Incivility and Abuse Towards Members of the Congregation  

To fully understand this section you will first need to read the previous section to see what led to this incident :

As you will have read in the previous section the group of ladies who had lobbied so hard to get some seating installed for the disabled and elderly had found themselves at square one again as it came to light that it had been decided without consultation with the congregation that screens would be erected in front the seating in the Darbar Sahib.

So the ladies decided to practice their lawful right to petition the management committees decision, and within only a couple of days got over 600 signatures from member's of the congregation. It was on Saturday 15th February 2014, Mrs Iqbal Kaur, Mrs Balbir Kaur, Mrs Harjinder Kaur Mangat and Mrs Gobinder Kaur Sangha, whilst obtaining these signatures in the foyer of the Gurdwara Sahib that they were confronted by Mr Seetal Singh (Treasurer) who was in a rage shouting the ladies saying "who have you had permission from to do this here, you can't do that here get out of the Gurdwara, go and do it somewhere else".

Whilst shouting Mr Seetal Singh has snatched the petition papers from the ladies hands and looks at them and then throws them on the table still shout at them to leave the Gurdwara. Mrs Iqbal Kaur has gathered the papers back up whilst Mr Seetal Singh went into the general office to gather some support from members of the congregation and committee sitting in there but returned a minute later by himself.

He again starts to shout at the ladies to get out of the Gurdwara as they had no right or permission to do what they were doing only to be challenged by the ladies asking Mr Seetal Singh "do you get permission from the British Government first when you obtain signatures for petitions to hand over to 10 Downing Street ? " , which has angered Mr Seetal Singh further and he has again tried to snatch the papers from Mrs Iqbal Kaur to throw them out. But Mrs Iqbal Kaur has refused to let them go so Mr Seetal Singh has tried to forcefully take them from her thus a struggle between them has ensued. 

Mr Seetal Singh has only backed down after a large group of the congregation who have witnessed this have come out of the langer hall and confronted and challenged him, as the members of the congregation were absolutely disgusted and shocked by what they had just witnessed. They were asking for Mr Seetal Singh to step out side with them so that he could try and push them around, but at this point Mr Seetal Singh has made a very sharp exit via a rear exit door, whilst Mr Lakha Singh who had just arrived tried to calm the crowed and persuaded the ladies to stop the petition at that time to preserve the harmony of the Gurdwara Sahib, to which the ladies complied. 

It was not the intention of the ladies to cause trouble or disturb the harmony of the Gurdwara Sahib but just to legally voice their concerns against the unlawful actions of the management committee, it was actually the bigoted, uninformed member of the committee that was the cause of dis-congruity.

The letter of complaint about this incident sent to the management committee can be seen by clicking icon below.