Punjab polity: Straitjacketed in Politically Reversible Jackets
S P Singh
It is a very British tradition to link casual conversation with weather, but somehow the real balloting in Punjab on February 13 had a lot of weather talk involved. Sensing possible rains, and helped by the meteorologists, politicians bought huge stocks of umbrellas from the market, lest their good fortune comes under a cloud.
There was some chill in the air. Shimla's hills seemed more pristine with the fresh snowfall. Few of the young now remember it was the capital of Punjab also for some years. It doesn't snow anymore in Punjab, not since Punjab shrank. But the chill does send one scurrying for woolens again. And top on the demand list are things reversible. Reversible jackets, reversible coats, reversible socks.
In this chill of sifting moral stances in politics, everything is available in reversible modes. We are living in an age of reversible politics.
Welcome to the new age! And of course you can reverse it anytime. Haven't you heard of retro fashions?
Akali Dal's Parkash Singh Badal declares Congress' Amarinder Singh as a Khalistani because a gurdwara he went to in Dixie (Canada) had Khalistan Zindabad blazed behind on the wall. The Akali Dal president appears with folded hands in huge advertisements saying he is committed to build more railway over bridges. (If Badal had any particular love for building railway over bridges earlier, he had kept it hidden very successfully.) The Chief Ministerial candidate of the Congress talks about opening the route to Nankana Sahib and celebrating the Sikh centenaries. Badal matches it by saying his government will open more Adarsh schools.
Topsy-turvy you said? No, just reversible.
Virsa Singh Valtoha and Harminder Singh Gill have had a similar past. Today Valtoha is fighting on the ticket of a party which says it is wedded to IT sector's advancement, while
Gill is a Congress candidate from Patti, contesting against Adesh Partap Singh Kairon.
Whether Kairons are these days Congressmen or Akalis is not very clear. Depends which side of the jacket they fancy currently.
Khalsa Ji Ka Bol Bala is not an Akali political phrase any more. We didn't hear of Jawaharlal Nehru's oft-quoted promise to the Sikhs about a region where they could enjoy the glow of freedom. We didn't hear of Chandigarh and river waters. Badal has long given up tearing copies of the Constitution. An inquiry into the terror era is not on Akali agenda. Sukhbir Singh Badal doesn’t refer to ‘Sikh quom de mahaan shaeed’, instead he talks of five-marla plots. Capt Kanwaljit Singh has inserted an advertisements in the newspapers which affirms 'Asi watan nu poojde han te watan nu pyar karde han' (We worship our country and we love our country). It suspiciously looks like a Shiv Sena style nationalist advertisement.
Bhai Daljit Singh Bittu is seen on the stage with Comrade A B Bardhan.
In a moment of particular weakness, Parkash Singh Badal had remembered a man called Harchand Singh Longowal because the Congress government decided to observe his death anniversary as a state-level function. Soon, Amarinder Singh found he can’t sell every Akali agenda item to his party wrapped in a new wrapper, so he gave Longowal a go by. Badal was quick to wave bye bye to the Sant he in any case never went along with well. In these elections, neither Amarinder nor Badal uttered the Sant’s name.
But as Badal tries to divorce all his links with the past, he forgets that the past can come to haunt those who negate it, invalidate it, and repudiate its very existence.
Poor Badal doesn't even get photographed at the Akal Takht, the supreme seat of temporal authority for the Sikhs, before embarking on his battle for Punjab Assembly because someone will ask the Election Commission for action against him. CM Amarinder Singh begins his campaign by praying at a flame lit in the Moti Mahal in memory of Baba Ala Singh, but Badal doesn't even risk visiting the local gurdwara. Instead he goes visiting a temple at Lambi.
And then comes the reversible twist. Economist, your dear ‘not-really-a-stereotyped politician’ PM Manmohan Singh comes visiting Punjab on electioneering tour. "If Akali Dal came back to power, Punjab will again see the dark days," he said. Look who recalls the period that Badal wants Sikhs to forget. Sonia Gandhi had the same tune to sing.
BJP-RSS leaders L K Advani and A B Vajpayee both castigate Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh for bringing up the issue of terrorism. Wrong jacket, they are crying. Too bad that statesmen like Manmohan Singh should remember such an issue when Badal is succeeding in getting Punjab to live in a state of denial.
Why don't you buy a reversible jacket too, Mr Prime Minister?
Akali leaders have left the Dal and joined the Congress. Congressmen have quit the party and gotten Akali Dal tickets. Both parties have virtually the same agenda. Even their moral plunge is of the same depth.
Each declaration of support by a dera is matched by a similar counter declaration. The party which was always against derawad felt jolted by the support of a dera to the opponent Congress. Both of course forgot that the head of the dera whom they were both courting was an accused in the murder of a journalist and is fast getting clenched in a CBI scanner. The media of course also seems to have forgotten that one of its members was murdered and the dera head is an accused. It refrained from publishing a single recalls story to tell the readers about the case in which the Baba is embroiled. (Responsible media, did someone squeak?)
Both parties ran an abusive issue-less campaign is to quote the obvious -- abuses. Both bought entire news pages wholesale and presented the ‘news’ issued by the SAD or the Congress. Both accused each other of lack of morality, and both thanked the media at the end of the elections for playing such a wonderfully responsible role as fourth estate. The media dutifully published expressions of such dripping gratefulness.
The crudeness, the amount of untruth is virtually matching. Reversible jackets have surprising similarities too.
February 16, 2007