Bihar Woman Thrashed In Golden Temple On Suspicion Of Smoking Beedi, Incident Caught On Video

A woman was thrashed by sewadars at the Golden Temple in Punjab’s Amritsar city earlier this week for smoking beedi in the premises.

Sikhs consider smoking tobacco a taboo as the tenth Sikh Guru, Gobind Singh, prohibited them from doing it.

A video of the incident has gone viral on social media. It shows some sewadars at the Gurudwara questioning the woman and later slapping her several times as punishment.

The video shows the woman sitting in the premises with her daughter while the sewadars ask her if she has more beedis hidden in her clothes. The woman, hands folded, says she only had that one beedi.

The sewadars ask her why she smoked in the premises. The woman’s daughter replies that her mother is old-fashioned and thus smokes beedi. She adds that “we are not terrorists” (translated from Hindi). The men reply that they never called them terrorists in the first place.

The girl says her mother made a mistake. The men ask them why they had come to the Gurudwara. The girl says they had faith in “Wahe Guru”, which is why they had come.

At this point, one of the sewadars hits the mother hard on her cheek. The woman bursts into tears even as a sewadar tells her – “you don’t smoke beedi in your own temples, but do it here in our Gurudwara” (translated from Hindi). The woman, crying, touches her ears as a show of apology and pleads to be spared.

She is slapped hard for the second time, before a volley of blows and slaps from all sides. The girl touches a sewadar’s feet to spare her mother. The men ask the two women to get up, saying they should be sent to “room number 50”.

Crying, the women obey the command. At this point, the video stops.

You can watch the video here.

The Times of India has reported that the two women were also accompanied by a young boy. The report says that the sewadars were members of the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) task force.

The report further says that while the incident took place on the intervening night of March 14 and 15, officials at the Golden Temple kept in under wraps and even the police are tight-lipped about it.

The woman was let off without being handed to the police, the report has quoted an unidentified police officer as saying.

Hindustan Times has reported that the woman is a resident of Bihar. The report has quoted an unidentified police officer as saying that the woman was let off as “those who produced the woman to the police could not show any cigarette and even in the video, there is no proof of her smoking any cigarette“.

Prominent members of the community have, instead of condemning the violence on the woman, called the incident an act of sacrilege.

SGPC general secretary Jathedar Karnail Singh Pancholi posted about the incident on his Facebook page yesterday, where he called it the “third case of sacrilege inside the Golden Temple”.

In the post, Panjoli said that the woman slept in Parikarma and tried to smoke a beedi in the night when a sewadar saw her. Panjoli called the Golden Temple manager to be sacked from the post.

Panjoli has been quoted by Hindustan Times as saying that the men who thrashed the woman were not SGPC members but devotees.

Smoking tobacco is taboo in Sikhism

Smoking inside Gurudwaras attract charges of outraging religious sentiments (IPC section 295A) besides other penal provisions.

Swarajya reported about such a case last year when a man was arrested in Punjab for smoking inside Takht Sri Kesgarh Sahib gurudwara in Anandpur Sahib. Paramjit Singh, a Sikh belonging to the dominant Jatt caste, reportedly took a puff and threw his cigarette behind the ragis. He was booked under IPC section 295A and promptly arrested.

Depictions of Sikhs smoking in films trigger outrage as well.

In 2018, Bollywood film Manmarziyaan courted controversy when a scene showed a Sikh man, played by Abhishek Bachchan, smoking after solemnising his marriage rituals. The character was shown removing his turban and smoking.

The Sikh community protested this scene, saying it hurt their religious sentiments. The production house, Eros, deleted the scene from the film. Another scene showing actor Taapsee Pannu smoking (she is a Sikh in real life) was deleted too.

Later, Pannu criticised the protests and wrote on Twitter, “I am sure this edit will assure that no Sikh will ever Smoke and no woman will ever think about ANYONE else while getting married in a Gurudwara. THIS surely will make Waheguru proud and assures that MY religion is the purest, most righteous and peaceful (sic).”

In 2016, the 91-year-old Sikh Gurdwaras Act of 1925 was amended to prohibit all those Sikhs from voting in the elections to Sikh religious bodies who smoke tobacco or consume alcohol. Those who trim or shave beard and hair were added in the prohibition list too.

The original act allowed any Sikh above 21 years of age to vote.

The amendment was passed after then president Pranab Mukherjee gave assent to a bill passed in Parliament. The act regulates administration of gurdwaras in Punjab, Chandigarh, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh.

Acts of ‘sacrilege’ (called “be-adabi” in Punjab) at Gurudwaras often trigger violent reactions from devout Sikhs.

At least seven people have been killed over accusations of ‘sacrilege‘ of Sikh holy texts and symbols since 2016.

These include the December 2021 lynching of a man at the Golden Temple after he jumped off the grills separating devotees from the Granthis and picked up a diamond-encrusted sword from the spot.