‘They do not want Delhi to interfere’: why Punjab will be an outlier in the India election
- Only 21 per cent of Sikhs say they want Modi’s government to return and the mainly Sikh state of Punjab is not concerned with the issues driving the national electorate to polls
Critics of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party government, led by incumbent Prime Minister Narendra Modi, have often said it is unfavourable to India’s roughly 190 million Muslims.
A widely-cited study, which surveyed some 10,000 people across 19 of India’s 29 states, seemed to confirm this.
“A clear reflection of the absence of the practice of inclusiveness is seen in the response of the religious minorities,” said the report by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS). “While close to half the Hindu respondents felt the BJP should get another chance, more than half the Muslim respondents were against a second chance for the BJP.”
However, the group that seemed to be the least supportive of the BJP and Modi was not Muslims but another religious minority group.
Some 68 per cent of Sikhs surveyed said they were against voting Modi back into power, compared with 56 per cent of Muslims, and 36 per cent of all respondents. Only 21 per cent of Sikhs – a group which makes up 1.9 per cent of India’s population – said they wanted Modi’s government to return.
Sikh dislike of Modi makes the northern state of Punjab – where nearly three in five people are Sikh – an outlier this election.
“The CSDS need not have done any survey,” said veteran journalist SP Singh. “Anecdotal evidence in Punjab would have reflected the same picture.”
A lot of the dislike may be rooted in a history of violence against the Sikh community, including the 17th century persecution by the Delhi-based Mughal kings. Punjab also bore the brunt of the violence that accompanied the 1947 partition of India and Pakistan. From the 1970s to the early 1990s, Punjab was ground zero for the militant and separatist Khalistan movement. In 1984, thousands were killed in anti-Sikh riots in New Delhi after then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards at the height of the secessionist movement.
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“Sikhs have a wounded psyche – a history of war and bloodshed. If you go to the Golden Temple and listen to the narratives being described, it is full of descriptions of sacrifices. They do not want Delhi to interfere,” said Ashutosh Kumar, professor of political science at Panjab University, who led the CSDS study in Punjab.
Consequently, the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) – the largest Sikh party – advocated federalism in its early years.
SP Singh speculated that the SAD does not talk of federalism much any more because it has been in a long-term alliance with the BJP, which has sought to concentrate power in Delhi. “Historically, Punjab has resisted people who become too powerful,” he said.
The BJP’s poll plank of nationalism may also be at odds with the Punjabi ethos.
“The operative part of BJP’s nationalism is opposing Pakistan. There is a feeling here that Punjab was divided among two nations. Here, you will hear songs that say: ‘That Punjab is also mine, this Punjab is also mine’,” said Kanwaljeet Singh, central committee member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation.
According to Kanwaljeet Singh, Punjab’s nationalism is older than the BJP’s and has its roots in India’s independence movement. He invoked Bhagat Singh, the socialist executed by the British, who was born in what is now the Pakistani province of Punjab. “Our nationalism is anti-imperial, inherited from the likes of Bhagat Singh,” he said.
Then, there is the SAD itself, which has kept the BJP from making inroads in the state using demographics. “In Punjab, the BJP is an out-and-out urban uppercaste Hindu party,” said Kumar. The widely-held belief in Punjab that the spiritual parent of the BJP, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, has tried to subsume Sikhism within a larger Hindu identity has not helped Modi’s party.
“The BJP is unable to broaden their support base. Because RSS is not that strong, BJP does not have cadre,” said Kumar.
It also hurts the BJP that the SAD is going through a slump of its own. According to journalist SP Singh, Modi and his BJP are seen by the Sikhs through the prism of its senior alliance partner. “Modi and his BJP are seen by the Sikhs through the prism of their senior alliance partner, the Shiromani Akali Dal,” he said.
Kanwaljeet Singh said police firing on a crowd protesting the alleged desecration of the Guru Granth Sahib – the holy book of Sikhs – in 2015 damaged the SAD’s standing, as a state government of the SAD-BJP alliance was in force at the time. “Alkalis cannot be the Trojan Horse of the BJP this time as they have been discredited,” he said.
Punjab also did not see the “Modi Wave” of 2014 that swept the BJP to power. In fact, senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley was defeated in the state and had to be nominated to the upper house, or Rajya Sabha, to become finance minister. The state voted overwhelmingly for the Aam Aadmi Party, which was contesting elections there for the first time. Kumar said it was a sign of the electorate’s fatigue with the SAD, BJP and Congress.
I would stick my neck out and say that Punjab is virtually boycotting the Lok Sabha elections this time
He said AAP was poised to win the 2017 elections to the state assembly, but an announcement by Delhi’s chief minister and AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal that he would control the state government backfired. “It also did not help that Delhi-based leaders of the AAP talked down to the proud people of Punjab,” said Kumar.
This election though, things seem to be taking a different trajectory.
“I would stick my neck out and say that Punjab is virtually boycotting the Lok Sabha elections this time,” said SP Singh.
According to Singh, the parties in the state and the electorate are mainly concerned with the debate about alleged desecrations of the Sikh holy book and a controversial law to punish such offences. “There is a disconnect with the rest of the country which shows, in some ways, the isolation of Punjab. It is so much in the grip of what it is facing that it is not paying attention to what’s happening to the throne in Delhi,” he said.
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The claims and counter-claims on sacrilege could be a distraction from an ongoing agrarian debt crisis that saw about 16,000 suicides in the state between 2000 and 2015.
“The sacrilege issue is an outcome of the agrarian crisis. The rage and the anger needs a way out,” said SP Singh. According to Kumar, the electorate also accuses Modi of not doing enough to alleviate the pain of farmers.
BJP’s national secretary and Delhi’s legislative assembly member RP Singh rejected the idea that Sikhs were largely opposed to the BJP and Modi.
“Whatever issues are there in Punjab are due to local politics,” he said after attending a large gathering of Sikhs. Singh said his party and its ally would do well in Punjab due to its choice of good candidates. He insisted Modi’s government had taken steps to address various concerns of the Sikh community and its members had noticed.
