 |
| Shiromani Akali Dal candidate Bikram Singh Majithia during a door-to-door campaign in Amritsar on Sunday. (PTI) |
Amritsar/Malerkotla, Jan. 29: For the first time in decades, elections in Punjab will not be fought on the plank of a sectarian agenda.
In a sign that the state has moved on from its troubled past, the son of a “martyr” had to withdraw from tomorrow’s Assembly elections as he didn’t find enough donors to fund his campaign.
The change, though, hasn’t happened overnight.
Over the past decade, extremist ideology has given diminishing returns, pushing Akali factions led by leaders like Simranjit Singh Mann, who demand a religious Sikh state, to the fringes of electoral politics.
In the 1989 Lok Sabha elections, Mann’s party won six of the eight seats it contested and polled nearly 30 per cent votes. But since the late 1990s, the Mann-led Akalis have barely polled two-to-three per cent of the votes.
Take the case of Sarabjit Singh Khalsa who, for the first time in several years, spent the last day of campaigning at home.
The 33-year-old son of Beant Singh, one of the two men who assassinated Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, couldn’t find enough donors to help him contest the election.
Sarabjit’s mother Bimal Kaur Khalsa and grandfather Sucha Singh have been regular contestants in both Assembly and Lok Sabha elections since 1985. Bimal Kaur and Sucha both won the 1989 Lok Sabha elections.
But as Sarabjit discovered this time, Punjab of 2012 has little time for people like him who till a decade back were heroes and basked in the glory of being sons or relatives of martyrs.
Earlier this month, Sarabjit had, as has been his wont since he turned 25 in 2004, announced his decision to contest yet another election. This time, he decided to contest as an Independent and not on a ticket given by the Mann-led Shiromani Akali Dal (Amritsar).
Sarabjit hoped his personal appeal and being a martyr’s son would help him get donations. But he withdrew when no donations were forthcoming, not even from those who had funded the Khalistan movement.
“People sympathise with my cause and me but advise me to move on,” Sarabjit says, adding that his community has forgotten the sacrifice of 30,000 youths who lost their lives.
Observers say the hold of militants and the ideology they espoused has few takers in Punjab today.
It isn’t as if the conditions that led to youths turning to militancy have vanished. “Unemployment of educated youth is high. Police continue to be powerful and repressive. But youths look for opportunities abroad instead of picking up guns. Many have become victims of rampant drug abuse,” says Bibi Kiranjot Kaur, a member of the SGPC, which is responsible for the upkeep of gurdwaras.
SGPC information officer Gurbachan Singh says the wounds of the eighties are difficult to forget for people who lost their loved ones. But others have moved on. “ Mitti pao (forget it),” says Jagir Singh of Tarn Taran, 20km from Amritsar and the centre of the Khalistan movement.
Jagir echoes many when he says Sikhs are fed up with violence and want peace and development.
So this time, the moderate Akalis, led by chief minister Parkash Singh Badal, shed references to contentious anti-Delhi issues like transfer of Chandigarh to Punjab and, instead, along with coalition partner BJP, focused on development.
That the BJP has fielded a Hindu from Tarn Taran indicates the transformation in Punjab’s political discourse that has moved from its stress on Sikh identity to a more inclusive Punjab.
|
