Sacrilege And The State: Three Constitutional Questions Punjab's Anti-Sacrilege Law Has Not Answered
Background
“The scripture is the abode of the Supreme Being.” - Guru Arjan Dev Ji, Guru Granth Sahib Ji, Ang 1226
On 20th April 2026, the Punjab Legislative Assembly unanimously passed the JaagatJot Sri Guru Granth Sahib Satkar (Amendment) Act, 2026, amending the foundational 2008 statute governing reverence, custody, and protection of the Guru Granth Sahib Ji. To Sikhs, the Guru Granth Sahib Ji is not merely a scripture it is the living, eternal eleventh Guru. Each physical copy, called a Saroop (meaning 'embodiment'), commands the care due a living person: a dedicated chamber, ceremonial handling, and a formal nightly rest ritual. Its pages the tradition calls angs limbs.
In October 2015, a Saroop was desecrated in Faridkot, pages torn and scattered in the street. Two protesters were killed by police firing. There was no final prosecution of the perpetrators. The JaagatJot Sri Guru Granth Sahib Satkar Act of 2008 had a maximum of three years deterring no one. The governments of Punjab had spent almost a decade trying to fill this gap a 2016 bill failed because of its attempt to single out one religion, a 2018 version also failed, and a 2025 bill lapsed in committee. In 2026 finally Amendment got passed.
The Amendment establishes a Central Register of Saroops administered by the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC), imposes statutory custodial liabilities in relation to the Sikh Rehat Maryada, and prescribes graduated criminal penalties seven to twenty years of direct sacrilege, ten years to life of sacrilege through criminal conspiracy. It also extends the definition of sacrilege to expressive conduct, whether verbal, written, symbolic, visual or digital, performed with deliberate intent to insult the religious feelings of the Sikh community.
Courts may examine the issue through constitutional principles such as legislative competence, fundamental rights, and judicial consistency. These are legitimate concerns, but they leave three structurally more significant constitutional questions unaddressed: who controls the regulatory machinery, whose theology the law enforces, and whether the Act's own sentencing design defeats its purpose.
Question One: Does the Act Make the State an Instrument of the SGPC?
The Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee is the highest elected body in management of Sikh gurdwaras in the states of Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh. It was founded by the SikhGurdwaras Act, 1925, after decades of agitation, to wrest control over Sikh shrines away from hereditary custodians the reformist Singh Sabha movement who were considered a corrupt lot. The SGPC is elected by Sikh voters, and serves as both the leading religious and administrative body of mainstream Khalsa Sikhism managing the Golden Temple, the supervision of hundreds of historical gurdwaras, and the publication of the official Sikh scriptural texts.
Though central to Khalsa mainstream, the theological authority of the SGPC does not receive unanimity. The Namdhari movement, the Nirankari movement and a number of Udasi and Sewapanthi traditions have all maintained adversarial relationships with the SGPC. Its elections are constitutionally important because its close affiliation with the Shiromani Akali Dal makes its claim to represent all Sikhs constitutionally significant.
In the 2008 Act, the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee had an advisory role, but no statutory enforcement role. This is completely changed in the 2026 Amendment. The Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee now holds the Central Register of all Saroops in Punjab, gives each a unique identification number and is obliged to receive reports on any damage, loss or suspected desecration by a custodian. The Amendment has assimilated a private religious organisation into the enforcement apparatus of the State.
Articles 26 and 27 Challenge to State Regulation of Religious Practice
The Supreme Court held in the case Commissioner, Hindu Religious Endowments, Madras v. Sri Lakshmindra Thirtha Swamiar of Sri Shirur Mutt, AIR 1954 SC 282, that the State may regulate the secular aspects of religious institutions' activities but not their religious ones. Section5 of the Act imposes a legal obligation on every custodian to 'strictly observe the Sikh Rehat Maryada.' The Rehat Maryada is not an administrative code it is the sacred code of the Khalsa tradition, governing how custodians handle, store, transport, and read the Guru Granth Sahib Ji. By converting Rehat Maryada compliance into a criminal statutory duty, the Act deploys State power to enforce religious doctrine.
A counterargument is that the Act merely codifies norms that the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) has already established. But Article26 of the constitution protects against State compulsion, not only external imposition. Even where the State enforces a norm the denomination endorses, the enforcement mechanism shifts fundamentally from denominational discipline to criminal prosecution. A custodian who neglects the Rehat Maryada now faces a criminal sentence rather than an internal religious sanction. The Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee's political endorsement of the Act does not constitute its constitutional authorisation.
The Article27 of the Constitution bars public tax money from promoting any particular religion. The Act deploys substantial State resources DSP-level investigation, exclusive Sessions Court jurisdiction, dedicated rule-making powers specifically for one scripture of one religion. Preventing communal violence ordinarily shields this resource deployment. But the Act's preamble frames it as a statute for the protection and sanctification of the Guru Granth Sahib Ji that incidentally promotes public order placing the religious purpose first. That framing sharpens the Article 27 exposure materially.
Question Two: Whose Version of Sikhism Does the Law Enforce?
The Problem Inside the Definition of Sacrilege
“One who hears slander of the Guru with open ears, and lowers his head in shame, goes to ruin.” - Guru Amar Das Ji, Guru Granth Sahib Ji, Ang 315
The expressive-conduct limb of the Act applies to verbal, written, symbolic, visual or digital acts done with the deliberate intent to offend the religious sentiments of the Sikh community. That term serves as the objective legal criterion by which all expressive actions are evaluated. It is based, however, on a debatable premise: that the Sikh community has a single, coherent set of religious sentiments that can be used as a legal point of reference.
It does not. The Namdhari movement recognizes a living human Guru and the scripture a status the Akal Takht considers heretical. The Nirankari movement has a controversial history in the Sikh world, including a violent clash in 1978 at Amritsar. The Radha Soami Satsang has doctrinal stances that the SGPC officially denounces. Given that the SGPC is at the heart of the regulatory machinery of the Act, the prosecutions will in effect be weighed against the SGPC theology. The mainstream of the Khalsa is made the legally binding norm of all other Sikh expression.
This is what can be referred to as doctrinal capture: the process whereby the theological interpretation of one sect becomes, through the legislation of the State, the standard against which the State judges all other interpretations within that tradition. It is not just a mere vagueness. The vagueness analysis, which the Supreme Court discussed in ShreyaSinghal v. Union of India, (2015) 5 SCC 1, requires answering the question whether a legal standard is clear enough to allow a person to know what the law prohibits. The capture of doctrines leads to a prior question, whose theology provides the content of that standard?
In Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee v. Som Nath Dass, AIR 2000 SC 1421, the Supreme Court recognized the juristic personality of the Guru Granth Sahib Ji, but only to a limited extent, but categorically declined to accept the theological belief that it is the living eleventh Guru. Endorsing one theological position would implicitly delegitimise the positions of other groups within the same tradition. The Act does exactly what the Court refused to do: its preamble frames the status of the Guru Granth Sahib Ji in terms corresponding to the dominant Khalsa tradition, and the definition of sacrilege is based on that framing.
The implications in practice are tangible. An open professed affirmation of the authority of a living human Guru a heartfelt challenge to the exclusive doctrinal authority of the scripture. When interpreted under the prevailing Khalsa attitude, such a declaration may amount to acts that are offensive to the religious feelings of the so-called Sikh community. The mens rea requirement of the Act of a deliberate intent is in itself a deliberate act, in the eyes of the Khalsa. The Act potentially criminalises even the good-faith theological dissent as the legal norm by encoding one theological interpretation as the legal standard and providing no constitutional justification to do so.
Question Three: Does the Act Go Easy on the Most Serious Offenders?
The Act's attempt provisions contain a structural problem that all public commentary has missed. The Act creates two completed-offence categories: direct individual sacrilege, carrying seven to twenty years, and sacrilege through criminal conspiracy intended to disrupt communal harmony, carrying ten years to life.
The attempt provision, however, prescribes a fixed sentence of three to five years for an attempt at either category. Under Section62 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, where a special law contains no express attempt provision, an attempt carries up to half the maximum for the completed offence. Had the Act stayed silent, an attempt at the conspiracy offence carrying a life maximum would have attracted a substantially higher sentence than the five-year cap the Act expressly prescribes. Section5 of the BNS preserves the Act's express provision over the default. The result: a person who plans and begins executing a sacrilege conspiracy and is interrupted mid-way faces a lower maximum sentence under this Act than general criminal law would have imposed had the Act said nothing about attempts at all.
The Supreme Court held in State of Maharashtra v. Mohd. Yakub, AIR 1980 SC 1111, that the gravity of an attempt depends on how serious the intended offence was and how close it came to completion. The Act's provision ignores both factors, treating an attempt at individual sacrilege and an attempt at organised conspiracy identically. A law enacted because existing deterrence failed should not cap the sentence for an attempt at its most serious offence below what general law would have produced automatically.
The Jaagat Jot Sri Guru Granth Sahib Satkar (Amendment) Act, 2026 responds seriously to a real failure. Existing law failed the Sikh community after Faridkot, and the demand for a specific remedy pursued through nearly a decade of failed attempts carries genuine social and political weight.
But the Act's constitutional architecture is more fragile than its unanimous passage suggests. Elevating the SGPC from advisory body to central regulatory authority, while criminalising non-compliance with the Rehat Maryada, raises serious Article 26 and 27 concerns the standard secular-religious distinction cannot resolve. Building the expressive-conduct limb on 'the religious sentiments of the Sikh community' constitutes one internal theological interpretation as the binding legal standard for all Sikhs precisely what the Supreme Court declined to do in Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee v. Som Nath Dass, AIR 2000 SC 1421, and threatens minority communities under Article 25. The attempt provision caps the sentence for the most serious incomplete offence below what general criminal law would have imposed by default, directly undermining the deterrence rationale the legislature explicitly invoked.
None of these issues makes the Act wholly unconstitutional, or its goals illegitimate. What they establish is that unanimous legislative support cannot substitute for constitutional scrutiny. The three questions this article raises remain unanswered. They will need answers before this law faces its first serious challenge in court.
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