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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
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