www.penmarks.com-Punjab’s Religio-Politics-Nanakshahi Calender…

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Politics has many faces, and this one peered from a calendar. Akali Dal president Parkash Singh Badal would not have heard of Raja Ravi Verma displayed a keen sense of calendar art in politics. I followed the issue throughout in politics and kept in touch with Pal Singh Purewal in Canada. I had met Purewal for the first time in1999 in Jalandhar along with my friend and fellow journalist Hartosh Singh Bal.

After nearly two hours of intense education on lunar almanacs and earth’s gyrations around the sun, Purewal asked us to come to a room upstairs. We climbed the stairs and were ushered into his study, whereupon he brought out two small digital tape recorders, and wanted us to keep these. We politely declined, but for some strange reason, every time someone mentions Nanakshahi, I recall the crest fallen face of Purewal. Now perhaps I understand better what made Nayantara Sehgal relate prison to chocolate cakes. It takes Nanakshahi politics to learn some lessons perhaps.

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	"Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever lays one down without a feeling of disappointment." Charles Lamb, 1833 "Frankly, despite my horror of the press, I’d love to rise from the grave every ten years or so and go buy a few newspapers." Luis Buñuel, Spanish filmmaker "I often wonder what future historians will say about us. One sentence will suffice to describe modern man: he fornicated and he read newspapers." Albert Camus, French novelist, dramatist, philosopher, 1956

Nanakshahi Calendar
Is Badalshahi Way Of Politics

S P Singh

Chandigarh:

When a clever politician is down on the political turf, the cleverest stratagem he can employ is to change the turf, and by releasing the Nanakshahi calender, beleagured Akali Dal president Parkash Singh Badal has done exactly that. Politics in religious idiom is his forte, and it is a domain which Chief Minister Amarinder Singh has repeatedly found slippery.

After years of dithering by SGPC and a totally non-serious attitude towards the self-proclaimed Sikhs' almanac, a tear-down-all-obstacles pace marked the final outcome and, presto! The Nanakshahi calender was born.

Large swathes of political spectrum in the state see the calender more as Badalshahi way of doing politics than the manifestation of a commitment to have a Nanakshahi almanac guiding the Sikhs.

"Though the issue was not of Badal's creation, he, with his reputation of reading the Sikhs' psyche faster than many others, rushed in to stand in front of the crowd clamouring for the new almanac and proclaimed himself the leader," said a senior Akali leader associated with the almanac for long.

And there are many who have their doubts about Badal's intentions as he put his weight behind the calender. "Though he has agreed to the calender, his commitment to the issue is still suspect," said Prof Jagmohan Singh, general secretary of Akali Dal (Amritsar) who was part of the larger committee mandated by the SGPC to discuss the almanac.

Look at how tailor-made the calender is for Badal, politically, and how it was tailored to fine-tune with his politics. With the controversial almanac adopted by the SGPC, and backed by the Akal Takht, Amarinder would be under pressure to either buckle in and change the state government's list of holidays or be branded anti-Sikh by Badal and company.

"See the clever move of not changing the date of Guru Nanak's birth anniversary celebrations or Bandi-chhorr diwas even as per Nanakshahi calendar. Amarinder could have thrown back the gauntlet by asking the Akalis to get the BJP-led Centre to effect a change in that holiday, but care was taken not to give him that opportunity," said a Sikh scholar.

Badal was also advised not to have days devoted to Sukha-Jinda or Beant Singh-Satwant Singh duos on the calender as that would have given the Congress a handle to beat the Akalis for tilting towards militancy when deprived of power.

Just as what has been excluded, the inclusions too are based on similar reasoning.

“But we kept Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale on the almanac lest radicals accuse us of shunning the panthic agenda,” argued a senior leader of Badal's Akali Dal.

That Badal has been successful in his politics through the Nanakshahi calendar was clear from Amarinder's quick fire reaction that the new almanac would only "create chaos". Any more opposition and Badal will cry foul loudly.

Even more important is the occasion that he chose for the photo-op. "Badal has chosen his party's political conference at Talwandi Sabo for releasing the calender. Is it his personal property?" asked an enraged Himmat Singh Gill, Chairman of Chandigarh Sahitya Akademi and a prolific writer on Sikh affairs.

He said the community already had too many issues on front burner. "The birth of a calendar, born at Badal's jormela rally and heralded by one political party as Sikhs' identity-engraving almanac, wasn't being looked forward to with any terrible urgency," Gill said, adding it will "obviously be used to fulfill the designs of certain individuals."

But Akali strategists have their defence which gave a peep into their thought process. "Amarinder is planning to focus on 400th Parkash Utsav of Guru Granth Sahib in a major way, and we could not have let him emerge as a leader of the Sikhs. Basic politics dictated the urgency, and Nanakshahi calendar was a readymade issue," said an Akali Dal theoretician. Need more reasons?

Haste makes waste

Here is the SGPC take on the haste that marked Nanakshahi calender:

"After years of row over almanac and the controversial announcement of its implementation in June 1999 and then withdrawal ... nearly three years passed without any movement on this front," says the introduction to the calendar published by SGPC.

But after political expediency arose, back-to-back meetings followed. The 11-strong panel met first on Jan 16, 2003, then on Feb 13, March 10, March 20 (at Akal Takht), March 18 (at Dr Balwant Singh Dhillon's house, Amritsar) and March 23 (Anurag Singh's house at Ludhiana). On March 28, Akal Takht jathedar Joginder Singh Vedanti wrote to SGPC directing publication of almanac. Next day, the SGPC house passes it without discussion. April 14, the almanac is born.■

April 16, 2002

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