Recent attacks by the BJP on Rahul Gandhi, for the latter’s address – when questioned on the position of minorities, by a Sikh, and his modulated response – to a crowd of Indian-Americans is the latest vitriol by the saffron party against someone they have variedly referred as “pappu” or perhaps, more nefariously as “shehzada”.
The BJP, otherwise unwilling to even drop-pretense for its anti-minority and especially its anti-Muslim stance, have ironically and shamelessly, deployed Sikh-groups it backs, to protest and agitate outside his mother, Sonia Gandhi’s residence.
Senior BJP leaders such as Hardeep Singh Puri (who is himself Sikh) pulled-no-punches, in a column for the Indian Express, Puri wrote: “The only time Sikhs have felt insecure and faced an existential threat in India was in the early 1980s.”
Not that minister Puri needs reminding, but the Sangh’s role – be it in the Punjabi Suba movement of the 1950s or nudging Indira Gandhi towards Operation Bluestar and the eventual Delhi pogroms – casts it in a less than desirable light; something that Minister Puri would do well to reconcile himself and his politics with. Unwilling to be outdone, BJP’s national spokesperson Sudhanshu Trivedi, referred to Rahul Gandhi’s comments as supposed evidence of the latter having gone from making “childish comments” to “dangerous and mischievous activities”.
Rahul Gandhi’s meeting with Ilhan Omar-during the same trip-whom the BJP IT cell head Amit Malviya referred to as “Pakistan sponsored anti-India voice, a radical Islamist and an advocate of independent Kashmir,” became a further battle-point and was brought up by another BJP leader, Shehzad Poonawala, who threw a litany of charges against Omar, including her visit to the PoK and peddling hatred against Hindus.
Recent turncoat, Ravneet Singh Bittu, presently Minister of State for Railways and who swapped allegiances for the BJP, having been a three-time MP from the Congress, has referred to Gandhi as “the biggest enemy of the country”. The Congress however hit-back, with Congress general secretary K C Venugopal referring to Bittu’s remarks as the “minimum qualification for turncoats”.
Battle for Optics, Sabotaging Truth and the BJP’s Relation with Sikhism/Sikhs
BJP leaders’ disdain-for someone whose statements and actions they routinely claim to be ‘anti-India’-is, as aforementioned, matched by the time and effort they put into making him the ‘pappu” of politics, the optics have begun to shift.
The pioneering Bharat Jodo Yatra of 2022, an innovation never before tried on the Indian political landscape, resonated to enable Rahul’s image makeover, but crucially he was able to stitch together an opposition that was both robust and credible, putting paid to-at least for the present-ambitions of ‘abki baar 400 paar’ for Narendra Modi himself.
For its vitriol and consistent targeting of the Congress and Rahul Gandhi, alleging anti-India provocations, the BJP, too, has a dubious record of genuinely addressing the grievances of Sikhs; least of all the farm-bill related protests that rocked the nation in 2020-2021, even making international headlines, across multiple platforms.
But when it comes to the BJP’s relationship with Sikh farmers, upon even cursory investigation, it becomes plainly apparent how in the party’s bastion state-Gujarat, farmers who have been subjects of discrimination, despite having settled as far back as 1965, under the invitation of then-Prime minister Lal Bahadur Shastri.
These farmers of Bhuj, Kutch district-who hail from the present-day state of Rajasthan and Punjab, were intimidated and attacked by local agriculturalists and politicians in cahoots with each other, at least since 2013. No Doubt that that judiciary had ruled in favour of the aggrieved Sikh framers, but the Gujarat State Government had challenged the order of the High Court in the Supreme Court.
This move clearly shows the double standard of the BJP’s attitude, when it comes to Hindu majority state viz a viz Muslim majority Jammu & Kashmir.
The Farmers’ Protests and Heavy-Handed Repression
Return then, to the three farm bills, passed by the Parliament in 2020, (Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, 2020); contract farming (Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Act, 2020); and regulation of supply (Essential Commodities Act). While the two former bills have been repealed, the third remains in force –albeit in an amended form.
These farm bills, predictably, invited sharp criticisms from farmers’ unions – with Sikhs especially being at the forefront of agitations – no wonder BJP leaders such as Dushyant Kumar Gautam, the national General Secretary of the BJP – referred to the protests as raising slogans such as “Khalistan Zindabad” and “Pakistan Zindabad”, but which upon fact-checking were proven to be false, and related to old Khalistani sloganeering that did not originate from the protesting farmers.
The Bharatiya Kisan Union leader Rakesh Tikait alleged that close to 750 farmers had died near the Delhi border alone. In their bid to prevent the farmers from approaching the capital, the government set up barricades, roadblocks and police-personnel, covered diligently by international media, in 2021 that further drove home the hollow slogan of ‘sabka saath, sabka vikas’ (lit. with all, for benefit of all).
The actions of the BJP extended to criminally charging activists but after months of harassment, having to let them go for want of any plausible criminal transgression. Decisively, how the BJP chose to fraudulently introduce the bills, undermining the federal structure, with the Parliament going along,[25] sounded alarm-bells for India’s democratic fabric, with their repeal highlighting the necessity of public protest and its indispensability in upholding substantive democracy in the country.
Prejudicing Social Fabric on the Ground
Ideologically and as a matter of doctrine, the consistent appropriation by the BJP of the sacrifices made by Sikh Gurus forced the Akal Takht to issue a statement reminding the acts of the Gurus as being for the betterment of humankind ad not just one religion.
While earlier controversies, such as the Gurus being portrayed as ‘gaubhakts’ with ‘Hindu blood running through their veins’ and the stance of the SGPC against the RSS’ proclamations of India being a Hindu Rashtra, is an uncomfortable truth that many within the BJP rather not reckon with.
Earlier this year, West Bengal BJP leader, Suvendu Adhikari, had allegedly called Jaspreet Singh, a Sikh IPS officer-a Khalistani; prompting about 200 members of the Sikh community to stage a protest outside the BJP’s party offices in Kolkata.
Sikh thinker and journalist, Jaspal Singh Sidhu, noting the BJP’s enthusiasm in celebrating the 400th birth anniversary of Guru Tegh Bahadur, in 2022, sees the gesture as merely in service of strengthening the anti-Muslim rhetoric.
Similarly, professor Bawa Singh, a former deputy chairman for the National Commission for Minorities, asserts that the Sangh consciously wishes to present the historic struggles of the Sikh Gurus as anti-Muslim fights. While Islam remains the principal adversary of the Sangh Parivar, there is a desire to absorb Sikhism into the Hindu fold, ensuring its ideological elimination.
More insidiously, perhaps, as Gurpreet Singh, writes, that while serving as a reporter for The Tribune, as far back in 2001, he came across a school book that taught students what can only be described as revisionist history-one in which Guru Gobind Singh was supposed to have sent in his armies to liberate Ram Temple at Ayodhya!
Apart from peddling blatant historical fabrications, such textbooks have been part of the Sangh’s expanding foray into Punjab coinciding with increased attempts to effectively re-write Sikh history of struggle as essentially on-behalf of the Hindu nation and against a ‘barbaric’ Muslim invader.
Congress leader Pawan Khera, in responding to the BJP leaders’ attacks on Gandhi, pointed to how the saffron party often construes any criticism of its policies as attacks on India. Khera further reminded how the Prime Minister himself was not above-often in pejorative terms-referencing people’s clothing, most recently, the anti-hijab movement of the BJP, against the school-going girls of Karnataka, fanning communal flames in educational institutions; with members of the judiciary openly attending events by organisations such as the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP).
The turban remark, when concurrently assessed with the BJP’s own relationship with Sikhs reveals the deep-seated ideological challenges the Sangh Parivar must confront and manage through its desire to see all ‘dharmic’ faiths united against its declared enemy-Islam.
As professor Singh observed, it was from the Punjab that voices supporting Kashmiris were raised after the reading down of Article 370 or how Sikhs supported Muslim apprehensions during the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019.
Gurpreet Singh, another Punjabi-origin journalist living in Canada, analyses the bonhomie between certain section of the Sikhs and Sangh Parivar, wherein the former secure unofficial patronage of the Indian state in projecting their leadership aspirations across the wider Sikh polity; while the Indian state gets to further consolidate its liberal credentials-especially in the West.
With a government-especially its leader-obsessed with crafting and curating all things to their specifications, little surprise then, to seize upon every opportunity to (re)assert their hegemony over the Indian socio-political landscape.
The mishandling of the CoVID-19 pandemic making international headlines or the repeal of three contentious farm laws and the diplomatic row with Western nations such as Canada, over assassinations of the latter’s citizens on its own soil to potentially establish a modus operandi for targeted killings abroad has upset more than the world’s largest democracy could ideally afford-especially when relations with its own neighbours are at their lowest ebb.
Overall failures of the dispensation captured in the book The Price of the Modi Years, documenting the multi-faceted damage his rule has invoked in the spheres of economy, society, polity and even national security is evident as the BJP has gone into overdrive pushing its ‘Hindu-first’ agenda the first three-or-so months of Modi 3.0.
The grotesquely obscene moniker ‘bulldozer justice’ that has somehow become euphemism for a ‘strong, decisive and effective government’; targeting Muslims leaving them pauperised or the resumption of beef-lynchings to the harassing and haranguing school-going Muslim children for surreptitiously attempting to convert, unsuspecting Hindu children to Islam, by feeding biryani, exposes the cynicism of the BJP and Sangh Parivar on its integrity of the vaunted slogan ‘sab ka saath, sab ka vikaas’.
Battle for Narratives: Beyond Politicking
As for the Congress and indeed much of its secular-minded allies of the INDIA Alliance, the challenge is immanent to keep battling the Sangh Parivar’s designs of altering the social and cultural fabric of the country. Indeed, while parliamentary elections are a shot-in-the-arm for an opposition that till as recently as January, 2024 seemed like all but done for, the mandate showered by the people is in equal measure a reminder that politics is far beyond the remit of the ballot.
Rahul Gandhi with the added responsibility as Leader of Opposition (LoP) and the Congress Party, with its rejuvenated standing, must understand the real panic it has caused for a coterie that till recently were convinced of their ‘divine’ ability to bend reality to their whims.
As the battle for narratives rages on, the possibility that even the most empathetic statements, may be co-opted to produce narratives – such as claims by Gurpatwant Singh Pannu – that cause setbacks to a nascent opposition, still looking resonate and (re)capture much of the standing among the common people; is a consideration that must be fairly dealt with and not attributed to black-and-white, cosmic battles between good-and-evil.
It is not enough to ‘call-out’ the nefarious designs of the Hindutva brigade abroad but back that up with tangible activity back home.
This could well-begin by developing long-term policy, one agreed to by all members of the INDIA Alliance, against illegal demolition of Muslim (and indeed Dalit and other marginalised sections) homes and properties, to proposing material compensation for those Muslims who have been subject to hate and humiliation by the state. As for the minority in question here-The Sikhs-the Congress must confess to its own sins of 1984.
That what happened in the fateful year has left tens of thousands scarred across the country is a powerful admission, but one that must be made. Tendering an official apology for the Delhi pogroms and admitting to the repressive policies of the 1980s through at least the mid-1990s, under the guise of combatting militancy in the Punjab may just be catharsis for the grand old party.
Justice, reconciliation and eventually peace lie not in grand gesturing and sloganeering but sometimes in the simple admission of past wrongs and as the peace activist Nelson Mandela remarked at the Global Convention on Peace and Nonviolence, in New Delhi, in 2004; “Peace is not just the absence of conflict; peace is the creation of an environment where all can flourish, regardless of race, colour, creed, religion, gender, class, caste, or any other social markers of difference.