to the SGPC by the Centre and how many of those continue to be in the possession of the government. He added that one thing was clear that these books contained the history of entire India and the SGPC had been preserving these