In the last forty years, the Bhar­tiya Janata Party has grown brick by brick and pur­sued its pro-Hin­dutva agenda. In these four decades, the In­dian Na­tional Con­gress has killed and tor­tured the Sikhs. In the last two decades, the Shi­ro­mani Akali Dal has eaten the Sikh polity from within, dec­i­mat­ing the ethos and sanc­tity of the Panth. 

The re­sults of 2019 gen­eral elec­tions in Pun­jab are symp­to­matic of a malaise which is killing the heart, soul and body politic of Pun­jab. There are more peo­ple and or­gan­i­sa­tions re­spon­si­ble for the po­lit­i­cal de­ba­cle in Pun­jab which has thrown the Panth to the fringes.

The ‘en­light­ened’ so­cial and re­li­gious bod­ies of the Sikhs, who should be more alert and aware, have ei­ther re­mained to­tally aloof from Sikh pol­i­tics or have been in­cor­po­rated by the Shi­ro­mani Akali Dal through in­sti­tu­tions like the Akal Takht and the SGPC which are os­ten­si­bly in­de­pen­dent.

Last week a score of Sikh bod­ies from across Pun­jab and the world at­tended a meet­ing with the Jathedar Akal Takht -Gi­ani Harpreet Singh, blind to the mess that his ap­point­ment as ‘act­ing Jathedar’ has cre­ated in Sikh minds.  They were the ones who were ex­pected to pro­vide an al­ter­na­tive to the Sikh masses.

The lead­ers of the Bar­gari Mor­cha, who were sup­posed to lead the cam­paign for jus­tice against sac­ri­lege and make it an elec­toral is­sue, were clearly bought over by the Con­gress Party and there is no doubt that they sub­mit­ted to the dik­tat of the Pun­jab Chief Min­is­ter. Dur­ing the elec­tions, they ‘staged’ a protest dharna, which ob­vi­ously had no im­pact.

The Sikh Di­as­pora did not find any mir­a­cles hap­pen­ing this time around, as it ex­pected through AAP in 2014, so it kept aloof dur­ing the 2019 polls. Some sec­tions of it were con­cerned a lit­tle about Sim­ran­jit Singh Mann and an­other about Paramjit Kaur Khalra. Both can­di­dates and their sup­port­ers must re­alise that elec­tions are not a part-time busi­ness.

The half-baked 2020 Ref­er­en­dum movers are likely to let all hell loose on Sikhs in the Pun­jab and else­where. The Panth or what­ever is left of it is still think­ing how to tackle this.

The pro­po­nents of a Sikh state were happy boy­cotting the polls. On so­cial me­dia, some of them are say­ing ‘the elec­tion de­feat in Pun­jab shows that we have no choice but to fight for a Sikh state’. How sim­plis­tic!! Rome was not built in a day!

Paramjit Kaur Khalra, while speak­ing to the me­dia, af­ter her de­feat ac­knowl­edged that ‘the Pan­thic cir­cles do not know how to work dur­ing elec­tions.’

That is the whole point. With no train­ing in elec­tions, with no fore­sight to build an al­ter­na­tive po­lit­i­cal struc­ture and cam­paign, with only slo­gan-mon­ger­ing and hate cam­paign against BJP and Badal Dal on so­cial me­dia, you can­not think of chang­ing the course of the Panth, can you?

In forty years, the Bhar­tiya Janata Party has grown from two seats to a brute ma­jor­ity to char­ter the course of In­dia and pur­sue its agenda of Hindu In­dia. The RSS has grown man­i­fold.

In three decades, the Con­gress which at­tacked Dar­bar Sahib killed Sikhs ex­tra­ju­di­cially, made thou­sands dis­ap­pear in­vol­un­tar­ily, is now the ruler of Pun­jab. Clearly, June 1984 and No­vem­ber 1984 are not elec­toral is­sues any­more. What does that speak for the Sikhs or the Panth?

What the Panth needs to ac­knowl­edge is that both par­ties have worked very hard to achieve their pre­sent po­si­tion. They have used all tac­tics to make in­roads into Sikhs and Sikhism. We have al­lowed them to do so. Their ma­chin­ery was and is work­ing over­time. There is a per­fect wed­ding of ide­ol­ogy and skil­ful man­age­ment in their work ethics.

Is there any Pan­thic group any­where in the world, which has an Elec­tion Train­ing and Man­age­ment Plan for Sikhs and Pun­jabis in Pun­jab? Has any­one crit­i­cally stud­ied the func­tion­ing of the Con­gress, the Bhar­tiya Janata Party and the Shi­ro­mani Akali Dal?

The Panth only builds cas­tles in the air. The Sikh polity has gone down­hill, step by step. The strength of our char­ac­ter has been com­pro­mised.  There is no in­vest­ment from Pun­jab or from the Di­as­pora be­fore or dur­ing the polls to cre­ate a sys­tem­atic counter-at­tack to forces in­im­i­cal to Sikhs and Pun­jab. No youth are be­ing trained ex­cept by the Badals and the Con­gress in state­craft and ad­min­is­tra­tion.

With a few well-at­tended meet­ings with a few hun­dred thou­sand peo­ple at Melas and func­tions, we start weav­ing a glo­ri­ous fu­ture. With the only tool of wish­ful think­ing, we dream of ei­ther de­feat­ing the Badals or the Con­gress Party.

There is no vis­i­ble or covert plan or think­ing. How fur­ther down will we go, be­fore we cry aloud, enough is enough!