Since The Councils Letter of Concern.....

It has been a while since our last update but it seems the letter from Wolverhampton City Council highlighting the discrimination against disabled and elderly members of the congregation at GNSG, has not had any effect on certain members of the GNSG's management committee.

Rather it has made their contempt for the wishes of the congregation even greater and even more obviously apparent after a few members of the management committee have put up the signs seen on the left here in several places within the Gurdwara Sahib illegally without any resolution being passed within the committee.

The fact that the last full committee meeting was highjacked by some of the very same people responsible for the intimidation and criminal damage at the Gurdwara Sahib previously has meant there has not been any full committee meetings since, meaning the above signs have never been discussed or passed in any meeting.

So the fact that the signs have "GNSG Management Committee" at the bottom is a blatant lie put up by a specific few people in power against the wishes of the majority. As you can see the people who put them up were quite concerned about them being removed from the number of screws used to secure two very light, plastic A4 size signs.

The reason these people have felt the need to put these signs up was because the elderly and disabled members of the congregation have refused to sit behind screened off areas on benches not fit for purpose. So instead are forced carry up or get others to carry up chairs on their behalf so they can sit in front of the screens amongst the rest of the congregation.

The other reason is that the people responsible for putting up the screens do not ever themselves approach any member of the congregation that is sitting on a chair to ask them to stop or move behind the screens, but rather get young people who are either not fully aware of the politics going on or they get their relatives to remove the chairs. This forces the elderly and disabled to risk their own well being to try and carry the chairs back upstairs every day if nobody is around to help them. 

When our members have previously on numerous occasions challenged certain members of the committee regarding this particular issue, they have talked about it being against what the Akal Takhat Sahib ( Sikh Temporal Authority ) prescribes. This is their main reasoning for not allowing chairs and having dividing screens even though it is against the laws of this country.

But yet if you take a close look at the photograph above you can clearly see the Jathedar (Head/Leader) of the Akal Takhat Sahib sitting on the stage next to the Ragi Jatha (Hymn Singers) whilst the Chief Minister of Punjab Parkash Singh Badal and the Head of the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) Avtar Singh Makkar are sitting right next to him on chairs whilst every other member of the congregation is sitting on the floor. 

The photo above shows forward thinking Indian Sikhs as there is a common understanding that we need to cater for the elderly. The photo above on the left demonstrates the unfortunate low level thinking of certain simple minded so called " Sikh Community Leaders " from Wolverhampton.

Wolverhampton Council has advised the Gurdwara that they must not discriminate, this is a core principle of Sikhi. Even the Late Jathedar of Shiromani Akali Panth Budha Dal ( Supreme Sikh Military Order ) towards the end of his life used to go into the Darbar in a wheelchair and sat before Guru Granth Sahib Ji without having to get out of his wheelchair or having to sit behind any ridiculous screens.

If we are to believe the lame excuses that have been given to Forum members by certain committee members over the past few months, then they need to be asking themselves the question " Why is it one rule for one, and another rule for the other " . Our belief is that this excuse was only used as they thought it would be hard to prove whether their excuses were true or not and by the time it would have been ascertained that they were not true, their term in office would come to an end without them having to answer for their incompetence. 

The following photographs are of a historically significant Gurdwara Sahib in Delhi India, which is obviously run by forward thinking educated Sikhs that show the facilities available there for the elderly and disabled without prejudice or stigma. Which is quite a contrast to the situation we have in Wolverhampton.

All the example thus far in this post are from India but there are many examples of forward thinking management committees here in the UK and every other Gurdwara Sahib in Wolverhampton far as we are aware all provide some sort of seating for the elderly and disabled in their Darbar's and Langar halls (communal eating halls) without screens to segregate them. Below we have some photographs of a good example of a UK Gurdwara providing good facilities for the elderly and disabled in a very tasteful manner.

So we the Sikh Forum Wolverhampton and the rest of the wider congregation requests that the intelligent members of the committee to remove these offensive, insensitive and illegal signs.