Religious Upheaval Dented Akalis’ Credibility In Punjab

By Jaspal Singh Sidhu

23 October, 2015
Countercurrents.org

The ruling Akalis are now facing some sort of social and political opposition from the Sikhs in Punjab. The piled up anger of Sikhs against the power-drunk Akali leaders, particularly the Badal family, has poured out on the streets and roads of Punjab resulting in a several day long road blockades causing a total disruption of normal life . And the rulers are finding hard to check the eruption of mass hysteria which forced the Akali leaders to shut themselves indoors under official security umbrella. A hundred odd villages in Faridkot district have displayed hoardings warning the political against their entry there.

Never before as of now, the Akali Dal has suffered such a loss of credibility and social acceptance among the Sikhs for whose political protection the party was floated in 1920s. Thought the ruling Badal family allowed the nominal entry of the Punjabi Hindus in the party to broaden the electoral base in late 1990s but it has , predominantly, remained a rural-based political outfit of the Sikhs.

The Akalis have always sought to retain their control of the Sikh religious institutions including the Akal Takht ( a temporal authority ). For this purpose, the winning of the election to the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) that runs Sikh religious affairs has always been a priority with Akali leaders. Hold on the SGPC has, invariably, empowered the Akalis ( now read, the Badal family) to manipulate sensitive religious issues for their vested political interests.

But after acquiring every conceivable source of power the Badals, now keen to strengthen its vote bank for the coming 2017 Punjab assembly elections, have maneuvered the Akal Takht Jathedar to pardon the Dera Sucha Sauda head of his religious misconduct. Earlier, the Badals made the then Jathedar to issue ‘hukamnama’ (edict) ordaining the Sikhs to socially boycotted the Dera head in May, 2007. The hush-hush manner of exonerating the Dera head in last September generated a strong resentment among the Sikhs against the Akal Takht. The Badals’ calculations, however, went awry. An overwhelming majority of the Sikhs openly criticized the Akal takht Jathedar as well as the Badals perceived as being instrumental in giving religious reprieve to the Dera head.

The resentment over the exoneration move added to the already accumulated Sikh anger against the Badals as consequent to various previous happenings during their 7-8 year long rule. Most of the occurrences have been taken as the ruler’s ‘excesses’ because of the haughty behavior of the Badal’s , particularly that of Sukhbir Singh Badal, their indulgence in rampant corruption and their being indifferent and unaccountabe towards the Punjabis who voted them to power.

The Badals have ,in fact, monopolized all conceivable religious and economic powers. Sukhbir Singh, the junior Badal projects himself as CEO rather than Deputy Chief Minister of Punjab and nonchalantly flaunt his ‘management expertise’ in winning elections, of course, with the use of money and muscle power like other ruling families of the country. He has been operating a large fleet of private luxury buses in Punjab and impunity enjoyed by the transport staff has earned notoriety for rapes and road rage occurrences.

Besides that, the Punjab’s agriculture-based economy, stagnating for past many years has suffered further another blow this year following ‘white-fly attack’ on the cotton crop. Agrarian economy has further been aggravated with downward spiral in prices of basmati, a variety of rice forming a sizeable portion of current paddy crop in Punjab. Yield of the last wheat crop was also low which adversely affected the economic viability of the farmers.

While the Punjab farmers have been agitating, resorting to ‘rail roko’ and road blockades protests for past six-seven weeks pressing the government to compensate them for the crop loss , the Akal Takht went in for exonerating the Dera head in last September. This move amounted to ‘adding insult to injury’ of the farmers who happened to be Sikhs also. At the same time, the Sikhs were upset over the ‘antics’ of the Dera head whose stunt movie, MSG-2, was being screened in Punjab as the state administration had cowed down to the aggressive protests by the Dera followers.

On the top of it when the Sikhs were suffering from some sort of suppressed rage because of recurring religious and mundane issues, the incidence of torn pages of the holy Sikh scripture acted like an incendiary bomb exploding wrath of the Sikhs. The torn pages were found spread in a village in Faridkot district on October 12 to be followed by such acts of sacrilege at five-six other places. Overwhelming number of Sikhs perceived that the sacrilege was a handiwork of the Badals. And thereafter, the killing of two protesting Sikhs and injuring many others in police firing virtually put entire state on the boil.

Later, the spontaneous and aggressive reaction of the Sikhs became unmanageable for the administration as well as for the ruling Akalis. Local Akali leaders also came under attack and many SGPC members were chased away by incensed Sikh crowds. Under the mass and moral pressure of the Sikhs, around 20 SGPC members resigned and several local Akali leaders publically severed their association of with the ruling Dal . The Akali leaders, not only lost their social ties but also the courage to talk to and soothe down the agitating Sikhs .Visibly troubled Sikhs refused to accept the leadership of any traditional Sikh leader and also those of religious preachers who had been the part of protesters. All of them did not seem to match heroic stature of Sant Jarnail Singh Bhinderanwale, what the agitators were seemed to be looking for, and the spectre (spirit) of the slain religious leader looked like possessing the protesters out of the roads.

With the failure of other strategic moves, the Punjab government, ultimately, withdrew the police to a safe distance from the protesting Sikhs to pre-empt further conflagration and deployed para-military forces in cities to checkmate the situation from taking a communal turn. The Sikhs in turmoil, however, calmed down with the passage of time and also because of the state government’s changed strategy of not-using the force against the demonstrators thereafter.

Leaving aside the usual politicking Congress and other opposition leaders resorted to for winning the sympathy of the agonized Sikhs , the Akalis have , undoubtedly, suffered a palpable loss to their base and credibility. The lingering deeper shadow of this trouble will continue to exhibit itself in various shapes of protests for the long time to come. A visibly shaken up Akali Dal will also find it difficult to resume its earlier position till the coming assembly polls, a year away. Image of Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal, a heavy weight ally of the ruling BJP at New Delhi has also been dented to a greater extent.

Besides the anti-Akali stance of the present Sikh protest, a noticeable ire has been manifested against RSS at every gatherings heard asserting that “ the RSS, through Badals, has managed the exoneration of the Dera head from the Akal Takht ……”. The current protests against the sacrilege have rather strengthened the prevailing perception among the Sikhs that “aligning of the ruling Akali Dal with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Hindutva forces has threatened the ‘distinct identity of the Sikhs”. For many Sikhs -- nowhere associated with demand of Khalistan -- the Badals have become synonymous with RSS and Hindutva forces as the former have been observing a conspicuous silence on minorities’ issues even as they have been got sharpened up in the country of late, particularly with the open activities of RSS directed towards the establishment of the ‘Hindu Rashtra’. Many Sikhs intellectuals now feel that RSS has been ordaining minorities not to consume beef while it has all along been opposing the Sikh demand for a ban on smoking in Amritsar, the city of Golden Temple and granting the city a status of ‘holy city’ at par with Varanasi. Besides that, during the recent protests several clips have gone viral on social media hurling accusations against RSS charging the latter attempting to “demolish unique identity and culture of the Sikhs to assimilate them among the Hindus”. No doubt, the RSS has been trying to strengthen base in Punjab as well as its front organization among the Sikhs, known as ‘Sikh Sangat’, which now being headed by a former Akali MP from Sangrur.

Even as the current Sikh protest has not thrown any leadership or an identifiable Sikh alternative to the Badal Dal but it has manifested a palpable consolidation of the Sikhs on religious and social issues. Such consolidation could prove planting of a ‘seedling’ whose growth could upset the political ‘apple cart’ of the Badals and their ally, BJP.

For handling the Sikhs’ uprising, the Punjab administration has been resorting to old tactics and stretched the link of the arrested Sikh youths in the sacrilege case to the so-called extremist Sikh elements living abroad. But, a majority of Sikhs are not buying this ‘foreign hand’ theory and are not in the mood to ‘absolve’ the Badals. Even opposition leaders including former Chief Minister Capt Amrinder Singh have described the police version as “concoction” suiting the Hindutva line.

The Sikh upsurge also raked up some dormant but pestering issues like re-adoption of ‘Nanakshahi Sikh calendar’ which severs sharpens divide between the Hindus and Sikhs on the observance of religious and social festivals . It has questioned the legitimacy of the SGPC, acting as a quasi political body and claiming its sole authority in appointing the Akal Takht Jathedar. The Sikhs living world over are pressing for holding ‘Sarbat Khalsa’ ( a broader Sikh congregation) to resolve contentious Sikh religious issues. Most of them are pressing for annulling the ongoing the election system for the SGPC, devised by the British nearly a century ago to hoodwink the Sikhs. This election system in vogue even today, has been inviting a direct official interference of the federal government (now a majoritarian one) into the religious affairs of a tiny Sikh minority in the country.

Jaspal Singh Sidhu- a freelance journalist and author- writing on political and economic issues. He can be reached at E-mail- [email protected]