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Vancouver Sikhs Snub Hard-liners

A P Kamath in Vancouver

Balwant Singh Gill is convinced that god does not differentiate between a Sikh who uses table and chair while having his langar at the gurudwara and the Sikh who sits down the bare floor. God is more worried about the life one leads, Gill says.

Most of the 20,000 voters agreed with him when they fended a challenge by traditionalists and elected Gill for the second time as the president of the Guru Nanak gurudwara.

Gill defeated Dalip Singh Mangat by 2,300 votes in an election tightly monitored by more than 30 police officers who instructed voters to cast their ballots and move away from the three polling booths. The polling took place on Sunday in three schools a few miles away from the gurudwara. About 31,000 people were eligible to vote.

Mangat is associated with International Sikh Youth Federation and is allied with Bhai Ranjit Singh, the former Sikh high priest, who excommunicated Gill several years ago.

The Guru Nanak gurudwara is a very important institution for British Columbia's Sikh community, the largest outside of India, with an estimated 80,000 members.

A stronghold of pro-Khalistanis for many years, the Guru Nanak gurudwara has seen many bloody fights between the moderates and traditionalists.

Two years ago, Tara Singh Hayer, publisher of the Indo-Canadian Times, North America's largest Punjab-language newspaper, was shot in the garage of his home in Surrey, not far from the gurdwara. Police called the November 20 killing "a targeted assassination" No one has been arrested in his murder. A former Khalistani, Hayer had turned liberal and had embraced the moderates, and written strong editorials against the hard-liners.

Hayer, 62, who was confined to a wheelchair because of another assassination attempt 10 years ago, had said often that he had feared for his life but insisted on crusading against the hard-liners.

Hayer's family charged the killing was an attempt to scare moderate Sikhs on the eve of elections but the hard-liners were not successful in retaining the control of the temple.

Hayer was one of five moderate Sikh leaders in Canada who were excommunicated by the Akal Takht.

The Akal Takht's order had also banned all Sikhs from buying or reading the Indo-Canadian Times.

Gill believes that Hayer's murder opened the eyes of many hard-liners and that the gurdwara came under moderates' control two years ago as a result. Gill said people were fed up with the issue of Khalistan and they were also tired of being projected in the Canadian media as violent people.

Gill believes that the issue of tables and chairs is just a ruse for the traditionalists to win over the gurudwara and use it to wage a war against moderate Sikhs in Canada and anti-Khalistanis in India.

Because of the past violence at the temple, the police had also armed themselves with a court injunction obtained by the temple executive to prevent people from loitering or gathering in the area, except to vote.

Referring to Mangat's promise to remove tables and chairs from the temple's dining hall, Gill pronounced: "This issue should be dead once for all now."

Instead of dwelling on such issues, Gill said the community should work together for its betterment and that of the society at large.

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