Thou­sands of Sauda dera fol­low­ers con­vert Panchkula into a war­zone. Their sheer num­bers show po­lice and ad­min­is­tra­tion fail­ure de­spite tall claims by po­lice and chief min­is­ters, leav­ing cit­i­zens shocked and scared. Saner el­e­ments and par­ents urge peo­ple to stay in­doors.  It is dis­turb­ing that one ac­cused and his cultist fol­low­ers hold the en­tire state to ran­som.

Update: Po­lice likely to crack­down tonight on Dera sup­port­ers in Panchkula as Pun­jab and Haryana High court takes stern view of gath­er­ing of thou­sands in the city. In­ter­net ser­vices sus­pended in Pun­jab and Haryana for the next 72 hours. Haryana po­lice, anti-riot po­lice, para mil­i­tary po­lice sur­round the court area and though ap­peals have been made, there is likely to be a lathi charge dur­ing the night as the High court has asked Haryana Di­rec­tor Gen­eral of Po­lice to va­cate the area by the morn­ing.

In Pun­jab, dan­ger­ous cults prod­ded by the state ma­chin­ery to make in­roads into the Sikh fold and weaken them are now get­ting out of hands. In 1978, it was the neo-Ni­rankaris who killed 13 de­vout Sikhs in broad day­light in Am­rit­sar and 7 de­vout Sikhs in Kan­pur. At the be­gin­ning of this cen­tury the Noormahlias chal­lenged the ba­sics of Sikhism and to whom the Pun­jab and Haryana High court has re­cently given the lee­way not to cre­mate the body of their chief -Ashutosh Ma­haraj, who died years ago, but whose fol­low­ers “suc­cess­fully con­vinced” the court that he is is “samadhi” and will rise at the ap­pro­pri­ate time.

In the back­wa­ters of Haryana, in the sleepy un­de­vel­oped dis­trict town Sirsa, the gov­ern­ment of In­dia propped up the Dera Sauda chief -Gurmeet Ram Rahim, who con­ducted big tamashas, held po­lit­i­cal dar­bars, den­i­grated Sikh Gu­rus and swayed the poor­est of the poor to­wards him through largesse and po­lit­i­cal pa­tron­age, con­sol­i­dat­ing their vote bank to elicit favours and re­spect.

To­day, the In­dian state is be­ing made to bite more than it can chew.  As Jus­tice Jagdeep Singh pre­pares to de­liver the judge­ment in the sex­ual abuse case of fe­male fol­low­ers at the Sirsa dera, the state is un­pre­pared to han­dle the state of af­fairs. The sit­u­a­tion is to­tally out of hands. It is a bat­tle zone.  

Schools and col­leges shut down. Gov­ern­ment of­fices of Pun­jab and Chandi­garh de­clare 25 Au­gust as a pub­lic hol­i­day.

State Road­ways  sus­pend trans­port to and from Haryana. Other means of trans­port likely to be un­avail­able. North­ern Rail­ways sus­pends 22 trains to Haryana and Chandi­garh.

“In the back­wa­ters of Haryana, in the sleepy un­de­vel­oped dis­trict town Sirsa, the gov­ern­ment of In­dia propped up the Dera Sauda chief Gur­mit Ram Rahim, who con­ducted big tamashas, held po­lit­i­cal dar­bars, den­i­grated Sikh Gu­rus and swayed the poor­est of the poor to­wards him through largesse and po­lit­i­cal pa­tron­age, con­sol­i­dat­ing their vote bank to elicit favours and re­spect.”

Hos­pi­tal and health fa­cil­i­ties on high alert. Health staff and doc­tors’ leave can­celled.

Like Kash­mir and the north-east, mo­bile in­ter­net ser­vices ap­pear on the verge of clo­sure.

Ad­di­tional po­lice com­pa­nies req­ui­si­tioned by the Pun­jab and Haryana High Court. In­dian army on standby. VIP Se­cu­rity per­son­nel re­de­ployed on streets by Pun­jab gov­ern­ment.

Chief Min­is­ter Pun­jab Cap­tain Amarinder Singh and Haryana Chief Min­is­ter Manohar Lal Khat­tar avow readi­ness to con­trol any un­to­ward sit­u­a­tion.  How­ever, the Pun­jab and Haryana High Court has strongly pulled up the Haryana gov­ern­ment for its fail­ure to stop the flood of dera fol­low­ers into Panchkula. They have said that DGP Haryana should be pre­pared for ac­tion should se­cu­rity and safety of cit­i­zens is jeop­ar­dised.

Pun­jab con­verts one cricket sta­dium, whereas Haryana trans­forms two sta­di­ums into sub-jails.

There is sup­posed to be Sec­tion 144 im­posed in Pun­jab, Haryana and Chandi­garh. Yet, thou­sands of Sacha Sauda dera fol­low­ers oc­cupy Panchkula and Chandi­garh. Pet­ri­fied tri-city res­i­dents choose to stay in­doors.

Sikhs are forced to think that in case they were to protest with one-tenth of such num­bers as the dera fol­low­ers, they would have been stopped, lathi-charged, fired upon and lead­er­ship at all lev­els sub­jected to in-house im­pris­on­ment.  While peace­fully protest­ing against this pseudo-cult’s at­tempt to den­i­grate Sikh re­li­gious sen­ti­ments, Kan­waljit Singh of Sunam, Har­man­dar Singh of Dab­wali and Balkar Singh from Mum­bai were bru­tally killed by the pri­vate army of the pseudo-saint.

Clearly, there are a dif­fer­ent set of rules for those who take favours and give favours and those who con­test for rights, in­clud­ing the right to non-in­ter­ven­tion in their re­li­gious af­fairs by dan­ger­ous cults.

It is still not clear whether the Dera Chief will reach the courts, though he has af­firmed that he will de­spite “a back­ache”. His sup­port­ers talk of peace but their in­ten­tions are clear in their num­bers, body lan­guage and the worst pos­si­ble sce­nario of a sec­tion likely to take to self-im­mo­la­tion should the ver­dict go against the cult chief.  Ku Klux Klan in Pun­jab?

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