The Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) has removed the ghumatis or kiosk minars that the Sikh seminary Damdami Taksal had erected at the martyrdom site of Baba Deep Singh on the Golden Temple premises amid ongoing renovation works.
The incident has raised questions about the functioning of the SGPC, whose primary responsibility is the management of gurdwaras. Sources said the ‘kiosk minars’, as they are architecturally referred to, were removed in a hurry as soon as they came to the committee’s notice.
In a recent interview, manager Bhagwant Singh Dhangera said the kiosk minars were removed as they were not according to “the Sikh psyche.”
SGPC president Harjinder Singh Dhami had on November 1, 2024, handed over the sacred site of Shaheed Baba Deep Singh to Damdami Taksal head Baba Harnam Singh for a year for restoration and beautification works. Dhami had said that the site would be preserved in its original form. The Damdami Taksal has also been collecting donations for the renovation from the Golden Temple premises.
However, there were no kiosk minars at the site before the renovation and the newly erected ones did not match Sikh architecture. “We had asked them to remove the kiosk minars. It was not aligned with the Sikh psyche,” said the manager.
Sikh author Jagtarjeet Singh said, “The kiosk minars they had installed are often used in temples. Every place has its aesthetic. You can’t use Sikh architecture in temples or mosques. If this can happen inside the Darbar Sahib (Golden Temple), then you can imagine what kind of blunders might be committed in Sikh structures being constructed under SGPC’s supervision in other places.”
“It is SGPC’s primary responsibility to take care of the gurdwaras. It has been running hospitals, schools, and universities, yet SGPC does not have a single institution dedicated to Sikh architecture. Simply using expensive marble has nothing to do with authentic Sikh architecture. SGPC has not focused on Sikh architecture. That is why someone used their imagination to install a structure inside the Darbar Sahib premises that was so absurd, the SGPC had to remove it immediately,” the writer added.
