INSIDE THE GURU'S GATE - Anpere

campus. This changed drastically with the riots subsequent to the assassination of
Indira Gandhi in 1984. Shanti recalled what happened on the day after the Prime
Minister’s death: at 11 in the morning a mob ‒ close to a hundred students according
to her estimation ‒ drove trucks into the campus, set the gurdwara building on fire
and demolished the Sikh standard (Nishan Sahib). Clean shaven Punjabis and Hindu
neighbors tried to stop the mob and helped the turban-wearing Sikhs to hide in their
houses. Even if none were killed in the October riots at Varanasi many were severely
injured by being stoned or beaten up, and their properties and belongings were burnt
down. For about two weeks the police guarded the campus and shortly thereafter the
Sikhs, who had governmental employment at DLW, were transferred to the Punjab.
The gurdwara was reconstructed, but the community was never to be the same again.
At the present the Sikh community at DLW consists of five families who meet every
fortnight and at major Sikh festivals. The son of Lav and Shanti, Balwant Singh, has
inherited the post as granthi beside his daily work of running a cloth business in the
neighboring town of Ramnagar.
ASHOK NAGAR
In the centre of a residential colony called Ashok Nagar in Sigra, a small gurdwara of
about 25 square metres is located. In pre-partition times this was mainly an inhabited
forest area in the outskirts of Varanasi. When streams of people from the West Punjab
arrived in the city after 1947, the local government set up about 80 quarters as aid to
refugees, who subsequently purchased the tenements at a cheap rate. As the city
expanded rapidly during the second half of the twentieth century Ashok Nagar was
slowly annexed to the townscape. Most of the refugees who settled in the colony
were Hindus, Sindhis and a few Sikh families ‒ a social composition that has remained
up to the present. On a recreation ground within the colony the Hindus
erected a temple to Hanuman. The Sikh and Sindhi families likewise decided to construct
a gurdwara. The residents established a committee for the local housing cooperative,
Sarchak Committee, and agreed to build the gurdwara in a room next to the
Hanuman statue. When the head of the committee, who was a Sindhi, sold a house in
the area, the profit was invested in the purchase and construction of a gurdwara hall.
At the present Ashok Nagar Gurdwara bears no administrative relation to the
VGPC but is run by Sarchak Committee with seven elected residents and members
(Hindus, Sikhs and Sindhis) who are responsible for both the Sikh gurdwara and the
Hindu mandir. Even if these adjacent sanctuaries collaborate and share the executive
body, devotees carry out religious activities and the daily worship separately. The
prime mover behind the gurdwara is Ganesh Singh, a retired postmaster who has
worked as a granthi and organized religious programs in Ashok Nagar since 1983. At
the time of my field work he used to keep the gurdwara open from four in the morning
and performed the Prakash ceremony and recitation of Sukhmani Sahib. During the
thirty days between every sangrand, the first day of the solar month, families organized
broken readings of the whole Guru Granth Sahib (Khulla path) in the gurdwara.
Since the 1980s the residents of the colony have also participated in the forty-day long
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Published on www.anpere.net in May 2008