As the World Sikh News com­pletes two years of its pres­ence on the in­ter­net, we fo­cus on the work­ing in the Sikh world. On the eve of the elec­tions in the Pun­jab, with deep an­guish, we pre­sent an analy­sis of the po­lit­i­cal can­vas of the Sikhs –the Sikh lead­er­ship in Pun­jab and the Di­as­pora. We will soon fol­low up with de­tailed analy­ses of Sikh so­cial and re­li­gious fo­rums.

As In­dia goes to the hus­tings, the Sikh lead­er­ship from Pun­jab to the Di­as­pora is in ut­ter sham­bles. There is no or­gan­i­sa­tion or in­di­vid­ual worth the salt who can lead the sit­u­a­tion and take the com­mu­nity for­ward in these try­ing times. The re­li­gious, po­lit­i­cal and re­li­gio-po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship, the tra­di­tional and rev­o­lu­tion-in­clined par­ties are all in the limbo, wait­ing in the wings for a mir­a­cle to hap­pen or a leader to de­scend from the skies.

No party or leader, in­di­vid­u­ally or col­lec­tively has framed the Sikh agenda and thrusted down the throat of the po­lit­i­cal par­ties con­test­ing the elec­tions.

Once upon a time, the Akali lead­er­ship was con­sid­ered the Sikh lead­er­ship. Over the decades, they be­came Pun­jabi lead­er­ship in name to feed their pseudo-sec­u­lar stance but in ef­fect they are al­ways at sea, not know­ing which side to lean on. To­day, the Badal Dal lead­er­ship is swing­ing be­tween the Panth and the BJP, but doggedly pur­su­ing their self­ish and feu­dal pol­i­tics.

No party or leader, in­di­vid­u­ally or col­lec­tively has framed the Sikh agenda and thrusted down the throat of the po­lit­i­cal par­ties con­test­ing the elec­tions.

Sikhs in the Con­gress have been voted to power many a time in the past but they have never qual­i­fied nor have been ac­cepted as Sikh lead­er­ship by the Sikh pop­u­la­tion.  They do not de­serve to be so called, any­way. The pre­sent lead­er­ship cer­tainly does not de­serve to be called Sikh lead­ers.

For the Shi­ro­mani Akali Dal (Am­rit­sar), Pun­jab be­gins and ends in San­grur.  Though the party raises Sikh is­sues, the lead­er­ship is found want­ing on many fronts.

The Bharatiya Janta Party, through some nou­veau-riche Sikhs has made in­roads into the po­lit­i­cal fi­bre of Pun­jab, with ac­tive con­nivance and sup­port of the Badal Dal, but they can never dream of be­ing liked or ac­cepted as Sikh lead­ers.

 If you like our sto­ries, do fol­low WSN on Face­book.

As for the Aam Aadmi Party, nei­ther the party nor the lead­er­ship has any pre­tence of be­ing Sikh lead­ers and they have still to make up their minds whether they want to align with the peo­ple of Pun­jab or their wa­ver­ing lead­er­ship in Delhi.

The Tak­sali Akali Dal wants to be holier than thou and is heav­ily bank­ing on the left­overs or break­aways from their par­ent party. They are still mak­ing up their mind whether they want to be pro-Pun­jab and pro-Panth or sim­ply anti-Badal.

The Pun­jab Ekta Party is an at­tempt to be sec­u­lar yet pro-Pun­jabi. The party lead­er­ship is still evolv­ing and so far has only been able to break away from its par­ent Aam Aadmi Party.

The Lok In­saaf Party is test­ing the wa­ters as it ex­pands from Lud­hi­ana to around the state with their ef­fi­cient man­age­ment ap­proach and pro­vok­ing po­lit­i­cal man­ner­isms.  Much wa­ter has to flow down the Sut­lej till the lead­ers be­come Sikh lead­ers of the state and be­yond.

Long ago, the Bahu­jan Samaj Party con­cluded that the 13 Par­lia­men­tary seats of Pun­jab do not have much sig­nif­i­cance in the larger scheme of things as it is Ut­tar Pradesh, Mad­hya Pradesh and Bi­har which de­cides who will get ma­jor­ity in the house of 543 mem­bers.  The party has very lit­tle in­ter­est in the Pun­jab.

The Com­mu­nist Party of In­dia, the Com­mu­nist Party of In­dia (Marx­ist) and some ex­treme left ver­sions con­tinue their ‘botched pol­i­tics’ of in­creas­ing the num­bers of their vote count, with­out mak­ing an im­pact, but cer­tainly sid­ing with the State as op­posed to Sikh in­ter­ests.

The Delhi Sikh Gur­d­wara Man­age­ment Com­mit­tee lead­er­ship has sold its body, mind and soul to the Bharatiya Janta Party. It would be naive and stu­pid to ex­pect any­thing from them.

The Pun­jab Bachao Mor­cha of the Chandi­garh club is de­void of in­no­v­a­tive ideas and con­tin­ues their anti-Badal rant. It has still to come to terms with what the rev­o­lu­tion­ary Chandi­garh poet Gajin­der Singh said years ago, “change and rev­o­lu­tion does not come about over end­less cups of tea in the com­fort of draw­ing rooms.”

The All In­dia Sikh Stu­dents Fed­er­a­tion which was once the lead­er­ship bank of the Shi­ro­mani Akali Dal is now bank­rupt; the de­funct body has a lin­eage of syco­phants and way­ward ac­tivists. They are not lead­ers and they have no or­gan­i­sa­tion to lead.

The All In­dia Sikh Fed­er­a­tion which was the lead­er­ship bank of the Shi­ro­mani Akali Dal, is torn apart into so many groups that the body is to­tally de­funct. No­body can lead the body, how will they lead the com­mu­nity?

The Bar­gari In­saf Mor­cha –shame­lessly has now got noth­ing to do with Bar­gari, no In­saf is sought and the Mor­cha has fiz­zled out. In their love for pol­i­tics, they do not at­tend court hear­ings of top po­lice per­son­nel in­car­cer­ated for Bar­gari and Be­hbal Kalan po­lice fir­ings and then let off on bails. This mor­cha has been the biggest let down of the decade for the Sikhs, par­tic­u­larly those who ex­pected the moon.

The Pan­thic Co­or­di­na­tion Com­mit­tee, work­ing since the last decade has prof­fered no Pan­thic agenda; there is no co­or­di­na­tion and the com­mit­tee ex­ists only on pa­per.

The Sikh Se­wak Army, pro­fess­edly non-po­lit­i­cal, but has not moved an inch on the ground to change the func­tion­ing of the SGPC. Un­less it catches the bull by its horns, sweet-mouthings in the me­dia will not fetch re­sults.

On the side­lines, those who do not di­rectly par­tic­i­pate in the elec­tions yet claim to be re­li­gious and re­li­gio-po­lit­i­cal lead­ers have failed to show ini­tia­tive and dash.

The re­li­gio-po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship of the Shi­ro­mani Gur­d­wara Par­band­hak Com­mit­tee is too con­tent to serve lan­gar to can­di­dates and sup­port­ers of the Badal Dal and wher­ever pos­si­ble send em­ploy­ees in mufti as vol­un­teers of the party. There is hardly any di­vid­ing line be­tween the party and the SGPC, prompt­ing the Sikh San­gat to paint both with the same brush.

The Sikh Ref­er­en­dum 2020 team in the Di­as­pora is des­per­ately wait­ing for 2019 to pass. Does their lead­er­ship look, speak and func­tion like Sikh lead­ers?

The Delhi Sikh Gur­d­wara Man­age­ment Com­mit­tee lead­er­ship has sold its body, mind and soul to the Bharatiya Janta Party. It would be naive and stu­pid to ex­pect any­thing from them.

The Takht Har­man­dar Patna Sahib Com­mit­tee and the Takht Hazur Sahib Nanded Com­mit­tee is al­ways ready to be ma­nip­u­lated ei­ther by the gov­ern­ment of the day or by the SGPC.  So en­grossed in their own worlds, it is a far cry for them to pro­vide lead­er­ship to the com­mu­nity on any front.

The Chief Khalsa Di­wan, throw­ing the id­iom, wis­dom, vi­sion and his­tor­i­cal work of its founder Bhai Vir Singh to the winds, is now a ‘pri­vate lim­ited com­pa­ny’ of Am­rit­sar-based rich Sikhs, who are en­gaged in chang­ing the course, nomen­cla­ture and own­er­ship of the prop­er­ties of the or­gan­i­sa­tion. For them Sikh lead­er­ship as an is­sue ceased long back.

The Ak­hand Kir­tani Jatha and the Damdami Tak­sal have lost their po­lit­i­cal voice. They are ei­ther silent or aligned to some in­di­vid­u­als here and there.

The Gur­mat Mis­sion­ary Col­leges se­lec­tively be­come ‘re­li­gious’ and ‘semi-po­lit­i­cal’ or ‘po­lit­i­cal’ de­pend­ing upon can­di­date and the times. Their lead­er­ship is too bar­ri­caded and with­out a world view of the Sikhs or the Sikh world. They are so en­grossed in ‘pro­tect­ing’ the re­li­gious dic­tum as per their think­ing that they end up cre­at­ing more di­vi­sions than bridg­ing those al­ready there.

For the po­lit­i­cal fo­rums in Pun­jab and else­where ded­i­cated to up­hold the sov­er­eignty of the peo­ple of Pun­jab, the elec­tions in Pun­jab of­fer no ground for work. So they think.

 If you like our sto­ries, do fol­low WSN on Face­book.

The Dal Khalsa cadres are on a three-month sab­bat­i­cal, free to pur­sue any po­lit­i­cal party or per­son of their choice, as the party has taken the stand of not con­test­ing any elec­tions un­der the In­dian dis­pen­sa­tion.

The Sikh Fed­er­a­tion UK, the Amer­i­can Sikh Gur­d­wara Par­band­hak Com­mit­tee, the ‘June 1984 groups’ and the World Sikh Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Canada would hereto­fore take keen in­ter­est in the re­li­gio-po­lit­i­cal de­vel­op­ments in Pun­jab. Not any­more. Now Sikhs are left to fend for them­selves. These bod­ies are too en­trenched in their own po­lit­i­cal can­vasses to worry about the Pun­jab, ex­cept a hu­man rights vi­o­la­tion here and there. The same is the sit­u­a­tion with other groups in other coun­tries.

The Di­as­pora bod­ies in all the coun­tries where Sikhs now have siz­able num­bers and those num­bers are in­creas­ing with the flight of Sikhs from the Pun­jab, these bod­ies are more con­cerned about lo­cal prob­lems and their so­lu­tions.

The Sikh Ref­er­en­dum 2020 team in the Di­as­pora is des­per­ately wait­ing for 2019 to pass. If you want to be­lieve them, in the year 2020, notwith­stand­ing what­ever kind of ref­er­en­dum they will be able to man­age, all prob­lems of the com­mu­nity will be solved. Sikhs will be in the sev­enth skies and Sikh sov­er­eignty which we lost on 29 March 1849, will be re­stored in the year 2020. Does their lead­er­ship look, speak and func­tion like Sikh lead­ers?

The can­di­da­ture of Paramjit Kaur Khalra has given a lit­tle fil­lip to the Di­as­pora Sikh bod­ies to iden­tify with hu­man rights as an agenda. Oth­er­wise from UK to Canada to Aus­tralia to the US, they would have re­mained silent spec­ta­tors –first al­low­ing things to hap­pen with­out in­ter­ven­tion and then ru­ing that ‘look this is hap­pen­ing in Hindu In­dia.’ Re­gur­gi­ta­tion is their forte.

The Pak­istan Sikh Gur­d­wara Par­band­hak Com­mit­tee will do well to fol­low the trail of Sikh her­itage ex­perts and look af­ter the huge spec­trum of Sikh legacy wast­ing by the day in that coun­try. It will do well to look af­ter the eco­nomic needs of the poor­est of the poor Sikhs in Pak­istan and Afghanistan.

The can­di­da­ture of Paramjit Kaur Khalra has given a lit­tle fil­lip to the Di­as­pora Sikh bod­ies to iden­tify with hu­man rights as an agenda. Oth­er­wise from UK to Canada to Aus­tralia to the US, they would have re­mained silent spec­ta­tors –first al­low­ing things to hap­pen with­out in­ter­ven­tion and then ru­ing that ‘look this is hap­pen­ing in Hindu In­dia.’ Re­gur­gi­ta­tion is their forte.

The Di­as­pora mis­er­ably failed in its as­sess­ment of the Aam Aadmi Party in the last elec­tions, fund­ing the party to the teeth and giv­ing false high hopes of po­lit­i­cal power to their Sikh can­di­dates, with many wait­ing in the wings to be­come the chief min­is­ter of the state.

In the pre­sent times, in the Di­as­pora and within Pun­jab has emerged a string of so­cial me­dia war­riors who spare no op­por­tu­nity to pick up Sikh is­sues and raise their voice against in­jus­tices by the state or union gov­ern­ment. They re­lent­lessly ex­pose the po­lit­i­cal rene­gades in the com­mu­nity. They are happy in their co­coons and would not like to be­come lead­ers of the Sikh com­mu­nity.

The re­li­gio-po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship of the Jathedars –recog­nised by the SGPC to those recog­nised by the Sar­bat Khalsa to those dere­cog­nised by the Jathedars recog­nised by the Sar­bat Khalsa has mis­er­ably failed to pro­vide di­rec­tion to the ex­ist­ing par­ties or to any­one else. They are too in­volved in pur­su­ing their own agen­das only.

In the six­ties of the last cen­tury, Pet­ti­grew wrote her path-break­ing analy­sis of pol­i­tics in Pun­jab in her book Rob­ber­man No­ble­man and said that pol­i­tics in Pun­jab is every­thing about ‘pal­ty­baazi’.  The group is more im­por­tant than the Panth. The stance of the group is more im­por­tant than the cause. The party is more im­por­tant than Pun­jab. The party lead­ers are more im­por­tant than the Sikh masses.

Out of the po­lit­i­cal party sphere, no in­di­vid­ual has ei­ther as­pired or vol­un­teered or worked to shake the old foun­da­tions of the po­lit­i­cal sys­tems in Pun­jab and prove Irish an­thro­pol­o­gist Joyce Pet­ti­grew wrong.

In the six­ties of the last cen­tury, Pet­ti­grew wrote her path-break­ing analy­sis of pol­i­tics in Pun­jab in her book Rob­ber­man No­ble­man and said that pol­i­tics in Pun­jab is every­thing about ‘pal­ty­baazi’.  The group is more im­por­tant than the Panth. The stance of the group is more im­por­tant than the cause. The party is more im­por­tant than Pun­jab. The party lead­ers are more im­por­tant than the Sikh masses.

In such times, with such a sit­u­a­tion, what will hap­pen? Noth­ing. No in­di­vid­ual or party from the pre­sent sphere has the ca­pac­ity, ca­pa­bil­ity and vi­sion to nur­ture and throw up Sikh lead­er­ship. As has hap­pened in the past and as it stands, there will be a ma­jor up­heaval in the In­dian sub-con­ti­nent and some kind of Sikh lead­er­ship will emerge. Will it be ready to take the sit­u­a­tion head on and guide the des­tiny of the com­mu­nity?

 If you like our sto­ries, do fol­low WSN on Face­book.

Many of these groups and in­di­vid­u­als have the in­ter­est of the Panth and Pun­jab at heart. How­ever that is not enough. The con­text and per­spec­tive has to change. Re­peat­ing the same di­a­logues, the same ar­gu­ments, yearn­ing for fund­ing is not go­ing to help.  The huge mon­ster of In­dian democ­racy can­not be wished away or fought with merely slo­ga­neer­ing and cry­ing hoarse.

The free­dom and the op­por­tu­nity that the West pro­vides to the Sikhs set­tled there should en­able them for a more benev­o­lent, vi­sion­ary and ef­fec­tive in­ter­ac­tion with the Pun­jab and Panth and not limit only to re­li­gious dogma and dic­tum.

Many of these groups and in­di­vid­u­als have the in­ter­est of the Panth and Pun­jab at heart. How­ever that is not enough. The con­text and per­spec­tive has to change. Re­peat­ing the same di­a­logues, the same ar­gu­ments, yearn­ing for fund­ing is not go­ing to help.  The huge mon­ster of In­dian democ­racy can­not be wished away or fought with merely slo­ga­neer­ing and cry­ing hoarse.

Soul-search­ing, adop­tion of new tech­nolo­gies, adap­tion of new world po­lit­i­cal think­ing, de­vel­op­ing Sikh lead­er­ship from amongst the youth from scratch, giv­ing up old hy­per­bole, stop­ping to drum dis­crim­i­na­tion, en­gag­ing with the peo­ple of all castes, class and shades, re­ori­ent­ing the teach­ings of the Gu­rus and mak­ing it part of our lives and chang­ing the so­cial and re­li­gious fi­bre to be more in­clu­sive and vi­sion­ary.

All this needs to hap­pen and hap­pen fast.