“THINGS fall apart; the cen­tre can­not hold,” Yeats could have said this about Pun­jab’s pol­i­tics. As the ful­crums of power, Shi­ro­mani Akali Dal (SAD) and Con­gress, both more than cen­tury-old par­ties, fell by the way­side, the coun­try ac­tu­ally wants to un­der­stand what did the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) do to score such a land­slide win? Well, it was there, and that was all it had to do. The rest of the work was done by its com­peti­tors, who were not found want­ing in work­ing hard and whole­heart­edly for their own de­feat and for AAP’s vic­tory that left SAD and Con­gress dec­i­mated to an ex­tent where an even­tual two-party sys­tem in the coun­try could mean BJP ver­sus AAP.

QUICK FIX AN­A­LYSTS, WITH A PRO­NOUNCED PRO­CLIV­ITY TO SOUND NICE AND PO­LITE TO AN IN­COM­ING REGIME, have tried to give credit for the 92/​117 win to AAP’s os­ten­si­bly clever strat­egy, but the fact is that AAP re­ceived a rob­ber’s haul of 42 per cent grudge vote, while it had con­tributed lit­tle in the man­u­fac­tur­ing of that grudge.

For the en­tire du­ra­tion of the Kisan An­dolan that had kept pol­i­tics paral­ysed for more than a year in Pun­jab, politi­cians of var­i­ous po­lit­i­cal par­ties did the bid­ding of farm union lead­ers, afraid that any de­ci­sion by them to jump head­long into the elec­toral arena would squeeze out the tra­di­tional par­ties from the field al­to­gether.

And then, Mod­i’s ca­pit­u­la­tion on the farm bills was fol­lowed by a com­plete mess by the farm union lead­ers -what was clearly Mod­i’s de­feat played out as con­fu­sion within pro­tes­tors’ ranks. Stunned by BJP’s sud­den sur­ren­der, they hardly knew how to play it out in Pun­jab, UP or else­where. Within days, the mas­sive gains of the An­dolan were frit­tered away, its lead­ers’ unity fell vic­tim to their lit­tle egos and un­duly hard­core stances, and soon any rem­nants of the An­dolan who were adamant on fight­ing elec­tions were pushed to the mar­gins by fel­low farm union­ists.

The An­dolan by it­self was a prob­lem­atic move­ment. It spoke of the farm­ers’ fear of los­ing land – so, by de­f­i­n­i­tion, it was to guard the in­ter­ests of the land-own­ing class. It claimed sup­port of land­less labour­ers – but they were there for sheer sur­vival, not in search of so­cial jus­tice. It tried to ex­pand its agenda to in­clude hu­man rights, but soon be­came wary of ref­er­ences to Kash­mir or Art 370, and the hu­man rights de­bate ran into a rad­i­cal Sikhs ver­sus com­rades wall. It cried hoarse about Sudha Bharad­waj, but would meekly add the is­sue of us­ing UAPA against Sikh youth. And the mo­ment a de­bate about the land ceil­ing and land re­forms hit the An­dolan, the fis­sures widened to threaten unity.

But de­spite sev­eral prob­lem­atic as­pects, the An­dolan was a suc­cess. Not just be­cause it achieved its pri­mary ob­jec­tive of forc­ing Mod­i’s hand on three farm laws, but be­cause it had suc­ceeded in stok­ing mas­sive anger as well as con­scious­ness about pol­i­tics.

Pun­jab learnt to ask tough ques­tions of politi­cians. In pub­lic, it played out as a ran­dom heck­ler at a street-cor­ner elec­tion meet­ing hurl­ing in­sult-wrapped-as-ques­tion to a farm econ­o­mist rais­ing com­plex is­sues in sim­ple lan­guage at a sem­i­nar or an op-ed piece. Clearly, Pun­jab was seen as a peo­ple and a land in search of an al­ter­na­tive, and with a vengeance.

Pun­jab and Pun­jabis had been do­ing this ex­er­cise for long now. At one point, the en­thu­si­asm for the short-lived Peo­ple’s Party of Pun­jab (PPP) also re­flected the same wish when Man­preet Singh Badal posed as a Don Quixote and Bhag­want Mann had tagged along as his San­cho Panza, both land­ing at Sha­heed Bha­gat Singh’s Khatkar Kalan vil­lage, hold­ing fist­fuls of soil in hand and vow­ing to change pol­i­tics.

Man­preet Badal soon went back to old ways of do­ing pol­i­tics, op­pos­ing sub­si­dies or an­nounc­ing new ones, de­pend­ing upon po­lit­i­cal con­ve­nience, and find­ing a mes­siah in Amarinder Singh or a Cha­ran­jit Singh Channi, de­pend­ing upon, well, the same thing. He has never de­pended upon any­thing else, not even Ghalib.

But Pun­jab wanted real change. The PPP ex­per­i­ment failed. Pun­jab hit back by elect­ing four AAP MPs. The coun­try took no­tice, but then the AAP ex­per­i­ment went awry. In 2017, Pun­jab came close to threat­en­ing to over­turn the en­tire cart. Arvind Ke­jri­wal was hop­ing for 100 seats but got only 20. Then half of them ran away. Noth­ing else had changed. The SAD and the Con­gress had failed for an en­tire decade to read the writ­ing on the wall — that Pun­jab was ask­ing for change. It des­per­ately wanted change. It was try­ing time and again to do it whole­sale.

This time, Pun­jabis trans­lated it as “bad­laav”. And no one who looked and acted the same as they had done for decades, could be that change.

The SAD and the Con­gress had failed for an en­tire decade to read the writ­ing on the wall — that Pun­jab was ask­ing for change. It des­per­ately wanted change. It was try­ing time and again to do it whole­sale.

Be­tween the Con­gress gov­ern­ment, first led by Amarinder Singh and later, for a lit­tle over 100 days, by Cha­ran­jit Singh Channi, and the prin­ci­pal op­po­si­tion party SAD, led by Badal fa­ther and son duo, they had earned enough pub­lic op­pro­brium over the years as be­ing the same side of the same coin but never felt the need to ad­dress the is­sue.

Amidst all this, Arvind Ke­jri­wal and his San­cho Panza Bhag­want Singh Mann emerged as the biggest ben­e­fi­cia­ries of the wave of anger con­sum­ing the peo­ple. While the rest of In­dia saw the ro­bust year-long An­dolan merely as a re­sis­tance move­ment against three farm laws, in Pun­jab it had played out as a re­jec­tion of the way pol­i­tics had been done by tra­di­tional par­ties for decades.

The more le­git­i­mate fight­ers for the change – the Kisan An­dolan – had also picked up the same re­frain. It cas­ti­gated “rawaiti par­tiyan” day in and out from a stage that had cap­tured the na­tional imag­i­na­tion. “Don’t come any­where near the stage,” it told politi­cians, thus bundling all hues into one.

Arvind Ke­jri­wal and his San­cho Panza Bhag­want Singh Mann emerged as the biggest ben­e­fi­cia­ries of the wave of anger con­sum­ing Pun­jabis who seemed adamant at re­ject­ing gt­the way tra­di­tional par­ties had been do­ing pol­i­tics for decades. 

In Pun­jab, both, Con­gress and Akali Dal, were seen as par­ties that thrived in their close con­nec­tions to big busi­ness. Nearly all ma­jor busi­ness sec­tors, in­clud­ing real es­tate, liquor, sugar, sand, trans­port, ca­ble, ed­u­ca­tion and health, came to be suf­fixed with a word from the Queen’s lan­guage that even the most il­lit­er­ate of the Pun­jabis could un­der­stand and pro­nounce per­fectly to the sat­is­fac­tion of Pro­fes­sor Henry Hig­gins — “Mafia”. And politi­cians of one hue or the other were part of all these busi­nesses.

AAP was suc­cess­ful in spin­ning it into a “peo­ple ver­sus mafia” nar­ra­tive.

The SAD had borne the brunt of peo­ple’s anger on the is­sue of sac­ri­lege of holy Sikh scrip­tures in 2017, but nei­ther the Badals nor the ben­e­fi­ciary of that anger, Con­gress, could ad­dress the highly sur­charged is­sue in the last five years. The fact is that even the highly emo­tive is­sue of sac­ri­lege was merely a weak link in the grudge chain against Akalis. Peo­ple had seen the regime’s close links with sev­eral streams of busi­ness, the Badal fam­i­ly’s hold on the party, the gen­eral dis­con­nect of the power elite from the masses, and per­ceived the regime to be har­bour­ing cor­rup­tion in its rank and lead­er­ship.

The Con­gress seemed no dif­fer­ent. Its lead­ers were equally com­mit­ted to min­ing sand from Pun­jab’s rivers, own­ing shop­ping com­plexes, run­ning pri­vate schools, col­leges, uni­ver­si­ties and hos­pi­tals, and buy­ing land along newly planned high­ways and roads on the ba­sis of ad­vance in­for­ma­tion about ur­ban de­vel­op­ment. The en­tire Akali and Con­gress po­lit­i­cal class had plunged head­long into the cesspool and the power elite openly talked about who had minted how many hun­dreds of crores in how short a time span.

They for­got that peo­ple had been watch­ing and lis­ten­ing, and were seething with anger. At best, they thought they will throw some crumbs to those too des­per­ate.

And they had been bit­ten by the na­tional bug called Modi rhetoric. Just as Amarinder Singh said he had made all the de­vel­op­ment plans for the state and was the sav­iour of not just Pun­jab but even of na­tional se­cu­rity, Cha­ran­jit Singh Channi said he had done so much 111 days be­cause Amarinder had done noth­ing in four and a half years. Sukhbir Badal had al­ready been telling peo­ple for years that “jo keeta vadde Badal Sahib ne keeta.”

Ad­di­tion­ally, the Akali Dal had a con­tract with the Panth – backed and le­git­imised by his­tory and legacy, but of­ten breached in con­tem­po­rary po­lit­i­cal equa­tion-build­ing. The SAD had al­ways claimed to be the Sikh/​pan­thic com­mu­ni­ty’s “Sole Spokesman,” to bor­row a term from the sub­con­ti­nen­tal his­tory of the heady but ri­otous mid-1940s and scholar his­to­rian Ayesha Jalal at the same time.

While the SAD de­sired to de­rive the core vote bank bal­lots from this “pan­thic con­tract”, it paid lit­tle at­ten­tion to the fact that the Panth had long back ter­mi­nated that con­tract ex-parte

While the SAD de­sired to de­rive the core vote bank bal­lots from this “pan­thic con­tract”, it paid lit­tle at­ten­tion to the fact that the Panth had long back ter­mi­nated that con­tract ex-parte. Once you de­sign your pol­i­tics around su­per­high­ways, new air­ports, swanky malls and Pro­gres­sive Pun­jab sum­mits, your con­cerns no more match­ing the in­nate in­ter­ests of the com­mu­nity, nei­ther the Sikh po­lit­i­cal nor its elec­toral stream was to re­main bounden to Akali Dal’s his­tory of be­ing a watch­dog of com­mu­nity in­ter­ests.

 Read also: The 92/​117 ver­dict: De­bat­ing its im­pli­ca­tions for Pun­jab, Panth & Pol­i­tics

As for the ex­tra­ne­ous Sikh rad­i­cal el­e­ments and those with a pen­chant to pro­claim them­selves as “true Pan­thic forces”, their own con­tri­bu­tion re­mained next to zilch. The poll num­bers in Amar­garh owe more to the dogged­ness of the mav­er­ick Sikh na­tion­al­ist leader, but­tressed by an ac­ci­dent on a su­per­high­way on the ram­parts of Sul­tanate of Delhi.

The “true Pan­thic forces” con­stituency, in­clud­ing Dal Khalsa, the many other Pan­thic Dals or their it­er­a­tions, hardly made any mean­ing­ful con­tri­bu­tion to the de­bate in which Pun­jab and Panth found them­selves em­broiled for a long time. Their role, if any, re­mains a best-guarded su­per-se­cret. Have they un­der­stood the 92/​117 re­sult? Your guess is as good as mine.

In­ter­est­ingly, even though in­ci­den­tally, the Akali Dal had con­sciously given up iden­tity pol­i­tics ex­actly at a time when the BJP was suc­cess­fully fash­ion­ing an en­tire par­a­digm of Hin­dutva pol­i­tics around iden­tity is­sues.

As for the ex­tra­ne­ous Sikh rad­i­cal el­e­ments and those with a pen­chant to pro­claim them­selves as “true Pan­thic forces”, their own con­tri­bu­tion re­mained next to zilch.

It’s not that the Sikh com­mu­nity had not been fac­ing is­sues. In the past few years, a num­ber of is­sues emerged in Pun­jab that found res­o­nance with the com­mu­nity, be it the fate of Beant Singh-killer Bal­want Singh Ra­joana, the po­lit­i­cal Sikh pris­on­ers in var­i­ous jails lan­guish­ing since the mid-1980s, Devin­der Pal Singh Bhullar or the needling by RSS. In fact, Sikhis­m’s long and deep-rooted re­sis­tance to Hin­dutva pol­i­tics and the idea of turn­ing In­dia into a Hindu Rash­tra was un­der­lined by Akal Takht’s call to ban the RSS, a de­mand re­it­er­ated by the in­cum­bent Jathedar, Harpreet Singh.

The Left-lib­eral stream had a bone to pick with the Akali Dal as well as the Con­gress, both bour­geoisie par­ties in its ide­o­log­i­cal world­view, and was also in a big­ger con­flict with the BJP at the Cen­tre, while the Sikh con­stituency had been rail­ing against the saf­fron pol­i­tics and was equally miffed with Con­gress, who it saw as be­ing re­spon­si­ble for 1984 and more, and Akali Dal, con­demned for forg­ing close ties with RSS-BJP and leav­ing the Panth ma­rooned and at the mercy of power pol­i­tics.

 Read also: Shi­ro­mani Akali Dal: Where did the party lose the plot?

In fact, the ag­i­ta­tional phase of pol­i­tics in Pun­jab saw both, the Left-lib­eral stream and the Sikh rad­i­cal stream, work­ing to­gether as well as clash­ing with each other. At times, the de­bate got very ro­bust, too, though much of the na­tional me­dia ei­ther skipped it or sim­ply did not pay at­ten­tion.

Ke­jri­wal and his acolytes talked a lot about Delhi Model. The fact is, that the en­tire elec­tion was fought as per AAP’s Delhi Model: talk na­tion­al­ism, carry out Tiranga Ya­tras, ap­peal to mid­dle-class Hindu voter, don’t say a word about Modi-Yogi hate pol­i­tics.

Ke­jri­wal’s AAP had suf­fered in 2017 be­cause he was per­ceived as do­ing the tango with some ques­tion­able rad­i­cal Sikh el­e­ments. Later, he changed tacks and de­cided to tow Mod­i’s line on the re­li­gious front. Vis­its to Hanu­man tem­ples be­came de rigueur; his pol­i­tics widened to in­clude spon­sor­ing vis­its to the new Ram Tem­ple in Ay­o­d­hya; the AAP started dot­ting Del­hi’s land­scape with huge tri­colours and it be­came the na­tional cap­i­tal’s im­per­a­tive need to in­clude ‘Desh Bhak­ti’ in school syl­labi.

This was BJP’s play­book all over, and AAP brought it to Pun­jab. If the 2022 elec­toral con­test needed a “Delhi Model”, this was it. Ke­jri­wal was di­rectly ap­peal­ing to the hard­core BJP voter as well as the mid­dle class ur­ban and rural Hindu pop­u­la­tion by talk­ing of na­tional se­cu­rity and car­ry­ing out Tiranga Ya­tras and Peace Marches in Pun­jab.

And he was promis­ing the Delhi model of gov­er­nance – to the ut­ter ex­clu­sion of any pol­i­tics. Free units of power, hard cash to women, sundry stuff to dif­fer­ent de­mo­graph­ics, plus the promise that you will not have to pay bribes in gov­ern­ment of­fices. As posters of Ke­jri­wal’s guar­an­tees, shorn of pol­i­tics and eas­ily quan­tifi­able, splashed the coun­try­side in Pun­jab, it also set a gram­mar of pol­i­tics for oth­ers.

The “true Pan­thic forces” con­stituency, in­clud­ing Dal Khalsa, the many other Pan­thic Dals or their it­er­a­tions, hardly made any mean­ing­ful con­tri­bu­tion to the de­bate in which Pun­jab and Panth found them­selves em­broiled for a long time.

The only own­er­ship of the Sikh/​peas­antry con­stituency could have been claimed by the SAD, but it de­cided not to do pol­i­tics on its tra­di­tional turf of fed­er­al­ism, Cen­tre-Pun­jab re­la­tions, or the larger ques­tions of the peas­antry. The Con­gress, too, fol­lowed suit. Pun­jab had now fully moved into the groove dug by the SAD’s Moga con­ven­tion of 1996 and it was de­bat­ing its des­tiny in terms that were his­tory/​legacy/​her­itage/​re­li­gion-ag­nos­tic.

No more was there any talk about any con­flict with Cen­tre. No ques­tions were raised about why the Cen­tre was de­nud­ing the states of pow­ers through in­stru­ments like the Na­tional In­ves­ti­ga­tion Agency or Dam Safety Act or sundry other laws, or how Pun­jab is a ma­jor stake­holder in South Asia peace or con­flict and must be con­sulted when it comes to Indo-Pak ties. Nei­ther party wanted to in­dulge in se­ri­ous talk of land re­forms in Pun­jab, a hot but­ton is­sue that could have gal­vanised the en­tire Dalit spec­trum, largely land­less, be­cause par­ties are led by land-own­ing hon­chos whose pol­i­tics is of­ten de­fined by the in­ter­ests of up­per caste peas­antry or mid­dle, up­per-class busi­ness sec­tions.

In­stead, the Akalis and Con­gress de­cided to match free units of elec­tric­ity, threw in col­lat­eral-free stu­dent loans and health in­sur­ance cov­ers and claimed as their USP their in­tent to im­ple­ment what they were promis­ing. This was ex­actly the turf that Ke­jri­wal could claim own­er­ship of. “We have done it in Delhi. We will do it here,” he told Pun­jabis.

The in­tra-Con­gress power the­atre played out to its ut­ter dis­ad­van­tage as Navjot Singh Sidhu proved he could keep the au­di­ence glued to the edge of their seats with his lat­est one-lin­ers but never recog­nised that sub­tle dif­fer­ence be­tween show world and hard pol­i­tics. He was hardly a team player, and given the fact that he was brought in only be­cause the team was too bad, he could­n’t have led the team ef­fort.

What In­dia has heard re­peat­edly in its po­lit­i­cal jour­ney as “Mera Neta Chor Hai” trans­lated in Pun­jab as both Akalis and Con­gress be­ing one and the same thing.

When the anti-farm bills ag­i­ta­tion stoked the la­tent ha­tred of politi­cians, main­stream par­ties of all hues, ex­cept the BJP, rushed to climb onto the farm­ers’ band­wagon, but by then, they had been seen as poseurs. What In­dia has heard re­peat­edly in its po­lit­i­cal jour­ney as “Mera Neta Chor Hai” trans­lated in Pun­jab as both Akalis and Con­gress be­ing one and the same thing.

The fact that a raid on mir­a­cle CM Cha­ran­jit Singh Chan­ni’s kin, how­so­ever po­lit­i­cally-mo­ti­vated, yielded Rs 10 crore of hard cash, hardly helped ce­ment the first Dalit chief min­is­ter’s pro­bity cre­den­tials, par­tic­u­larly when Ke­jri­wal had made “imaan­dari” a buzz­word in his nar­ra­tive.

For years, the Akali Dal had kept alive the is­sue of fed­er­al­ism and Pun­jab’s legacy wish list of con­trol over river wa­ters and Pun­jabi-speak­ing ar­eas, own­er­ship of Chandi­garh. The Con­gress would work hard to keep up, of­ten prov­ing that it was one up on the Akali Dal in guard­ing the state’s in­ter­ests. The 2022 elec­tion was unique: it was de­politi­cised to the core, and both Con­gress and SAD will live to re­gret it.

Ke­jri­wal’s en­try into the scene rang the free­bies’ bells, and the en­tire po­lit­i­cal com­men­tary came to rest on a de­bate about guar­an­tees. In dif­fer­ent times, I would have quoted Ibn Khaldûn’s The Muqad­dimah to but­tress my point, but since we live in times de­fined by comics, film screen glam­our and YouTube/​face­book/​in­sta­gram sen­sa­tions, let me sim­ply fall back on lit­er­a­ture with more street cred: Tune maari en­triyaan re/​Dil mein baji ghan­tiyaan re/​Dil ki sun com­men­triyan re/​Pyaar ki guar­an­tiyan re.

Mean­while, the key is­sues that Pun­jab faces con­tinue to stare it in the face. Peas­antry con­tin­ues to be in a cri­sis, un­em­ploy­ment re­mains ram­pant, law and or­der re­mains an is­sue, the state of Dalit and land­less labourer re­mains pitiable, and an eco­log­i­cal cri­sis is threat­en­ing civil­i­sa­tional dec­i­ma­tion.

Ke­jri­wal’s guar­an­tiyan spoke to Pun­jab, but more than that, it was Pun­jab’s grudge against the kind of pol­i­tics it was be­ing of­fered by those it wanted to re­form. Fi­nally, grudge went vot­ing on Feb­ru­ary 22 and pressed the EVM but­tons in sheer anger. The Pun­jab that had learnt to ask ques­tions de­cided not to ask ques­tions to the only choice it seem­ingly had. So it sim­ply did not mat­ter what Ke­jri­wal had done on Art 370 or how it broke every lib­eral, pro­gres­sive heart when it came to Delhi ri­ots of 2018 or his rub­bish ut­ter­ances about Sha­heen Bagh or his idea of car­ry­ing out Tiranga Ya­tras or his shame­less pan­der­ing to the ma­jori­tar­ian streak or his fail­ure to even talk about Cen­tral Vista, the most mega­lo­ma­niac of sub­con­ti­nen­tal’s ar­chi­tec­tural ven­tures right in the heart of Delhi. None of it mat­tered. Not even how he chose his par­ty’s CM face through an ut­terly fraud­u­lent ref­er­en­dum on the phone in the midst of an elec­toral cam­paign.

An an­gry Pun­jab voted, and voted for “bad­laav.” What­ever seemed like a “bad­laav” got its vote. From the rich­est can­di­date on Pun­jab’s fir­ma­ment, Kul­want Singh of Mo­hali, to the ut­terly sim­ple, poor, young, de­ter­mined daugh­ter of Pun­jab Narinder Kaur Bharaaj in San­grur.

Mean­while, the key is­sues that Pun­jab faces con­tinue to stare it in the face. Peas­antry con­tin­ues to be in a cri­sis, un­em­ploy­ment re­mains ram­pant, law and or­der re­mains an is­sue, the state of Dalit and land­less labourer re­mains pitiable, and an eco­log­i­cal cri­sis is threat­en­ing civil­i­sa­tional dec­i­ma­tion.

Bet­ter gov­er­nance promised by AAP could pos­si­bly pro­vide some re­lief in ed­u­ca­tion and health sec­tors, but how will AAP live up to its promise of pun­ish­ing those who looted Pun­jab for decades when many of its MLAs have ac­tu­ally come from the same tra­di­tional par­ties? Pun­jab has voted in AAP be­cause the other po­lit­i­cal par­ties were shorn of any in­tra-party democ­racy and had be­come fief­doms. But then, where is the democ­racy within AAP? It is a highly cen­tralised party where the day Pun­jab gave it 92 seats, the party was rep­re­sented on tele­vi­sion screens by Ke­jri­wal and Man­ish Sisod­hia in Delhi and Raghav Chadha in Pun­jab.

अब भारत को दुनिया का नंबर 1 देश बनने से कोई नहीं रोक सकता 

– श्री @Arvin­d­Ke­jri­wal #AAP­Sweep­sPun­jab pic.twit­ter.com/​dqK­wbNBN5J

— AAP (@Aa­mAad­mi­Party) March 10, 2022

Ke­jri­wal ap­peared in Delhi and on TV screens on the evening of March 10, greet­ing Pun­jabis across the world with Vande Mataram and Bharat Mata Ki Jai, and ended with Vande Mataram, In­quilab Zind­abad and Bharat Mata Ki Jai. Not one leader at the AAP of­fice shouted Bole So Ni­hal, and not one spoke of Pun­jab, Pun­jabi, Pun­jabiyat. Ke­jri­wal talked about build­ing the en­tire coun­try now.

“Saare Aam Aadmi Party join kar lo ab,” he ex­horted those lis­ten­ing to him, ask­ing busi­ness­men, traders, stu­dents, youth, women, every­one to join the “rev­o­lu­tion.”

Ke­jri­wal ap­peared in Delhi and on TV screens on the evening of March 10, greet­ing Pun­jabis across the world with Vande Mataram and Bharat Mata Ki Jai, and ended with Vande Mataram, In­quilab Zind­abad and Bharat Mata Ki Jai. Not one leader at the AAP of­fice shouted Bole So Ni­hal, and not one spoke of Pun­jab, Pun­jabi, Pun­jabiyat.

The Ke­jri­wal model of pol­i­tics will have no el­e­ment of Pun­jabiyat, a con­cept out­side the re­mit of this piece, but his model for Pun­jab seems to be cast in the Modi mould: link party and gov­ern­ment. En­sure ser­vice de­liv­ery to cit­i­zens, keep free power units sup­ply line run­ning, en­sure teach­ers in schools and do not let go of the nar­ra­tive of na­tion­al­ism. He will soon be at the Golden Tem­ple in Am­rit­sar for the manda­tory photo-op with the Dar­bar Sahib in the back­drop, just as he will be at Durgiyana Mandir and, prob­a­bly, at some tem­ple raised to the god who had once burnt down a coun­try for his lord.

But any­one try­ing to run down the 92/​117 ver­dict by Pun­jab peo­ple has no right to call him­self/​her­self de­mo­c­ra­tic. The ver­dict means some­thing. And pos­si­bly, it means many things at the same time. But at its core, it means a yearn­ing for change. Bad­laav. Peo­ple have brought about that. It would have taken pro­gres­sive, ed­u­cated, Eng­lish-speak­ing, Kafka-quot­ing, Hunt­ing­ton-spew­ing de­mo­c­ra­tic lib­eral left-of-cen­tre or cen­trists years or decades to achieve in one day what Pun­jab’s peo­ple de­liv­ered in the ini­tial cou­ple of hours of count­ing: a com­plete dec­i­ma­tion of the old or­der and its lead­ing faces. Some of the older faces have sneaked in, and there’s also a Rana Gur­jit to snub any­one try­ing to ut­ter “bad­laav” in that Swiss-French Charles-Édouard Jean­neret-de­signed build­ing called the Pun­jab As­sem­bly, but then there are many cor­rec­tives that still re­main to be ap­plied. Find­ing the Pun­jab AAP in Ke­jri­wal’s AAP is also a ma­jor task on hand, and both, the “Delhi Model” and “Pun­jab Model”, will ei­ther find new align­ments or new in­ter­faces of con­flict to re­solve.

Has Pun­jab elected a BJP-Lite gov­ern­ment? Only time will tell, or the next wave of ag­i­ta­tional pol­i­tics. 

To those Pun­jabis who found clo­sure in 92/​117 ver­dict and the de­feat of Badals Sr and Jr, Bikramjit Ma­jithia, Navjot Sidhu, Cha­ran­jit Channi, Amarinder Singh and umpteen oth­ers, and went to bed with a sense of peace and achieve­ment, hope you read the news­pa­pers.

In this hy­per-con­nected flat world called Mod­i’s In­dia, nei­ther your state nor your pol­i­tics ex­ists in a vac­uum. You can­not pon­tif­i­cate about Pun­jab’s streak of ‘naabri’ and at the same time refuse to en­gage with the re­sult in Ut­tar Pradesh. Yo­gi’s vic­tory, too, is a rev­o­lu­tion of the other side, but Ke­jri­wal will have lit­tle in­ter­est in get­ting Pun­jab to en­gage with it. The pol­i­tics of ‘guar­an­tees’ has very strong lim­i­ta­tions.

The In­quilab Zind­abad slo­gan and our icons like Sha­heed Bha­gat Singh are now all very elas­tic — any­one can stretch these to fit any agenda. So, Bhag­want Mann will be sworn in at Khatkar Kalan and you can bet that Ke­jri­wal will raise his fist and shout “In­quilab Zind­abad,” which, in the short run, will mean he plans to now find star pracharaks in Bhag­want Mann and his ilk for his next ven­ture in Hi­machal Pradesh or Gu­jarat and will even­tu­ally take Bha­gat Singh’s iconog­ra­phy to a big­ger stage by 2029 for a Ke­jri­wal ver­sus Yogi Adityanath clash for the top job in the coun­try.

Am I run­ning far too fast into the fu­ture?

Let me quote from Arvind Ke­jri­wal’s speech im­me­di­ately af­ter the Pun­jab elec­tion re­sults: “Noth­ing was done ear­lier. We have wasted 75 years. Let us start build­ing now. Bharat Mata Ki Jai, Vande Ma­tram!”

It could as well have been Naren­dra Mod­i’s first speech in 2014.

Has Pun­jab elected a BJP-Lite gov­ern­ment? Only time will tell, or the next wave of ag­i­ta­tional pol­i­tics. Even af­ter the stu­pen­dous vic­tory Pun­jabis have granted to AAP, Pun­jab con­tin­ues to be rife with omi­nous signs. To some, in­clud­ing me, these are the only signs of hope.

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SP Singh is a Chandi­garh-based se­nior jour­nal­ist who has cov­ered Pun­jab pol­i­tics for more than two decades, writes for lead­ing pub­li­ca­tions, an­chors the weekly cere­bral Pun­jabi tele­vi­sion talk­show ‘Daleel with SP Singh’ and dab­bles in sub­jects rang­ing from acad­e­mia, me­dia, arts and, yes, even trivia. He can be con­tacted at singh.in­dia@gmail.com and is too shy to be on so­cial me­dia. An abridged it­er­a­tion of this piece was pub­lished in Dec­can Her­ald within hours of the re­sult on March 10, 2022. This ex­panded ver­sion is ex­clu­sive to the WSN.