A heady cocktail of caste, religion and nationalism in Punjab polls

Dateline

With Congress and AAP having declared their CM candidates and most parties having come out with their candidate lists for the Assembly elections, the echo of caste and religion is somewhat more pronounced this time in Punjab poll discourse than it has been in previous polls.

While many argue that unlike in the Hindi belt states, identity politics does not play a big role in Punjab election outcomes, a heady cocktail of caste and communal issues is brewing ahead of voting in the state on February 20.

Pakistan was brought into the poll discourse when Capt Amarinder Singh, sitting in the BJP headquarters in Delhi in January, created a flutter by saying that Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan had wanted his “old friend” Navjot Singh Sidhu to be reinstated in Amarinder’s cabinet after Sidhu had resigned from it in 2019.

When Amarinder made the startling statement, Sidhu was still in the CM nominee race in his party and the BJP was going all out to project national security as a prime concern in the border state.

The BJP made a big issue of the breach in Prime Minister’s security, with its leaders repeatedly saying that the PM’s convoy was held up just a few kilometres from the border with Pakistan and that it was in the range of drones, missiles and snipers.

And temple politics also trickled in. While Rahul Gandhi brokered peace between Channi and Sidhu by eating langar food at the Golden Temple in January, in November when Channi and Sidhu were sparring, the then AICC in-charge for Punjab, Harish Rawat, took them to a prominent Hindu pilgrim site, the Kedarnath temple in Uttarakhand, on a peace mission, a subtle attempt also to reach out to Hindu voters in Punjab.

As the Congress bet high on naming Channi, a Dalit leader, as its CM face, senior Congress leader and former Union minister Manish Tewari, who is an MP from the Anandpur Sahib constituency in Punjab, advised journalists from the national media covering Punjab elections to ask people, “Is there a Hindu-Sikh issue in Punjab?”.

“Answer would be ‘no’. Is there a caste divide in Punjab. The answer would be ‘no’ again. Punjab’s ethos -- Manas ki jaat sabhe eke pehchan bo…,” he said, after earlier insisting that “Punjab’s social cohesion continues to be its only bulwark against Pak-exported terror...”

However, whether they tilt the results or not, caste and religion issues do seem to be reverberating in the run-up to the polls this time. The 32% Dalit votes, though not a homogeneous voting bloc, was at the heart of the Congress’ decision to name Channi its CM face, as it was in the Shiromani Akali Dal re-working an alliance with Mayawati’s BSP in Punjab after a gap of 26 years.

Channi, from the Ramdasia Sikh community, became the first Dalit CM of Punjab when Congress picked him for the post last year. Since 1966, all Punjab CMs have been Jat Sikhs. Now, both SAD and AAP have promised Deputy CM post to a Dalit leader if they win the polls.

The National Scheduled Caste Alliance, which was launched in Jalandhar in May 2013, recently carried out online surveys on issues that matter to Dalits in Punjab as the parties vied for Dalit votes. In 2017, AAP had released a separate Dalit manifesto for Punjab polls.

Emphasising caste always rakes up controversies. Soon after Channi was named CM candidate, former Punjab Congress chief Sunil Jakhar announced his decision to quit politics, days after claiming that he was the party MLAs’ choice for CM while Channi was the least favoured to replace Capt Amarinder Singh, who stepped down in September. Jakhar, a three-term MLA is the son of the late Balram Jakhar, and a prominent Hindu face of the party.

Hindus are 57.75% if Dalit Hindus are included in it. Dalits alone, divided across Hindus and Sikhs, are 32%, while Jat Sikhs alone are 25%. Non-Dalit Hindus are said to be 38% in the state, a group to which both Tewari and Jakhar belong.

In September, when Congress approached senior leader Ambika Soni to become CM after Amarinder Singh’s resignation, the Gandhi family loyalist not only refused the offer but also insisted that Punjab is a state where only a Sikh should be made the head of the government. Even before naming its Sangrur MP Bhagwant Mann as AAP’s CM face, Arvind Kejriwal had repeatedly said over the last year that AAP’s CM face in Punjab will be a Sikh.

One of the reasons why AAP did not do well in the 2017 polls, despite having won four Lok Sabha seats in 2014, was that the party did not name a CM candidate and the other parties made a campaign around Kejriwal being an “outsider”. Mann is a Jat Sikh, a community that has always dominated politics in the state. The BJP, which has been ‘forced’ into contesting almost three times more seats in this election than in previous elections — after its ally, Shiromani Akali Dal parted ways with it in September 2020 — has made a sustained bid to reach out to OBCs and Dalit Sikhs.

With its new ally Punjab Lok Congress already having a tall Jat Sikh leader in Amarinder, BJP is looking to build a Hindu-Sikh alliance whose votes its earlier alliance with SAD used to ensure. Former President Giani Zail Singh’s grandson Inderjeet Singh from the OBC Sikh community joined BJP last year. The Modi government earlier appointed an OBC Sikh leader Iqbal Singh Lalpura as Chairman of the National Minority Commission, a Sikh head for the Commission after 16 years.

The BJP has also made a serious bid to cultivate Dalit overs. In 2019, it made a huge issue out of the killing of a Dalit construction worker in Punjab and set up a probe panel, with party vice president Vinay Sahasrabuddhe as a member.

In February 2021, it appointed its prominent Dalit leader from the state Vijay Sampla Chairman of the National Commission for Scheduled Castes. It also promised to anoint a Dalit as CM if it is voted to power in the state this time.

DHNS