NEW DELHI, Apr 17: Shockingly a young girl was disallowed entry in the Golden Temple, Amritsar, in Punjab because she was sporting Indian flag on one of her cheeks.
The girl alleged that she was turned away from the Golden Temple because of a face-painting of an Indian flag. A video clip of the incident has gone viral on the social media showing a man arguing with a male companion of the girl.
A guard at the holy Sikh shrine can be heard saying “It’s Punjab” when confronted by another man accompanying the woman who asks “Is this not India?” The clip, shot by the woman on a phone, shows them repeatedly asking the guard if it was not India and the guard aggressively nodding in disagreement. The clip ends with the guard trying to snatch the woman’s phone when she tells him was saying bizarre things. The girl is visible just for a fleeting second at the start of the clip, but can be heard.
The Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee, which administers the Golden Temple, has apologised for the official’s misbehaviour but claimed the painting on the girl’s face wasn’t an Indian fag as it didn’t have the Ashoka Chakra. “This is a Sikh shrine. Every religious place has its own decorum…We welcome everyone…We apologise if an official misbehaved…The flag on her face was not our national flag as it didn’t have Ashoka Chakra. It could have been a political flag,” Gurcharan Singh Grewal, General Secretary of SGPC, said.
(Manas Dasgupta)
