What will it take to win Punjab today
THE GREAT GAME : Perhaps the PM feels the time has come to stitch together an anti-AAP coalition
IF elections were to be held in Punjab today, which political party would win? The answer to this question is closely linked with issues as diverse as the GenZ students’ protest that has now moved from Jantar Mantar to Jharkhand; the severe backlash against women protesters who participated in the Cockroach Janta Party agitation in the last month, which included both rape threats and death threats; the Centre’s reply in Parliament that the Kartarpur Sahib corridor linking Dera Baba Nanak to Guru Nanak’s resting place in Pakistan’s Narowal district will not be opened for security reasons; and a meeting between PM Modi and Akali Dal chief Sukhbir Badal in Delhi on Friday.
As if this wasn’t enough, the week was capped by RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat’s bombshell remarks — GenZ’s grievances, he admitted, “were real”, adding that except in a time of conflict, ties between India and Pakistan should not be severed.
Let me try and explain how these diverse strands are linked in a post-Jantar Mantar India.
First, the Modi-Badal meeting indicates that the possibility of an alliance between the Akali Dal and the BJP is back on the table. Both parties have done everything to showcase their independent reach, but it hasn’t worked. Only in March in a rally in the heart of Punjab in Moga, the powerful Home Minister Amit Shah, wearing a saffron turban, exhorted his audience to stop playing “chhota bhai” to the Akali Dal. The Moga rally came two years after talks between Shah and Sukhbir Badal, on the eve of the 2024 Lok Sabha election, fell through over a division of seats — the BJP wanted an equal share and Badal wouldn’t give.
Clearly, there’s nothing like an election to concentrate the mind. The PM knows that his several overtures in Punjab — visiting the Dera Sachkhand Ballan (visited mostly by Dalit Sikhs); inaugurating the posh Jalandhar railway station last month; naming a Jat Sikh, Kewal Dhillon, to replace the experienced and sophisticated Sunil Jakhar as state party president; naming the grandson of Teja Singh Samundri, the respected former diplomat Taranjit Sandhu, as the Lt Governor of Delhi; getting Haryana CM Nayab Singh Saini to don a saffron turban and conduct political raids in Punjab next door — will count for nothing, if he allows the disagreeable 2020 memory of SAD walking out of the NDA when the Centre imposed its three farm laws, to persist in the present.
The PM remembers all too well that it took a year-long siege of Delhi, with farmers mostly from Punjab, before the Centre relented and withdrew those laws.
The PM understands, that in the wake of the GenZ protest that has charged and galvanised a simmering despair in young people, he has to change the narrative across the country — and so his party must swallow some imperfect memories of the recent past. He realises that his party is blessed by the fact that Rahul Gandhi, in an attempt to stand with GenZ, is making dog videos instead of resolving the prolonged Congress squabble in Punjab — the Congress leader’s sheer disinterest is only matched by his dogged stubbornness in refusing to break the logjam over who should head the party in the state. (Keh diya, so keh diya, Rahul is believed to have said in perfect Karan Johar-ese, in his naming of Raja Warring, even as the other half of Punjab protests in favour of Charanjit Singh Channi.)
With the Congress well on its way to a daily fragmenting, perhaps the PM feels, the time has come to stitch together an anti-AAP coalition. Could the BJP become the informal pivot around the several Akali Dals, who have split from the original party because of the overwhelming dominance of Sukhbir Badal? Depending on the circumstances that unfold, could this include Waris Punjab De (WPD), whose main leader, Amritpal Singh, is in jail for anti-national activities, but guess what, here’s a kettle of fish called Manpreet Ayali — make of him what you will. He’s an influential former Akali Dal leader who left SAD to join the WPD, vehemently rejects the radical, extremist tag while acknowledging the leadership of Amritpal and boasts of several Hindus working on his real-estate development projects around Ludhiana.
Never mind the swirling rumours between BJP and WPD — the PM knows this is the time to strike hard and strike deep. He understands that if elections were to be held today in Punjab’s 117 seats, the BJP would not find as many people to be candidates — moreover, a revolt has broken out inside the party this week.
Two questions remain. First, what to do about the Kartarpur Sahib corridor which every Punjabi wants reopened – especially in the light of the Centre last week ordering the reopening of border trade between India and China, at Nathu La and Shipki La, across the India-China boundary, after several years. Even the Akal Takht Jathedar is rooting for opening Kartarpur Sahib. Moreover, none other than Mohan Bhagwat has now pronounced that Pakistan is not an enemy.
Could Punjab move towards the BJP if India and Pakistan can work out a face-saving quid pro quo on the Kartarpur Sahib corridor?
And second, does PM Modi truly understand the despair of young Indians to which Jantar Mantar-Jharkhand are witness? Clearly, Modi’s five Instagram selfie videos, as well as the interview with Mohan Bhagwat, have been part of the establishment’s attempt to communicate with the young — it’s been an awful sight these last few days, reading and hearing young women describe in graphic detail the rape and death threats they have been subject to in the wake of the PM’s admonishment of a young girl who abused him and his mother during the GenZ protest.
Even if zero protests took place across Punjab in sympathy with Jantar Mantar — you could argue that young Punjabis are protesting in Canada where they continue to migrate, although in fewer numbers — the fact remains that social media has united people across the universe and that every political party must now understand and account for this new X factor, especially in urban areas, in their political campaigns.
And so back to the original question, but with a twist : What will it take to win Punjab if elections were to be held today?
