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Problem with my Guru Ghar's Committee right now


Guest Gupti
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Guest Jagsaw_Singh

Upset and frustration with Gurdwara Committees is a common theme with our generation. Understandable, because so much of what happens within the Gurdwara is so clearly contradictory with Sikhi. But...as anyone that knows me on this forum will tell you; my 'thing' is history. I always say understand history and you will understand today but when it comes to Gurdwara committees it goes much deeper than that because when you understand history well you will begin to show a lot more understanding of the committee members.

Before I say anything else let me tell you about the UK's most important / famous Gurdwara: the Southall Havelock Road Gurdwara on Havelock Road:  Back in the day, for us old Sikh families of Southall, the langar hall used to be a tent / marquee in the back. Every Sunday, after all the families had had langar....around 2pm onwards, the men used to bring out their bottles of Bacardi and Dimples and sit there and drink. I know because my dad used to tell me how he and my grandmother used to leave him (my grandfather) there after langar with the other men.

So why am I telling you this ?

I'm telling you this because it illustrates how it is human nature to think in utopian terns and think what happens today is so much more worse / immoral than what happened in years gone by. If a Gurdwara committee won't allow a katha or gatka or dhadi jatha etc it is a small, meaningless and trivial thing in the bigger scheme of things. In the bigger scheme of things...when one understands how things used to be....every Gurdwara committee desrves upmost respect today.

So now comes the bit I love but you all hate : History:   If you read the constitution or charity status for a lot of the old established Gurdwaras in the UK you will notice that they were established, and many still registered as, branches of the IWA ; Indian Workers Association. That means a hellava lot but I don't feel any of you are in the mood for one of my history lessons here so let me condense it down to this:

We my like to criticise the committee members of Guru Khars but remember these facts: We've had it easy. Those old billigerent unknowledgable committe presidents didn't have it so easy. They came to a foerign country that had never seen a dark skinned man but still built a Gurudwra. They worked to the bone day and night but still found time to make a Gurdwara. They suffered the indignity of being paid less than their work colleagues with white skin but they still focussed on making a Gurdwara. They suffered immeasurable racial prejudice and violence but they still devoted their time, energy and money into building a Gurdwara. None of our generation has done the same despite how easy we have it. In comparison.....we are utterly useless.

Moral of the story ?   We are a lovely house. A house, whether lovely or not, will only stand if the foundation was strong. Those old timers that make up the committee of our Gurdwara,....despite doing and saying silly things.....are the strong foundation that allow us to stand rather than fall. They've been through enough to have earned the right to not allow you to do katha. In the bigger scheme of things it doesn't matter.

 

 

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Guest Jagsaw_Singh
2 hours ago, DailyMail said:

As a kid I still remember the elderly Singh's sitting on the benches next to the King St Mandir, (just outside Havelock Gurdwara) openly drinking in broad daylight. I guess it was the overspill from drinking in the gurdwara?

If benches could talk Daily Mail my what wonderful stories that bench or 2 on the green next to the King Street mandir could tell. Through 3 generations those benches have seen it all. First the drunken Scotsmen with their cans of Tenants Super, then our uncles with their plastic cups and a bottle of bacardi and now the faujis with their heroin. A thousand hard luck stories are ingrained within the wood of those benches.

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Wow. Early Punjabi immigrants certainly drank a lot more than today's generation. In those days, given the racism suffered elsewhere, wrongly, Gurdwara's became a social meeting point as well as a place of worship. Thankfully, behaviour have changed but that's because people drink elsewhere, not because they don't drink at all.

 

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Guest Jagsaw_Singh
5 minutes ago, DailyMail said:

Wow. Early Punjabi immigrants certainly drank a lot more than today's generation. In those days, given the racism suffered elsewhere, wrongly, Gurdwara's became a social meeting point as well as a place of worship. Thankfully, behaviour have changed but that's because people drink elsewhere, not because they don't drink at all.

 

It's only semantics DailyMail but I wouldn't say Gurdwaras "became" a social meeting point" because historical documentation evidence - i.e the majority from back in the day registering themselves as community centres of the IWA (Indian Workers Association) - tells us that the genesis of Gurdwaras in the UK did in some way mirror the original birth of Gurdwaras in the Punjab. What I mean by that is the fact that use of the word Gurdwara itself is not traced to the birth of Sikhi but came later as what we today know as 'Gurdwaras' were originally called 'Dharamshalas' by our forefathers. As the word itself would be defined as a spiritual resthouse for weary travellers you can see we're not venturing too far off the beaten track of 'community centres'. Gurdwaras then, really were very much a place of refuge for our community from the hard working grinds of daily life as well as the rampant racism. I suppose we have to show some sympathy of the time and conditions to understand why men did what they did inside what we today know as Gurdwaras.

And you're absolutely right. Alcohol abuse among our people today is about a tenth of what it used to be back in the day. Back in the day...it was really bad !

btw...you probably remember the old tooti nung gangster pub The White Swan in old Southall ?  It's a Gurdwara now but I just can't bear to go in it because I can't erase from my mind the absolutely disgusting things that used to go on in there during their lock-ins. :ghost:

 

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Clifton Road Gurdwara! 

I don't go there myself to be honest. Funny enough, we've never been invited to a function there either. I'm not sure how frequented it is. We stick to the Hounslow Gurdwara(s), closer to where we are.

Yes, it was called dharamsala, a word that has gone out of fashion in the post-Singh Sabha era that we find ourselves in. Incidentally, the first British gurdwara was initially called 'Maharaja Bhupinder Singh Dharamsala' (in light of his donation) in Putney, 1911, before moving to Shepherds Bush.

I knew the the IWA had a hand in some gurdwarae but I wasn't aware how profound an impact that they had in the early days. 

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Guest Jagsaw_Singh
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Clifton Road Gurdwara!

Yea sort of...the Guru Amardas Gurdwara but its actually Adelaide Road innit, Clifton Rds a bit further on

Quote

 

I don't go there myself to be honest. Funny enough, we've never been invited to a function there either. I'm not sure how frequented it is. We stick to the Hounslow Gurdwara(s), closer to where we are.

 

Yeah i know what you mean coz we've never been invited there for a path either, which makes me think it might not be a mainstream one ?  They didn't need a gurdwara there anyway as it's a gurdwara right opposite a gurdwara which in turn is 30 seconds walk from an even bigger gurdwara. Didn't need it but certainly shouldn't have had it inside the very walls of the infamous white swan. What i witnessed inside the white swan as a little 'un would make even the most broadminded man blush

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15 hours ago, DailyMail said:

Clifton Road Gurdwara! 

I don't go there myself to be honest. Funny enough, we've never been invited to a function there either. I'm not sure how frequented it is. We stick to the Hounslow Gurdwara(s), closer to where we are.

It is popularly known as Clifton Road Gurdwara. It was opened by the Sangat following Baba Jaswant Singh in the 80s and some of the sangat like a few of the families we knew became attached to the Gurdwara and stopped attending Havelock. 

It's true Havelock langar was covered by a tent like structure for many years, before becoming a more permanent structure with tables inside where everyone generally stood, what I do not recall even from the early days is that men sat and drank there after the diwaan, something I will check with my father. 

What fond memories, loved the old Gurdwara, felt instant peace entering the Darbar and was very much a close knit family oriented environment where everyone more or less knew each other if one was a regular. Nowadays, and I'm not saying its a bad thing, we have these MASSIVE structures and no one mingles like they used to and the satkar of the elders is not present. Back then the Babey had no qualms about smacking children out of line or making excess noise :)

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Guest Jagsaw_Singh
9 minutes ago, InderjitS said:

It is popularly known as Clifton Road Gurdwara. It was opened by the Sangat following Baba Jaswant Singh in the 80s and some of the sangat like a few of the families we knew became attached to the Gurdwara and stopped attending Havelock. 

It's true Havelock langar was covered by a tent like structure for many years, before becoming a more permanent structure with tables inside where everyone generally stood, what I do not recall even from the early days is that men sat and drank there after the diwaan, something I will check with my father. 

What fond memories, loved the old Gurdwara, felt instant peace entering the Darbar and was very much a close knit family oriented environment where everyone more or less knew each other if one was a regular. Nowadays, and I'm not saying its a bad thing, we have these MASSIVE structures and no one mingles like they used to and the satkar of the elders is not present. Back then the Babey had no qualms about smacking children out of line or making excess noise :)

Ah....the good old days :)

Those were days when half of the Havelock Road sangat was made up of Hounslow people as Hounslow didn't have a Gurdwara. (took the Hounslow sangat 30 years to establish one) It wasn't until the 1980's that the Hounslow sangat found a small piece of land  behind a house on Hibernia Road (you had to go through that man's side access and his orchard in his back garden in order to get to the Gurdwara). The darbar hall was a portacabin structure and the langar hall was an old shed. Pretty soon money got involved and they bought more land and expanded it so that the main entrance would be Alice Way off of Hanworth Road but it'll always be known as the 'Hibernia Road' gurdwara in my mind :)

 

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