A Window To Perceptive Journalism

Polling In Badal Fiefdom:
Mirroring A Rear View

S P Singh

Chandigarh:

When it comes to panthic affairs, political sagacity is second nature to Akali Dal president Parkash Singh Badal and Wednesday's events at the SGPC presidential elections showed how he has refined the task of retaining control over the cash-rich SGPC into a fine art.

With unfailing regularity, SGPC presidents have tumbled out from envelopes sent by Badal or messages conveyed by him. 2005 was no different. This time, Falstaff had become king.

With a CBI murder case against her, Bibi Jagir Kaur would have been clearly a liability in the forthcoming Assembly elections. However, even as he removed her, the wily Badal ensured that her successor was someone equally loyal to his MP son Sukhbir Singh Badal.

And so entered the scene Avtar Singh Makkar, the Akali leader from Ludhiana with virtually no recall outside the confines of the city where he spent years scrapping with local Akali limpets to keep presidentship of the district unit of the party.

In Makkar's choice, Badal has also tried to gain credit for empowering a non-jat, something the jat-dominated Akali Dal does very rarely unless dalits are involved. And with Sarna brothers rise, it was time to move at least one non-jat to an important position.

But in this game of leveraging on the SGPC to fight political turf wars, the Sikh community has increasingly squandered the gains it made by forcing the British to enact the Sikh Gurdwara Act 1925 after an aggressive agitation, now popularly known as the Gurdwara Reform Movement and widely seen as part of the larger freedom struggle.

The Raj buckled and transferred control of all historical Gurdwaras to the SGPC in the then Punjab, but not before hundreds lost their lives and thousands went to jail.

But as history has witnessed, the functioning of SGPC, often proudly termed by Akalis as "mini-Parliament of Sikhs", leaves much to be desired. With a budget of over Rs 200 crore, the general house meets only twice a year: once to elect its president and then to pass its annual budget. Carefully chosen speakers pass resolutions after monologues and debates or questions are studiously spurned.

The Sikh Gurdwaras Act, 1925 gives few financial powers to the SGPC president but the executive committee gives wide-ranging powers to the incumbent through resolutions.

For nearly a quarter of a century, the SGPC was lorded over by late Gurcharan Singh Tohra, described by Badal variously as either the supreme leader of the Sikhs and "panth's man with brains" (panth's roshan dimag aadm) or a traitor to the cause and an agent of the Congress, depending upon what suited him best at the moment.

But between these two pivotal panthic leaders, the SGPC has hopped from one crisis to another, accompanied by increasingly bigger budgets and poorer utilisation of funds. This apart from regular allegations of corruption, sacking and appointing jathedars at will, watching abstruse controversies over religious matters escalate into full-blown crises as in the case of the langar row and participating in a turf war over control which led to a vertical split in the Akali Dal.

But through all of this, Badal has only strengthened his vice-like grip over the religious body and aspirants to the SGPC top job now publicly declare that whosoever is nominated by Badal will be acceptable to everyone. Perhaps, in some queer way, the SGPC has actually become a mini-Parliament. All it needed was to give democracy a miss. After all, didn't Badal once famously declare that "SGPC is a wing of Akali Dal." Now, it's almost a family affair.■

November 23, 2005

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