The Sikh Marriage Bill 2007: a short history
Author : S. Gurtej Singh (IAS)
[The event is not even a week old and many misunderstandings have already cropped up. Jathedar Manmohan Singh Bajaj has already claimed that it was their group which persuaded the government of Pakistan to adopt the marriage law. He also claims that his group had provided the draft of the law to be enacted. Both claims are preposterous and when he made them in my presence, I told this to his face. I asked for a copy of the draft that he had provided but he had none. Syed Afzal Haider, the present Law Minister, the moving spirit behind the intention to enact Sikh Marriage Law has been in office for a short while before he made his intentions known. There appears to be little doubt that Dr. Pritpal Singh and his friends persuaded him – if he, at all needed any persuation. This writing intends to keep the record straight and is being written (on December 11, 2007) while the memory still is fresh.]
Author : S. Gurtej Singh (IAS)
[The event is not even a week old and many misunderstandings have already cropped up. Jathedar Manmohan Singh Bajaj has already claimed that it was their group which persuaded the government of Pakistan to adopt the marriage law. He also claims that his group had provided the draft of the law to be enacted. Both claims are preposterous and when he made them in my presence, I told this to his face. I asked for a copy of the draft that he had provided but he had none. Syed Afzal Haider, the present Law Minister, the moving spirit behind the intention to enact Sikh Marriage Law has been in office for a short while before he made his intentions known. There appears to be little doubt that Dr. Pritpal Singh and his friends persuaded him – if he, at all needed any persuation. This writing intends to keep the record straight and is being written (on December 11, 2007) while the memory still is fresh.]
My second visit to Pakistan this year came totally unexpected again. From the daily papers I learnt that Pakistan’s Law Minister Syed Afzal Haider had announced (in response to Dr. Pritpal Singh’s public request – as became known later) that the Government of Pakistan was prepared to enact law relating to Sikh marriages. This happened at Nankana Sahib during the birthday celebrations of Guru Nanak, when a huge crowd of worshippers from all over the world had converged on the Guru’s Nankana and was a part of the audience. This was very welcome news in every way. For the first time in the world a country had committed at the highest level to enact Sikh personal law. The effect on other countries, particularly India, could be guessed. I had met Mr. Haider during my last visit and had performed an errand for him. He appeared to me to be a serious person whose word could be relied upon. All that I planned in this respect was to look on with expectation until it happened.
That was not to be. I learnt later that Haider asked Dr. Pritpal Singh to provide him with a draft of the law to be enacted. So on the 24th itself (the date of announcement) Dr. Pritpal Singh rang up Paramjit Singh Sarna, president of the DGMC and requested him to have the draft prepared. The requirement was that it should be done immediately as Haider wanted it to become law before elections to the parliament had taken place – democracy has its own pitfalls. Sardar Sarna asked his lawyer friends including Mr. Phoolka, Justice Sodhi and Mr. K. T. S. Tulsi and some other judges in Delhi and Chandigarh to do the job within a week or so. They all, naturally, felt that the time was too short. On the 27th afternoon, he rang me up with the same request. When he explained the circumstances, I knew that it was now or never. I consulted my colleague at the Tat Gurmat Taksal Sardar Harshinder Singh, who is also a lawyer and we conveyed our agreement to undertake the difficult job.
The 27th was spent in collecting all the material we needed. It consisted of earlier attempts, available in my personal archives and all the marriage laws we know to have been used for formulating the Hindu Marriage Act and the Special Marriages Act, downloading all the available electronic copies, buying some books and so on. Anand Marriage Act of !909 was available in the Encyclopaedia of Sikhism. By the evening we were ready for the job.
We sat for the next three days from sunrise to sunset. After sunset Harshinder Singh continued the work of consulting his lawyer friend Kamaljit Singh Dhillon. Dhillon also sat with us for half a day and gave very valuable suggestions. By the 30th the law had taken some shape. On the 1st we held a meeting at the Guru Granth Sahib Bhawan in Sector 27, Chandigarh. Most of the invitees including, Professors Kashmir Singh (who came all the way from Amritsar), Professor Kulbir Singh, Justice Ajit Singh Bains (who had to fetch his wife and left midway), Navkiran Singh advocate (who also had an important errand to run and left midway), Sardar Amarjit Singh (a lexicographer), Sardar Balwant Singh Gulliani Advocate and Sardar Harjinder Singh Dilgeer an author.
Those who could not attend, included Justice S. S. Sodhi (who had his hands too full to spare time), Mr. Gurmeet Singh Advocate (who goes to Sirsa every Saturday), Justice K. S. Tiwana (who was extremely graceful and would have loved to perform the service to the people but could not attend due to poor health as he is 82 and has had a by-pass surgery). A couple of others did not respond.
We provided to this small group the complete draft that we had prepared the previous day. Sardar Harshinder Singh read it out section by section and both of us noted down the suggestions they gave. Several valuable suggestions came from Professor Kashmir Singh. One advocate, a friends of Harshinder Singh, fired a sharp barb or two at the core team holding them to be ignorant, not only of law but also of being deficient in commonsense. On the whole it went well. There were not many changes that were required. Harshinder Singh and I sat down for about an hour and incorporated them in our draft. We polished it up a little bit up to the afternoon of the next day.
By the evening of the 2nd a hard copy of it had been despatched to Sardar Sarna who had ben enquiring about it almost everyday after the 28th. It reached him by the evening and he sent it to Justice Kuldip Singh early next morning. He was requested to suggest changes; we had enough time to incorporate them. The judge initially found the draft somewhat inadequate but agreed that it would do for Pakistan. He was requested to make changes that would be required in India. He promised to do it if three leading spiritual personalities sat with him throughout the exercise. Sarna is a resourceful person and perhaps will be able to arrange nine maunds of oil to enable Radha to dance. At least, a draft for India will not have to be done in a hurry and will perhaps be prepared by the most spiritually inclined and the legally most looked up to personalities. The others to whom copies were sent by Sarna, could not give any feed back and of them only Mr. K. T. S. Tulsi went through it thoroughly.
We left for Amritsar on way to Lahore on the 5th morning and reached on the 6th. Tulsi had crossed the border with us and Manjit Singh Khaira came an hour or so later. Our meeting with the Law Minister was fixed in the evening.
In the prepratory meeting, P. S. Sarna, Dr. Pritpal Singh, Manjit Singh Khaira and the rest of us took part. Khaira wanted that the draft that he had brought should be presented although nobody had seen it earlier. He explained that the chief merit of his draft was that the succession act had also been incorporated in it. He said that he had provided, unlike in the Hindu Succession Act, that young person of any age could be adopted. Harshinder Singh’s opinion was that no succession law cannot be enacted without consulting the people who were to be governed by it. Meanwhile, Professor Kashmir Singh read over a few sections at random and found that it tallied with the Hindu Succession Act on the point of the age of the person to be adopted. Khaira attributed it to the folly of the typist whom he had instructed not to include it. It was clear that the draft had been prepared without due care. So his request to present it to the Law Minister did not find favour with anyone. Tulsi spoke highly of the other draft and thought ‘not a word or a punctuation mark needs to be changed.’ He felt ‘proud’ that among the Sikhs there were capapble persons who could draft laws. It was a highly ‘specialised job’ according to him. He used other superlatives regarding the drafting team, with which the reader of this piece will not be concerned and mentioning them may expose the writer to the charge of immodesty. The meeting with the Law Minister took place in the evening. With the entire Press looking on, the draft of the Sikh Marriage Act was presented by Mr. Sarna. The Minister assured us that he had taken the permission of the President and all other formalities had been completed. The next morning we were informed that the draft had already been sent to Islamabad for the scrutiny of the Law Ministry. The ceremony took place in the Pearl Continental and was followed by dinner. Pritpal Singh dropped us back to the Gymkhana Club.
Source : Email From Author.
