From the NCERT books taught in In­dian schools to the work of Ra­machan­dra Guha, to the end­less piles of books that UPSC as­pi­rants gorge upon, you will be told that the first non-con­gress gov­ern­ment in in­de­pen­dent In­dia was the one elected in 1957 in Ker­ala and top­pled in 1959 by Jawa­har Lal Nehru. If any­thing, it goes on to show how lit­tle Pun­jab fig­ures in the na­tional nar­ra­tive. Now that the coun­try is se­ri­ously watch­ing Pun­jab, post a stretched out Kisan An­dolan and in the midst of elec­tion fever, we bring you this highly in­for­ma­tive piece by se­nior jour­nal­ist IP Singh, who ex­plains this out­lier state whose re­al­ity chal­lenges the care­fully con­structed nar­ra­tive of the In­dian state, Delhi-based me­dia, mo­ti­vated an­a­lysts and NCERT books. – Ed­i­tor, WSN

PUN­JAB, WHICH FACES UN­CER­TAINTY WITH FIVE-COR­NERED as­sem­bly elec­tions, has usu­ally re­mained an out­lier to the na­tional trend, es­pe­cially as seen in the cow-belt states.

Be­cause the roots of Pun­jab’s dif­fer­ent po­lit­i­cal be­hav­iour are re­li­gious and so­cial, its so­cial dy­nam­ics, com­mu­nal and caste is­sues can’t be seen through the prism of any other state or prisms stan­dard­ised in Delhi.

Seven decades be­fore Channi: Long be­fore Cha­ran­jit Singh Channi be­came its first sched­uled caste Sikh chief min­is­ter, the state had its first leader of op­po­si­tion in an il­lus­tri­ous SC Sikh, Gopal Singh Khalsa, whom then Shi­ro­mani Akali Dal pres­i­dent Mas­ter Tara Singh picked for the post af­ter the first elec­tion in free In­dia in 1952. His ac­cep­tance was also seam­less.

When the rest of the coun­try largely cites Ma­hatma Gand­hi’s peace­ful meth­ods, the Sikh peas­antry, which made the core of farm­ers’ re­cent peace­ful stir, has ex­am­ples of Akali ag­i­ta­tions of the early 1920s – Guru ka Bagh and Jaito – which hit in­ter­na­tional head­lines in those times and still re­main un­par­al­leled.

Pa­tiala and East Pun­jab States Union, which was later merged into Pun­jab, had the first Akali Dal-led non-Con­gress gov­ern­ment in the coun­try. This was also the first as­sem­bly to be dis­solved by Jawa­har Lal Nehru’s gov­ern­ment and PEPSU was placed un­der Pres­i­den­t’s Rule in 1953.

Soon af­ter, when Nehru in the last week of De­cem­ber 1953 came to ad­dress a re­li­gious con­gre­ga­tion at the his­toric shrine of Fate­hgarh Sahib, to mark the mar­tyr­dom of two younger sons of Guru Gob­ind Singh, he was not al­lowed to de­liver a speech af­ter pay­ing obei­sance.

Much later, one of the strongest mass op­po­si­tions to the Emer­gency im­posed by In­dira Gandhi also came from Pun­jab. Con­gress re­mained out of power in Pun­jab when Ra­jiv Gandhi headed the gov­ern­ment at the Cen­tre with the largest-ever man­date.

Like other states, Pun­jab has also had two promi­nent par­ties, SAD and Con­gress, which won al­ter­na­tively more or less, and BJP, or its ear­lier avatar Jan Sangh, Janata Party, and com­mu­nist par­ties re­mained smaller play­ers and had al­liances with SAD at dif­fer­ent times.

When Sikhs had al­most com­pletely dumped Con­gress and ral­lied be­hind SAD, Parkash Singh Badal com­pleted his fa­mil­ial con­trol not only on the party but also on Shi­ro­mani Gur­d­wara Par­band­hak Com­mit­tee and by im­pli­ca­tion on Akal Takht, the high­est tem­po­ral seat of Sikhs. This had its neg­a­tive im­pact and Con­gress bounced back in the 1999 par­lia­men­tary polls and in the 2002 as­sem­bly elec­tions.

Af­ter the cat­a­clysmic events of 1984, Con­gress re­mained highly un­pop­u­lar in the state. It lost the 1985 as­sem­bly elec­tions and the de­feats were hu­mil­i­at­ing in the
par­lia­men­tary elec­tions of 1989, 1996 and 1998 – in 1998 it was re­duced to zero. In the 1997 as­sem­bly elec­tion, the grand old party got just 14 seats in an as­sem­bly of 117 seats.

When Sikhs had al­most com­pletely dumped Con­gress and ral­lied be­hind SAD, Parkash Singh Badal com­pleted his fa­mil­ial con­trol not only on the party but also on Shi­ro­mani Gur­d­wara Par­band­hak Com­mit­tee and by im­pli­ca­tion on Akal Takht, the high­est tem­po­ral seat of Sikhs. This had its neg­a­tive im­pact and Con­gress bounced back in the 1999 par­lia­men­tary polls and in the 2002 as­sem­bly elec­tions.

In 2012, the SAD-BJP com­bine scripted his­tory by win­ning a con­sec­u­tive term, se­nior Badal’s fifth as the CM. How­ever, dur­ing this tenure, SAD lost a con­sid­er­able share of its con­stituency, the Sikhs.

Pun­jab has been look­ing for a third al­ter­na­tive for around eight years now, ini­tial signs of which came in the 2012 as­sem­bly elec­tions.

Pun­jab has been look­ing for a third al­ter­na­tive for around eight years now, ini­tial signs of which came in the 2012 as­sem­bly elec­tions. It was a sur­prise for AAP when its can­di­dates won four seats in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. Is­sues of sac­ri­lege of Guru Granth Sahib and po­lice fir­ing in which two Sikh pro­test­ers were killed in 2015 led to an in­crease in the un­pop­u­lar­ity of SAD.

But af­ter AAP started mi­cro­manag­ing things from Delhi, its vote share slipped in the 2017 as­sem­bly and 2019 par­lia­men­tary elec­tions and Con­gress gained from Sikhs’ dis­en­chant­ment with SAD. In 2019, AAP could get only 7.38% vote share while a ‘fourth al­ter­na­tive’ of Pun­jab De­mo­c­ra­tic Al­liance plus BSP got 10.77 % vote share. This col­lec­tive vote share of 18% still re­flected that quest for change to a third al­ter­na­tive.

But af­ter AAP started mi­cro­manag­ing things from Delhi, its vote share slipped in the 2017 as­sem­bly and 2019 par­lia­men­tary elec­tions and Con­gress gained from Sikhs’ dis­en­chant­ment with SAD. 

It is amid this po­lit­i­cal flu­id­ity, mainly caused by the weak­en­ing of Akali Dal and se­ri­ous is­sues of gov­er­nance, the emer­gence of mafias, cor­rup­tion for which Con­gress too faced flak, that Pun­jab has space for a third al­ter­na­tive. In other states, BJP gained space largely va­cated by Con­gress but in Pun­jab, Con­gress is still hold­ing con­sid­er­able ground and the saf­fron party will find it ex­tremely dif­fi­cult to gain hold in any ‘Sikh space’, which was also ap­par­ent from Pun­jab duck­ing the Modi wave in 2014, when even a stal­wart like Arun Jait­ley lost from Am­rit­sar, and in 2019.

BJP still re­mains a smaller player even as it is try­ing to pro­ject it­self as a ‘vi­rat’ (big) party.

This is pre­cisely the rea­son that BJP still re­mains a smaller player even as it is try­ing to pro­ject it­self as a ‘vi­rat’ (big) party.

Farm move­ment in­creased this flu­id­ity and now farm groups have also an­nounced their de­ci­sion to con­test elec­tions. They have also al­ready started strongly at­tack­ing AAP, which has now an­nounced Bhag­want Singh Mann as its CM can­di­date. Dur­ing the farm move­ment, there was enough ex­pres­sion of hope that farm groups would play some role in the fluid po­lit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion in Pun­jab even as no one was clear about the method.

The au­thor is a se­nior jour­nal­ist. The ar­ti­cle ap­pears here cour­tesy TOI. The au­thor blogs at https://​time­sofindia.in­di­a­times.com/​blogs/​au­thor/​ips­ingh/