The ongoing disturbance in Meghalaya’s capital, Shillong due to clashes between the local Khasi tribe and a few Sikhs who have been living there for generations now, has been termed as a “scuffle over land and not religion”, by Manjit Singh GK, who is the president of the Delhi Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee and the Delhi State President of Shiromani Akali Dal.
Mr GK, along with Manjinder Singh Sirsa, who is the General Secretary of the Delhi Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee and General Secretary of Shiromani Akali Dal, went to Shillong on a fact-finding mission last week.
In an interview to SBS Punjabi, Mr GK spoke in detail about the origins of the clash that has become news not only in India’s national media, but has also caught the interest of Punjabis spread across the world.
He stressed that there are seven gurdwaras in Shillong but disturbance surrounds only one.
“People everywhere except this one locality near a gurdwara, which is called Punjabi Lane, are moving about the place freely. Actually, the Khasis want the Punjabis to vacate the area where their gurdwara is built as they claim it to be their tribal hill."
"Our question to them is: why this sudden demand when these Punjabis have been living there for the last 150-plus years? It is, in reality, a scuffle over land ownership and has nothing to do with religion."
"However, I’m satisfied now that I’ve examined the situation and hope the law and order authorities will be able to restore normalcy in the small pocket around Punjabi Lane that remains affected,” Mr GK elaborated, after spending a few days in Shillong, where he had gone at the request of former Punjab deputy chief minister Sukhbir Singh Badal, who is also the president of Shiromani Akali Dal.
A curfew was imposed in Shillong at the start of this week and the army has been kept on stand-by should the situation go out of control for the police.
Listen to the interview by clicking on the link above.
