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Badal-Dominated SGPC Gives Sikhs Nanakshahi Calendar

But Politics Underlines The Development

S P Singh

More than five hundred years after Guru Nanak founded the Sikh religion, its followers felt the desperate need to stress their own distinct identity by giving unto themselves a separate calendar based on solar constructs of astronomy than the lunar ones followed by the Bikrami almanac.  

This Baisakhi, the Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee (SGPC), finally released the almanac called 'Nanakshahi Calender' which is based on the tropical concept of a year and takes Guru Nanak's year of birth – 1469 AD – as the year of its origin. Now that the SGPC, backed by the powerful Akal Takht, asks the Congress government in Punjab to implement the new calender, grounds are being readied for a fresh round of confrontation between the Akalis and the Congress regime.

The new calender features holidays marking various days connected with Sikh gurus and other events on days other than the ones which Bikrami calendar reflects.

Nanakshahi Calender was initially drafted by a Canada-based NRI Pal Singh Purewal, and had led to bitter conflict within the community as well as the top Sikh clergy, triggering even a near-crisis when the then Akal Takht jathedar Puran Singh excommunicated SGPC president Jagir Kaur on the issue for advocating the new Calendar.

While critics within the community have been either won over or are keeping resistance low key, the calender has given the Akali Dal a new opportunity to engage the Congress on a turf which the secular party finds slippery.

For Akali Dal president Parkash Singh Badal, known for his prowess in smelling a good opportunity, doing politics in religious idiom is his special forte. Chief Minister Amarinder Singh has repeatedly tied himself up in knots whenever engaging the Akalis on religious turf, as had happened during the SGPC polls last year when Congress was outsmarted by the Akalis.

Large swathes of political spectrum in the state see the calendar 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).

Many believe the calender was tailor-made for Badal and is fine-tuned with his politics. 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 of Diwali. Amarinder could have thrown back the gauntlet by asking the Akalis to get the BJP-led Centre to effect a change in these holidays, 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 terrorist 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.

Amarinder, by opposing the Nanakshahi calender and saying that it will create chaos, has done exactly what Badal would have wished for. Akalis are privately ecstatic about Amarinder's reaction. "Let the Badal and Tohra groups unite, and you will see Nanakshahi among the issues on which Amarinder will be engaged," said senior Akali leaders.

Saner elements see the entire thing as hogwash. Major General (retd) Himmat Singh Gill said the community already had too many issues on front burner, and Calendar featured less science and more unfiltered politics. He also took offence that it was released at Badal's political rally.

“The birth of a calendar, born at Badal's rally, will obviously be used to fulfill designs of certain individuals," he said.

But Akali strategists have their defence which gave a peep into their thought process. "Amarinder is planning to focus on 400th installation year 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.■  

April 26, 2002

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