INSIDE THE GURU'S GATE - Anpere

tures. Bringing together conventional Sikh symbols and ritual acts, he created a new
cremation ceremony that went under the name Agan Bhet samskar, meaning “the ritual
of fire sacrifice”. In 1988 he started to collect and burn old scriptures, and invited
people to participate in the voluntary work termed Agan Bhet Seva, ”the selfless service
for the fire sacrifice”. Subsequently Narinder Singh and the growing congregation
at Prabhu Simran Kender constructed buses suited for a respectful conveyance of
Guru Granth Sahib and began to collect old texts at different locations. The goal in
view, however, seemed to have been a gradual coordination and renewal of the scriptural
handling at Goindwal Sahib.
As the association presents the past,
establishing a cremation centre at
Goindwal was imperative for many
reasons. The town, with an arm of
the river Beas flowing alongside,
was a historical place already associated
with a tradition of burning
religious texts. The motive for establishing
a cremation ceremony at
Goindwal Sahib rested on disproval
of previous burning practices under
the control of the SGPC. 412 In the
Inside Angitha Sahib Narinder Singh performs the last
rite for scriptures and prayer books.
early 1990s Narinder Singh requested
the SGPC to take charge of
scriptural cremations at Goindwal
Sahib and after due negotiations were committed to this responsibility in 1997. 413 The
same year Narinder Singh and voluntary workers constructed two cremation chambers
(Agnitha Sahib) below the main shrine at Goindwal Sahib and two years later
established Sri Guru Granth Sahib Bhawan – a gurdwara with a repository hall for
scriptures with more than hundred beds. 414
In cooperation with the SGPC and local gurdwaras Narinder Singh and voluntary
workers of his organization begun to collect old scriptures from all over India. To
organize the ritual enterprise at two geographically distant locations, the congrega-
412
Narinder Singh was not diffident about leveling criticism to the practices at Goindwal in
public discourses. In September 2000, for instance, he told press reporters from the Punjabi
newspaper Ajit that the previous practices of tearing and folding pages from scriptures and
throwing them into the flames was only to stoke up the fire (jhulka). The ashes were spreading
everywhere. All things considered, the practices under management of SGPC were not giving
proper respect to Guru Granth Sahib (Ajit, 2000-09-18).
413
According to the association’s own history recorded on DVD the head (mukht) granthi of Akal
Takht in Amritsar, Giani Bhagwan Singh, was informed of the crematorium at Prabhu Simran
Kender in Ludhiana in 1994 and the SGPC commissioned him to investigate the institution. The
head granthi was sympathetic to the activities and consequently the SGPC passed his report.
414
The estimated building costs amounted to fifteen million rupees in total (Ajit, 2000-09-18).
226
Published on www.anpere.net in May 2008