Here’s some history.
Date: July 20, 1986
Location: Espanola, NM
Speaker: … Inhale.
(Students chanting, ‘Ong Namo Guru Dev Namo…’)
Speaker: Wahe Guru Ji Ka Khalsa, Wahe Guru Ji Ki Fateh.
Speaker … As you probably have heard, well, let me ask you how many people were at solstice and were there the day which talked about the lawsuit? Okay, I am going to talk about some of the same things for those who weren’t there and then amplify a little bit because it’s been filed. I can tell you what is in the lawsuit and tell you what is going on besides the lawsuit.
Basically, there is a very sophisticated, serious attempt to destroy us, to destroy the Siri Singh Sahib’s credibility, to take away from us everything that we’ve created over the last fifteen years, in the context of a lawsuit.
It’s not the first time that we’ve gone through hard times, as I mentioned at solstice, we’ve got quite a history. I think one of the reasons is because what has been given to us is so precious that things have to get weeded out and we have to get strong. The Siri Singh Sahib will not be here one day and whether this Dharma continues will depend on who is left and what happens then. And so, we’ve gone through a lot. We’ve gone through a lot of humiliation; we’ve gone through a lot of pain.
My view of it is, we started off as hippies. Remember many of us were hippies and then we got a lot of flak from the Sikhs in India because we did yoga and they said, “if you do yoga, you can’t be Sikhs”, and that was sort of crazy.
After that, Time Magazine*** came out around the world and said, ‘this is not Sikhism, it’s Bhajanism and he is a womanizer’. That went everywhere. Not much happened.
Then we became Iranians. Remember that? About four hundred and forty-four days, we were Iranians.
And then Jonestown happened and we went through you know, that.
Finally in the eighties, we became Sikhs. Everybody knows we are Sikhs. Now we are terrorists but…
(Student’s laughter)
At least we are Sikhs, and there is no doubt about that anymore.
And along the way we’ve had some people that, I put a lot of trust in, and I looked to for, almost like role models, and almost all of those people are gone. And I think there’s a reason for it. If the Siri Singh Sahib had died before Lehri and Guru Shabad and Wha Guru Singh, Premka, Phil and few others… if he had died before they left, you can imagine what would have happened to this Dharma; with those people and the way their personalities developed. So that has been painful, but we got through it, and I have no doubt that the Guru is doing everything because this thing that the Siri Singh Sahib has given us, these teachings that have come through him, it is just too precious to lose.
Now there is a serious threat, a sophisticated threat, a well-financed threat against us and it’s in the context of a lawsuit. Premka and Karta Purkh Kaur filed lawsuits, or at least lawsuits were filed in their names last week and they both allege this, but I am going to refer to Premka’s allegations. Here is what she says:
She says that the Siri Singh Sahib has never had a sincere belief in Sikhism, and he has never taught Sikhism. If he’s never taught Sikhism, then I’m not a Sikh. And so, when you start filling in the sentences, the threat’s against all of us, that’s the beginning.
She said that he never got the title of Siri Singh Sahib. You’ve heard that one before. But now she says there is not a title that Sikhs of India relate to as a title; rather, it is a phrase that the Sikhs in India use when they greet each other in a respectful manner. They go around saying, ‘Siri Singh Sahib Ji, Siri Singh Sahib Ji.’
(Students’ laughter)
She has alleged that she was physically imprisoned for eighteen years, and I’ll get to that. But she also says, the Siri Singh Sahib never washed the floors of the Golden Temple. So, I guess somebody was watching him for thirty-nine years.
She says that before he came to United States, the Siri Singh Sahib never read a Sikh scripture. Japji; nothing; never read a Sikh scripture. She says that all of the properties of Sikh Dharma, 3HO, Siri Singh Sahib Corporation, that’s the land you are sitting on, Ram Das Puri, the secretariat, all of the ashrams, should be taken away because what these corporations are doing with Yogi Bhajan, is racketeering activities.
Racketeering is basically what the mob does, when they kill and destroy and it’s prostitution, arson, gambling, you know, that’s what, you know, what you think of racketeering. She says we are racketeering activities, and because of that all the properties should be taken away.
She alleges sexual abuse by the Siri Singh Sahib. She says that for eighteen years she was falsely arrested and imprisoned. So aside from all of her credit cards and all of her travels around the world and all of the Mercedes that have been available to her and all the places she lived in, and all the tours she did to an ashram by herself, that she was physically and spiritually imprisoned for eighteen years, unable to leave, constantly watched under threats of death.
She says that for eighteen years she was the subject of emotional distress. She says that she never could think clearly. She never had free thought. Her independent ability to think was destroyed for eighteen years.
So, she says, in another part of the lawsuit, that she wants the minimum wage for all the hours she put in, which she calculates, if I remember right, as $362,000. She basically wants a spiritual refund.
By the way the racketeering activities are: “we say we are Sikhs when we are not and therefore, we used the mails to collect Dasvandh, to send out notices for solstice, to have people come across state lines to ladies camp”.
(Students’ laughter)
Karta Purkh Kaur says she was enticed to come to ladies camp under promises that there will be courses concerning women’s studies, when in truth and in fact, the only thing offered were indoctrination courses by Yogi Bhajan. I didn’t know if you knew that that’s what’s happening to you; that nothing else is offered. She said she wasn’t allowed to go horseback riding.
(Students’ laughter)
She says that there were sexual abuse, rapes and sodomy and all kinds, and in fact she says, Guru Amrit Kaur helped the Siri Singh Sahib do all those things and so did Guruke. I guess because he is so weak.
(Students’ laughter)
To tell you how hateful this thing is, I mean, really vicious, aside from suing those people, Karta Purkh also sued Bibiji and Shakti. They are part of this garbage.
A week before, the Monday before Peace Prayer Day, there was a meeting in New York. There is a man who used to live in the Boston ashram. His name is Pritam Singh. Pritam Singh left the ashram seventy-three, seventy-four, seventy-five, sometime then and became a “true Sikh”. All right, “true Sikh” and I took his deposition in 1977. That was a year when they filed a lawsuit to have Guru Gun Kaur, who used to live here, admitted to a psychiatric hospital, because she gave a gift to the Siri Singh Sahib Corporation. Her parents were named in the suit and part of that was an affidavit from psychiatrist saying that she is mentally deranged, she is a danger to her self and she should be hospitalized on an emergency basis. It turned out, in that lawsuit, that the psychiatrists never met her. So just to give you some idea how lawsuits…
So anyway, I took Pritam Singh’s deposition in the state of Maine; I went up to the state of Maine and took his deposition. He said he is looking for lawsuits to destroy Yogi Bhajan, because he is a fraud. He also said that in 3HO there is haves and have-nots; there is the princes and princesses, and then there are the slaves. Examples he gave for the princes, and the people who run the show and do all these things were Guru Shabad, Lehri and Premka.
(Students’ laughter)
Anyway, he met with the Siri Singh Sahib in New York the Monday before Peace Prayer Day and said, “these women are going to sue you, and it is my lawsuit. It’s my lawyers; it’s my money. One phone call from me, and you are destroyed in the press. But I am going to give you a chance to save yourself. All you have to do is three or four things; resign your office, Siri Singh Sahib; liquidate all the corporations and give him all the money, so that he can decide how to use it for “true Sikh” causes and of course give all the Americans to the Indians.”
(Students’ laughter)
Siri Singh Sahib decided not to do that.
(Students’ laughter)
So, they went to the judge on the Thursday before Peace Prayer Day, gave him the complaint to file it. You have to understand, in United States any bum with fifty bucks can file a lawsuit. The judge looked at it and said, “you can’t file this. This is for the newspapers. It’s not a lawsuit,” and they couldn’t file it.
So, Peace Prayer Day came. It was nice.
They went back the following week; another lawsuit– they had cleaned it up. He said, “Not enough, come back again.” Came back again.
Student: Where were they filing?
Speaker: Albuquerque US District Court. Third time came back. Judge said, “No, clean it up.” Fourth time, they filed, and he permitted it to be filed. The fourth time, all the allegations I just told you about are in it. This is the cleaned-up version by the fourth time around.
That’s part of what’s going on.
The other part is what I believe is the real focus behind this, and that is to destroy the credibility of the Siri Singh Sahib. The Siri Singh Sahib is the most prominent voice in the Sikh world for trying to bring about a compromise for the problems in India.
The people who are supporting Khalistan have been urging him for years to come on their side and give his voice and his support and he has said, ‘no.’ And so, anyone who is interested in continuing that conflict wants to destroy his credibility, so that they don’t need his okay. This is one way to do it.
There is a lot of money involved in this thing, and probably what’s going to happen is they are going to take that court case, that says United States District Court. It’s got the whole thing. It’s got an official stamp of the clerk. It’s got a little word on there that says “complaint”. Complaint is basically what any bum can file. A judgment is the reality of what happens at the end of the case. But when that complaint, with that little word complaint and that big piece of paper, goes to India and Africa and Canada and Great Britain, I’ll tell you, those people don’t know the difference between a complaint and judgment. And they’ll read this thing probably as if it’s gospel. We’ve had some of those people come here and knocking on doors, trying to give people in the ashram copies of those complaints.
My guess is they are going to be mailed to all your ashrams, and your parents, and all the Sikh Gurdwaras, and businesses, and whatever they can do to get mileage out of that scandalous piece of paper.
And so that’s what they’re after. Because the lawsuit, I told you basically what the lawsuit is, and as you know, I mean, we’re not dummies. There’s no games being played here. There’s no secrecy that happens that you don’t know about. You know that’s a bunch of garbage. They can’t prove it because it’s not true. And so sometimes lawsuits are filed for reasons other than the lawsuit.
During the anti-Vietnam war movement, there were many lawsuits; many conspiracy charges that the government filed. Probably the most famous was the Chicago seven case. In Chicago seven case, they took the seven most prominent anti-war personalities charged them with a conspiracy, that they conspired together to disrupt the democratic convention in Chicago. What they said is that ‘they crossed state lines to do this’. Fact is, when those seven people got together in that court room for arraignment, it’s the first time as a group they had ever met each other. Oh some knew each other, but it was the first time as a group they ever met each other. Now the lawsuit had to do with conspiracy; the reason for the lawsuit had to do with destroying the anti-war movement. That’s what it was all about.
And there’s cases that go on and on and on.
The beet case. Remember the beet case here? The lady ate beets in seventy-six. Sometime later, she had her tubes tied. Eight years later she came to her senses and said, “Oh my God, I ate beets, I had, I call them “my tubal litigations” and she sued us.
(Students’ laughter)
This lawsuit is a little more serious, because this one goes against us. Try to get everything because we’re racketeers and basically saying we are not Sikhs. They are trying to divide us. They are trying to put doubt in everybody’s minds because, you know, I remember one time, during the Time Magazine deal, I had to interface with a reporter. Siri Singh Sahib said he will not be interviewed.
I asked him, “Why?”
He said, “Because you can’t answer slanderous questions.”
He said, “But go to the reporter and I will have an interview with one condition.”
I said, “What’s that?”
He said, “Just go to the reporter and say, the Siri Singh Sahib will consent to interview, if you can prove to me as a lawyer, that your mother slept with your father, when you were conceived and not the milkman.”
(Students’ laughter)
You can’t do it.
We just had an ashram meeting about this, and I’ll tell you what my Karma is. My Karma is I have to read all this garbage. That’s my job. Siri Singh Sahib has never read any of it, I don’t think.
He says, “You read it. You tell me what’s in there.”
So, I read this, and I read the Time (magazine article) and we do an Akhand Path here every week, and so my slot for some reason is the part of the Guru, although it’s throughout the Guru, but it says, ‘don’t read slander.’
(Students’ laughter)
And so I keep getting that balance, and it’s interesting because when the Guru says, ‘don’t read slander,’ there have been some Hukams here, I know on some of the Sunday Gurdwaras, about what happens if you speak slander. It’s serious business. Because how does this reporter really know his mother really slept with his father. He couldn’t, and it could create doubt; and it could create doubt which you never can disprove. That’s what’s so insidious about it. You can never disprove it, and that’s why… This lawsuit’s a public document. You know what’s in it. If you want to read it, I’ll have it at my house. Come pollute yourself.
(Students’ laughter)
I mean, you can. It’s there; it’ll be there and it’s your choice. They want us to read it, they want us to get doubts, they want to doubt each other. I mentioned at solstice that there is only one real danger, if through this whole process, somehow in your mind, you’d say, ‘God, I wish I can talk to somebody, but I really can’t talk to anybody in the Dharma.’ If you get in that space, they’ve won. They won. Because there is nothing we can’t talk to each other about. But this is what is going on and you’re at ladies camp now, but when you go home, you are going to be hit with it, probably. As I said, probably through the mail; there may be newspaper articles. I understand they are going to try to get on 60 Minutes, Time Magazine… you know, this is their shot.
That’s basically what is going on and what I’d like to do is open this up for questions. We’ve got about twenty minutes.
Student: Isn’t racketeering something you need a grand jury to investigate for?
Speaker: There’s two kinds of racketeering. One is criminal racketeering. Criminal racketeering, you need a grand jury, you need indictments and people can go to jail. Recently in the last, it’s been on the books for the last fifteen years, there’s another aspect called civil racketeering, called civil rico (racketeering influenced corrupt organizations). How is that? And for the state of New Mexico for instance, I just filed one of the biggest civil rico cases, in fact the biggest case to have been filed in New Mexico against people been convicted of racketeering. Civil rico says ‘no, you don’t have to have been convicted, the US Supreme Court just decided that. They say, ‘if you are involved in racketeering activities, then whoever sues you can get whatever damage you’ve caused times three, plus attorney’s fees, plus costs, plus you forfeit all your property’. Heavy. The reason it’s heavy is it’s for the mob.
Now I don’t think this case is going to be tried, as far as jury is concerned, my own feeling. I think the judge will probably throw it out. Because I don’t think in United States you can have a jury decide who is a true Sikh. Let’s change the words around, okay?
I am going to sue the Catholic Church because the father and the mother superior told me that Christ was the son of God; that I should be guilty about my sexuality; that when I die, I may be judged and I may go to hell. Eighteen years later I found out it’s a bunch of lies. Christ wasn’t the son of God and they can’t prove he was, and I enjoy my sexuality, and I want money.
(Students’ laughter)
Same lawsuit, isn’t it? Emotional distress, I have been imprisoned, you know, I’m going to have spiritual damnation….(*some words are hard to understand due to the speaker using motions vs. words.)
‘I am going to sue the Temple. Thirteen years until I have my barmitzvah, whatever that indoctrination session was. I wore these things; I was humiliated; I was, I was basically ostracized from society; I want a refund.’
(Students’ laughter)
Isn’t that the same lawsuit?
Student: Have there ever been lawsuits like that?
Speaker: There have been, and most of them thrown out.
The times it doesn’t get thrown out, sometimes might be due to snake handling, you know, when you get bit and you die or something, in the name of religion.
So the lawsuit, they can’t prove lies. Or if you can, it will be a fluke. The real thing here is not the lawsuit, it’s the reason for the lawsuit and the attack against us.
Student: Why are these ladies doing this? Is Amrit Singh offering them money?
Speaker: It’s Pritam Singh. I am not going to say yes until I can prove it.
(Students’ laughter)
Student: What was the question?
Speaker: Question is whether these ladies are being paid money by Pritam Singh, and I said I would not say yes until I can prove it.
Student: (—-)
Speaker: Oh yeah, there have been other things by Pritam Singh. Pritam Singh and Sant Saroop Singh (he is from Albuquerque). They are calling people in 3HO basically saying look, (Pritam Singh has been making the actual money offer), ‘you leave 3HO, keep your turban on and sue. I will give you money. I will give you money for your business. I will pay for the lawyer. I will take care of everything. Just do it. Come with me. Sue. Destroy Yogi Bhajan.’ Those are calls going out to our family.
Student: (—-)
Speaker: Until I can prove it, I am not going to say but I will say this.
Student: Repeat the question.
Speaker: Where is Pritam Singh getting all this money? I don’t know and I can’t prove it. I don’t have documents. Now, I am going to give you my view of the world which may be connected and may not be.
(Students’ laughter)
A few years ago there was a big, there has been a tremendous amount of energy to create a fund for Khalistan. A few years ago there were requests for money from the Gurdwaras to buy a tank. Remember that? To buy a tank, a tank from Great Britain over the English channel through France, through Hungary and Yugoslavia and eventually get it to the Punjab.
(Students’ laughter)
A lot of money. About ten years ago, there was the beginnings of a serious attempt and, and now successfully, to divide the Sikhs in Punjab. Because a united militant, martial group of nine million religious people are pretty hard to crack, if you have an atheist to give a life. About at the same time, Russia started going into Afghanistan. Now there is air-wars over Pakistan and the next little step is Punjab. Punjab is where all the wheat is grown for that whole part of the world. Coincidently, Chernobyl happened, and their wheat crop is in trouble. The Russians are very patient people. The Russian leaders. Very patient. Siri Singh Sahib is one of the few voices in the world saying, ‘don’t let this happen. Sikhs unite, work out your differences with the Central Government, remain united, strong Indians of the Sikh religion.’ Now maybe there is a connection; maybe there isn’t. A lot of money is available. Lots of money.
Student: (—-)
Speaker: Yes, Pritam Singh, Pritam Singh said about that, no thank you.
Students: (—-)
Speaker: Oh, she said there is a traditional Sikh way of resolving disputes by having a Panj or five people come together, Bhai Jeevan Singh, Bhai Manmohan Singh, few others. Siri Singh Sahib mentioned that during some lecture.
All right. What happened is Pritam Singh said, ‘No thank you. I am going to file my lawsuit’. “My lawsuit”, right?
Student: Aside from just understanding what is going on, what is the next legal step we are going to take?
Speaker: Probably the next… well let me tell you what happens in court. The things have been filed. Next thing is probably a motion to have it thrown out for the reasons I have mentioned. Whatever may be left or if the judge thinks, the jury should decide these questions, eventually, there will be a trial. Probably a year, a year and half down the road. In the meantime, we will take the depositions of each other and ask questions under oath… “when was the first time you saw Indians greet each other by saying Siri Singh Sahibji.”
(Students’ laughter)
And where was that? And who else was with you? That’s the way lawsuits work.
(Students’ laughter)
Student: What’s the financial and legal connection between individual ashrams and Sikh Dharma International in terms of susceptibility to the lawsuit.
Speaker: Okay, what happens if we lose.
Student: Repeat the question.
Speaker: Question is, what is the financial inter-relationships between the ashrams and Sikh Dharma, basically in case we lose? Some ashrams are owned by Sikh Dharma of California, some by the Siri Singh Sahib corporation. Siri Singh Sahib corporation owns I think, Ram Das Puri. One of those corporations has Ram Das Puri, this ashram and the secretariat. All those properties will be put in a trust to be somehow managed for “true Sikhism”, rather than what we are doing with them. Those ashrams that are not owned by those corporations are not subject to this. Yet.
Student: (It seems like there’s a lot of economic reasons behind this. It doesn’t seem to me that the assets of our group is really that much compared to those the assets of those who are behind trying to divide the Sikh nation and the whole thing. I don’t really understand… you’re presenting it as economic…that’s why I’m not understanding it…
Speaker: The purpose is to divide us, divide us financially; divide us emotionally; create a lot of distrust. One of the reasons is because for those people who have been in India, we know how the Sikhs in India look to us. They look to us almost as, not a last hope, but a great hope; that what has been going on for five hundred years is going to continue; they see with our children over there.
Aside from us as the Sangat, there were basically two people who were the main voices of compromise and rationality to the problems in India. One was Longowal* and the other Siri Singh Sahib, and Longowal signed a peace agreement with Rajiv Gandhi, and within a few weeks he was assassinated.
Siri Singh Sahib is the only one left. And I think if they were to kill him, they would probably create a martyr, which is not their best interest. If they can destroy his credibility, by saying he’s womanizer and he’s fraudulent and he never really was the Sikh and destroy his credibility, then you don’t need him on your side.
But I think more immediate is, besides that, to destroy us as a Sangat, by slander, doubt, distrust.
Student: Most Indians don’t relate to the Siri Singh Sahib the way we do, in my experience, and I have a hard time understanding why he is such an influential voice or such a threat to them. You know what I mean? I don’t see the Indians, at least the American Indian Sikhs, respecting him or relating to him that much.
Speaker: If your experience has been what mine is, which is basically, the Sikhs who came to United States; and I’ve had lot of experience with them in Berkley and Yuba city and Los Angeles and Houston and other places. There is probably a hundred thousand. What happened with the disrespect that came from there, was basically in the early years they came here, a lot of them shaved, took their turbans off, did their number, went back home and you know, from the Punjab people said, “My God, what happened?” They said, “You just don’t understand America. You can’t live there that way. It’s impossible.” And then we went. And they said, “What do you mean, you can’t live here? These people are living this way.” So, there is lot of negativity, from those early years.
But when we’re talking about the eleven million people in India who have seen us and seen our kirtan and seen our children and heard him speak, those are the people who look to him. People here didn’t, I mean, some do but most of them are so involved in their own businesses and now in Khalistan… Those aren’t the people we’re talking about. We are talking about people living and dying in the Punjab.
Student: Are we taking any counter suits or any legal actions against them?
Speaker: As far as counter suits, we will file whatever countersuit we can prove. And that’s being worked on.** As far as politically, we’re talking now about what we are going to do about the Indian Gurdwaras and how to relate to them. As far as the press, we have a press release we’ve issued and that will be available tomorrow for everyone; and it’ll be sent out to all the ashrams, in case there is local articles in the newspaper back home.
Student: So, when people come up to you and say, “what do you think about all this?”
Speaker: Tell them it’s a bunch of garbage, bunch of lies and people want some money and they are not going to get it.
Student: When will we file our…
Speaker: Probably in a couple months. “when are we going to file a countersuit?”… and as soon as we get the information we need, we’ll file it, probably in a couple months. Yeah, and if the suit’s still alive then.
Student: Are these women and men involved, are they wearing their bana?
Speaker: Pritam Singh is a “true Sikh” in his mind. He wears a turban and beard. Karta Purakh does not. Premka, I don’t know.
Student: What kind of things should people be alerting to when they get back home? What kind of signals or signs or things that can show there’s a stress in the community, or some problems we should be sensative to…
Speaker: Well, couple of things… if anything happens back home; any phone calls; anybody in the Sangat of the kind I’ve mentioned; anything like that; anything in the mail; anything where somebody is trying to contact you to give their view of how righteous this suit is. It’s real important to call me or call Gurujot Singh. It’s real important to sit down as a Sangat and talk about it. It’s real important to pray.
Because I’ll tell you, all the legal shenanigans in the world that I could dream up from my purest scorpion mind, could not have come up with the idea, the judge is not going to let that lawsuit be filed in the two days before Peace Prayer Day. I couldn’t…Guru Ram Das is around, in New Mexico. But that’s the thing is – talk, just talk, there’s no secrets. If there’s doubts, talk about it.
Student: So we’re going to get the latest update?
Speaker: You get the latest, I will be sending out updated letters from the chancellor’s office of what’s going on the lawsuit. So everybody is going to be informed.
Student: Will those be just sent to the ashram or to everyone, because we had a little problem with disbursement of information.
Speaker: That I don’t know yet. If there is any problem with disbursement, let Guru Amrit Kaur know before you leave, so that that can be taken care of. Anybody who wants to be addressed specially, I think we can do that too. A lot of people gave donations at solstice; a lot of people. So anybody who’s done that or would like to can. Anybody wants to get a letter or be on the mailing list, can be on the mailing list.
Speaker: Okay, let me take a couple more questions
Student: Would it be a good idea if everyone over the next couple of days, called their husbands and ashrams to inform them of what you discussed? So we can just get the ball rolling?
Speaker: Yeah, one of the things…we are here in New Mexico. It’s happening here in New Mexico. You are here, I am here, you can get all the information which you need. Call your husbands. Call your ashrams. Say “We had a meeting. This is what’s going on. If you hear anything, get back to me.” Let’s get the word out.
Student: Tell them about the papers that are going around. They will probably get mail at the ashram and what to do about it.
Speaker: Yeah, if the copies of lawsuit come, give me a call, because I got to keep this thing up to date. There have been some ideas about what to do with those things, if they come. Some people want to just send it back to Premka and say, “no thank you”. Some people wanted… one of the allegations is that she is being hounded and harassed and intimidated under threats of death from people in 3HO, you and me. So, I am not sure we should send them back to her, because she may go to her analyst and God knows what will happen. But if you get them, call and you know, we can give you some suggestions and let you know what some other people might be doing. But it’s real important to let us know if anything like that happens.
Student: (inaudible)
Speaker: …there is a privilege in the law that anything that is filed in a court is privileged. Okay, I don’t know want to do, because we’ve run out of our time.
Speaker: All right, well, what we can do also is talk among yourselves, right come back, another night this week…
Speaker: All right, three more questions, I am not going to tempt fate.
Student: So how much money is involved in order to just defend ourselves against these lawsuits?
Speaker: It will probably cost between a $100,000 and $150,000, if it goes, the full thing through trial, and the only way we get the money is if we give it ourselves.
Student: Are we collecting now or what?
Speaker: Well, the only way to defend it is to pay a lawyer.
Student: I’ve been hearing about the other charges, but how are the sexual assault charges being handled?
Speaker: Um, I’m only hesitating because it’s an interesting phraseology. They are being denied. It didn’t happen.
Student: How are they being handled in the press?
Speaker: Press says that, I think the article in the Albuquerque Journal says, “leader of Sikhs enslaves women”. Something like that; and it had to do mostly with the false imprisonment and the mental anguish and then there were a couple of sentences about, “and there’s allegations of sexual abuse”.
Student: Will we be hiring outside lawyers?
Speaker: Yeah, we have. We have. We have outside lawyers in Santa Fe, who while they are respected, they’ve work with me on the beet case; they are used to it. People in New Mexico are pretty much used to it, by the way.
Student: …(inaudible)…They are trying to show it’s a cult; the main theme of it is that it’s a cult…(inaudible)
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The thing that is so astonishing about this, is that Premka knows that we have documents going back fifteen years. We’ve got a document called Hukamnama. Hukamnama. You know what Hukamnama is? “order of the Guru”; that’s what the Gurus used to write when they gave their orders. It’s a Hukamnama from Akal Takhat; 1974; bestowing a title of Bhai Sahib on Siri Singh Sahib; and we’ve got it. I asked at Pritam Singh in his deposition, “Well, what about this?” “Well, it must have been a mistake”. There’s only two people alive who have that title from the Akal Takhat. Siri Singh Sahib is one and Bhai Sahib Kapoor Singh who is the national professor of Sikhism is the other one. Only two people alive have that title and we’ve got all the documents. We’ve got documents from SGPC; we’ve got documents; we got stacks of documents going back fifteen years, and she knew it. We’ve got the originals.
Speaker: Anyway. So, last question.
Student: What is the way to handle the Indian Gurdwaras? If the communities aren’t that aware of what is going on, is it better not to bring it up?
Speaker: That whole strategy is being worked on now. This thing just happened couple days ago. But that is a whole different area that we are working on. And all the ashrams and areas where there are Indian Gurdwaras will be contacted directly, okay. And probably before you leave ladies camp, we can have another update, but I’ve got to end. And my wife has got her hand up.
(Students’ laughter)
Student: Do you just want to mention about people who are making phone calls and bringing the papers to people’s doors and what to do about that?
Speaker: If somebody came to my door, I’d tell him leave. You may want to invite them in and have tea, cookies.
Student: take all of what they have, tell them you’ll distribute it and then tear them all up and then they can’t give them to someone else.
Speaker: Yeah or take it in and send it in to us, you know.
Speaker: But don’t get too involved, unless you want to, with long discussions with them.
Okay, I appreciate it and we will do again if it looks like we need to. Thank you. Wahe Guru Ji Ka Khalsa, Wahe Guru Ji Ki Fateh.
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Resources from the Editor
Audio of this talk at KWTC on July 20, 1986.
*Tribune article about Longowal
**The countersuit brought in 1986 by Sikh Dharma and 3HO against Pritam Singh [interestingly, this countersuit was filed in response the lawsuit brought by Kate Felt (aka Karta Purkh Kaur) and S. Premka Kaur Khalsa). In other words, Pritam Singh was actually the one behind the lawsuit by these two women.]
***Pages from the 1977 Beads of Truth Magazine which share about
- the Siri Singh Sahib being given his title at the Akal Takht in India
- the letter, written by the Sikh Dharma Chancellor in 1977, demanding a retraction from Time Magazine
- Telegrams from SGPC officials demanding a retraction from the Time Magazine