A video has surfaced on social media purportedly showing a woman being stopped from entering the Golden Temple because she had the colours of the national flag painted on her face, triggering a row on Monday. A man who is partly seen in the video is heard asking an SGPC employee at the temple complex entrance, “Is this not India?” The employee replied that “It’s Punjab”.
According to the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC), which is the apex religious body of Sikhs, the sewadar asked the woman to follow the decorum (maryada) of the religious place. The SGPC said it has started an investigation into the matter and alleged that some people are deliberately giving a wrong twist to the incident. The sewadar reportedly objected to the flag painted on the woman’s face. SGPC general secretary Gurcharan Singh Grewal said the painting “was not a national flag as it did not have Ashok Chakra on it”.
“The Sikh community has great respect for the national flag since the majority of the people who sacrificed their lives for the nation during the freedom struggle were Sikhs,” he said. Grewal said Sikhs are patriots, and they can make any sacrifice for the sake of the motherland. Grewal expressed regret over the incident and said, “All people, from anywhere in the world or from any religion, are welcome here. The incident happened when a lady devotee was stopped by the SGPC sewadar and asked to follow Sikh maryada, which led to some arguments between them.”
SGPC president Harjinder Singh Dhami also condemned the narrative being created against the Sikhs on social media after the video went viral. The SGPC president said it was not right to make fabricated and baseless comments on social media to tarnish the image of Sikhs and defame the management of the organisation over an incident.
Dhami said that every gurdwara has a code of conduct that is mandatory
for people to follow.
