Why the BJP juggernaut is not on a roll in Punjab

A lot has been written over the past two weeks about the Bharatiya Janata Party’s spectacular victory in the recently-concluded Assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Manipur and Goa, where the party defied all odds and returned to power for another term.

However, little has been heard or said about the BJP’s inability to put down roots in Punjab. In sharp contrast to the other states, the people of this northern state were immune to the saffron party’s charm offensive and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s charisma.  The BJP could win only two seats in the 2022 election.

This is not the first time that the BJP and Modi failed to make a mark in Punjab. In the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, when India’s entire northern belt was in the grip of Modi mania, Punjab proved to be the odd one out with the BJP winning only two Lok Sabha seats. A similar trend continued for the party in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, too.

Electoral foray sans SAD

To be fair, the BJP did not expect to form a government in Punjab this time. But, it did hope to improve on its earlier performance and expand its footprint after its longstanding ally, the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), severed ties with it.

Also read: Will AAP’s Punjab win strengthen India’s alternative political front?

As SAD’s junior coalition partner, the BJP’s share of seats was limited to 23, as a result of which it could not expand its social base in Punjab beyond the urban Hindu voter. No longer constrained by a senior ally, the BJP believed this election season gave it the opportunity to test the waters as a major political force. It contested 65 of the state’s 117 Assembly seats and was clearly the senior partner in the alliance it stitched up with Amarinder Singh’s Punjab Lok Congress and Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa’s SAD (Sanyukt).

Yet, the BJP’s onward march failed to extend to Punjab. Disillusioned with mainstream political parties, the voters here chose to repose faith in the newbie Aam Aadmi Party, but were not willing to give the BJP a chance despite the party establishing itself as the country’s central political pole over the past eight years.

This is despite the best efforts put in by the BJP to woo the Punjab electorate, especially the Sikh voter. The Prime Minister personally announced his government’s decision to repeal the contentious farm laws on the occasion of Guru Nanak Jayanti, in the hope of mollifying the angry Sikh community which was at the forefront of the year-long farmers’ protests. The Modi government opened the Kartarpur corridor shortly before the elections so Sikh pilgrims could travel to Pakistan to offer prayers at the Gurdwara Darbar Sahib. The Centre also worked overtime to provide safe passage to Sikh families stranded in Afghanistan while Modi did the rounds of several gurdwaras on different holy occasions.

In the run-up to the Assembly polls, there was also the BJP’s special outreach to the Sikh community, particularly the professionals and intellectuals, to push for greater acceptability among the urban Sikhs. The party made simultaneous efforts to woo the Sikh peasantry by sending out batches of party workers to Punjab villages to dispel the popular perception that the Modi government was anti-farmer.

Why stunning win in Punjab is an opportunity and challenge alike for AAP

Also read: But none of this yielded the electoral results the BJP obviously had prayed for.

Poor acceptability

“The BJP and the Jan Sangh have never found acceptability in Punjab. There are historical reasons for this and deep cultural, spiritual and political differences between the Sikh community and the Hindu groups,” said Harminder Kaur, author and expert on Sikh affairs.

She said though the Jan Sangh/BJP and the SAD have worked together since the re-organisation of the state in 1966, first as post-poll allies and subsequently as pre-poll partners, this alliance was a political compulsion as the social bases of the two parties complemented each other. However, the ideological divide between them was a constant irritant in their relationship.

Differences over the creation of a separate Punjabi-speaking state and declaring Punjabi as the official language were once a major source of tension between Hindu fundamentalist groups and the Sikh community. Additionally, there has been a serious trust deficit between the BJP, especially its ideological mentor, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, and the Sikhs who feel the organisation is working to deny them their separate religious identity and obliterate their distinct culture by propagating that Sikhs are essentially a part of the extended Hindu family.

Kaur says that in the post-partition period when Punjab’s demography underwent a change, the Arya Samaj-led Hindu groups argued that since the Sikh Khalsa was created to protect Hindus against the Muslims, the Sikhs should agree to a ghar wapsi as the Muslims were no longer a factor.

RSS has not given up

Of course, despite the repeated setbacks, the RSS has not given up on Punjab. In fact, the Sangh intensified its activities in the state after the BJP came to power in 2014. The number of RSS-run shakhas (chapters) has steadily gone up while Sangh pracharaks (ideologues) have been touring the state regularly to convince people about their ideology.

The RSS operates through its Sikh arm, the Rashtriya Sikh Sangat, for this purpose. The lack of trust plus the stepped up activities of the RSS was a constant source of tension between the Akalis and the BJP, resulting in clashes between their workers and the killing of several RSS workers. The Akalis were particularly perturbed as the BJP was using the RSS to expand its footprint in rural areas in violation of their unwritten pact that the two parties will not tread on each other’s turf.

Encouraged by its recent electoral victories elsewhere and unmindful of its poor showing in Punjab, the BJP will not give up on its efforts to spread its wings in the northern state. Its first aim now will be to push aside other political players, especially the Congress, and emerge as the main opposition to the ruling AAP.

Strong regional identity

However, Prof Surinder S Jodhka, professor of sociology at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, doesn’t believe the BJP will meet with much success. “Punjab has a strong regional identity and because of this, there is a possibility that the Akali Dal could revive in the future,” he said.

The BJP, Jodhka maintained, will find the going tough as it will be difficult for it to play the communal card in Punjab, a state with a minuscule Muslim population. The BJP has attempted to do so by reviving memories of partition by declaring August 14 as Partition Horrors Remembrance Day but people in Punjab would prefer to forget it as a sad and unfortunate experience. Today, driven by their economic interests, they would rather have cordial relations with Pakistan and peace on their border. “But they fear this peace will be disturbed if the BJP is in power,” he pointed out.

Harminder Kaur pointed out that unlike the BJP-RSS, whose ideology is based on propagating   the Hindu cause and demonising Muslims, the Sikhs do not hate the Muslims because it hits at the roots of their beliefs and the teachings of their gurus. “The Sikh faith believes in universalism…that you are the child of the same god,” she added.

(The writer is a senior political journalist based in Delhi)

(The Federal seeks to present views and opinions from all sides of the spectrum. The information, ideas or opinions in the articles are of the author and do not reflect the views of The Federal.)