Think of an opposition leader calling militants “shaheed” or martyrs. You could trust the right-wing ecosystem to jump to its feet and label him as anti-India and anti-national. Or, they would simply label him a part of the “tukde-tukde” gang, someone who sympathises with those who wanted to disintegrate India.
However, there was no such outrage when Maharashtra minister and senior BJP leader Girish Mahajan said as much and more earlier this month at the Damdami Taksal Sikh seminary, once headed by Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale. Mahajan called the Army’s Operation Blue Star a “black day”. He called those killed in that operation “shaheed.” Mahajan then went on to draw a parallel between the Indian Army’s actions in 1984 and Afghan ruler Ahmad Shah Abdali’s invasions of the Golden Temple.
BJP leaders, including Atal Bihari Vajpayee and LK Advani, had supported Operation Blue Star. Advani, in his autobiography, My Country, My Life (2008), wrote that the BJP had “ultimately forced” Prime Minister Indira Gandhi to “use the military and liberate the Golden Temple from its anti-national occupants.”
Lessons in history
But Mahajan, like many others, may contend that it’s the Advani-led BJP’s history much of which has changed in the Modi-Shah era. In August 2023, Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a sharp departure from the Government of India’s and his own party’s stated line on Operation Blue Star, calling it “an attack on Akal Takht.”
“It was in Mizoram that Indiraji acquired the habit of using the army against own people,” Modi said in the Lok Sabha, alleging that civilians had been attacked by the Indian Air Force in 1966. In Mizoram, the Mizo National Front (MNF) had declared independence from India on 1 March 1966. It wanted to capture the Army and paramilitary bases. The idea was to raise the flag of an independent Mizoram for at least 48 hours until Pakistan raised their cause in the United Nations. Indira Gandhi ordered the air strike to prevent the MNF from overrunning the Assam Rifles outpost in Aizawl.
Modi was probably not briefed properly about why the Indian Air Force did what it did in Mizoram. Or, he got swayed in his own rhetorical flourish. Be that as it may, the fact is that Modi hasn’t repeated these charges. He obviously realised it soon that casting aspersions on an army or air force action even to blame Indira Gandhi is never “smart politics.” Dragging the armed forces into politics never goes down well with the people.
This is where Girish Mahajan went over the top. Making martyrs out of the militants killed in an army operation is going too far. And comparing our army operation with Ahmad Shah Abdali’s attacks only makes it worse. So, why is the BJP not condemning his remarks or not even distancing itself from them? Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis even defended Mahajan, saying that his remarks should be seen in the context of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots.
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A new frontier
Why has the BJP, which wears nationalism on its sleeves, chosen to condone his remarks then? Because it fits into the party’s ambitious political agenda in Punjab, where it’s largely seen as a Hindu party. Two states that were ravaged most by the Partition were Bengal and Punjab. It took the BJP eight decades to finally gain power in Bengal, despite the trauma and travails of a vast majority of the displaced people from Pakistan. Punjab, therefore, has to be the next political frontier for the BJP.
Imagine a conversation between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and RSS patron Mohan Bhagwat today:
Bhagwat: Naren bhai, we are so proud of you. You have almost delivered the Hindu rashtra to us.
Modi: There lies my question, Mohan ji… What’s wrong if JP (Nadda) tells you that our BJP is competent today and can take care of itself?
Bhagwat: Nahin (no), Naren bhai, that’s not the problem…just that you, as an individual, are becoming bigger than our goal—social and national reconstruction. As you know, no individual can be bigger than the larger goal.
Modi: That’s my problem, Mohan ji. You had three goals that we put in our manifesto—Ayodhya Ram Mandir construction, Uniform Civil Code and abrogation of Article 370. We have implemented almost all of them. What more do you expect?
Mohan Bhagwat goes silent at this point.
After a brief pause, Modi resumes, “Ok, fine… I have also delivered what Syama Prasad Mookerjee would have wanted in Bengal. I will deliver you Punjab, too.”
Bhagwat looks at Modi intently for a while and then walks away.
It’s a hypothetical and imagined conversation , of course. The fact, however, is that Modi seems to be working in exactly that direction—Punjab as the next frontier. In February, when everybody was busy in West Bengal, Assam, Tamil Nadu and Kerala elections, PM Modi was at Dera Sachkhand Ballan near Jallandhar on the occasion of Guru Ravidass Jayanti. Dalits constitute 32 per cent of Punjab’s population, the highest proportion of the Scheduled Castes in any state. Six weeks later, in the middle of intensive campaigns in four states and one union territory, Union Home Minister Amit Shah was addressing a badlav (change) rally in what appeared to be the BJP’s show of strength in Moga, Punjab. As I write this column, BJP national president Nitin Nabin is on a three-day tour to Punjab.
Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Goa, Manipur and Punjab go to polls in February-March next year. The stakes are high as the BJP is already the ruling party in the first four states. Why then are top BJP leaders spending so much time in Punjab, where they are supposed to have a very little stake? The BJP remains a Hindu party in Punjab, where Hindus constitute 38.5 per cent and Sikhs 57.7 per cent of the population. That’s why the Shiromani Akali Dal confined its erstwhile alliance partner to three out of 13 Lok Sabha seats and 23 out of 117 Assembly seats in elections. After its split with the SAD in 2020, the BJP secured 6.6 per cent votes in the 2022 Assembly election. It won over 18 per cent votes in the 2024 Lok Sabha election, coming second in three constituencies—Gurdaspur, Jalandhar and Ludhiana. So, what’s giving the BJP so much hope that leaders such as Modi and Shah took time away from major battlegrounds like Bengal and Assam to kickstart the party’s campaign in Punjab? The fact is that despite all its expansive reach across regions, the BJP hasn’t been able to have a chief minister in a non-Hindu majority state. There is just one exception, albeit technically: Manipur, where Hindus outnumber Christians by about 0.10 pertcentage point. Punjab has a much tougher demography from the BJP’s point of view.
Yet, the BJP remains confident.
“We will not have any tie-up with anyone in Punjab. We will fight on three core issues: lack of governance, drug menace and conversion,” a top government functionary recently told a select group of journalists. Since its Jan Sangh days, the BJP has never been a very significant player in Punjab politics. In 1952, Syama Prasad Mookerjee offered the support of two Jan Sangh MLAs to the Akali Dal-led UDF government in Patiala and East Punjab States Union (PEPSU). The Communists supported it from outside. Incidentally, the Jan Sangh and the Communists were also on the same side in their support for the Akali Dal governments in 1967 and 1969.
Much has changed since then. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) emerged as a principal political force, with the SAD and the Congress struggling to reclaim their respective space. AAP dominated the recent civic polls, indicating that its political rivals haven’t made much dent into its support base yet. Incidentally, the Congress had also swept the municipal polls in Punjab a year ahead of the 2022 Assembly election, which propelled the AAP to power. The Akal Takht recently pronounced CM Bhagwant Mann “anti-Guru” and “anti-Khalsa Panth,” queerinng the pitch for the AAP in the run up to the elections. It can only take solace in the fact that the Congress and the SAD seem to be still caught in their own internecine battles. But is it good enough for the BJP to dream big in Punjab, given that PM Modi’s appeal was always limited in the state and the spectre of Delhi border agitations against three controversial farm laws still haunts the BJP?
But think carefully about the three issues the top BJP functionary identified above. Mis-governance is an issue that resonates as much in Punjab today as it did in Bengal. Bengal was not like “Udta Punjab,” but the young boys and girls walking like zombies day and night does trigger a sense of chaos, helplessness and exasperation that one felt in a party society like Bengal—albeit in a different sense and for different reasons. An issue the BJP has identified in Punjab is conversion. Mazhabi (religious) Sikhs converting to Christianity in different parts of the state has irked the Shiromani Gurudwara Prabandhak Committee as much as Valmiki Hindus changing their religion sets alarm bells ringing among fellow Hindus.
Nobody knows the scale of such conversions. Just as few knew the facts about the “ghuspaithiyas” or infiltrators in Bengal. It can evoke insecurities about identities and cultures, if not necessarily jobs and livelihoods, in any social group anywhere. Punjab is no exception. The BJP won’t mind at all if the SGPC and Hindu organisations feel the same way.
To cut the story short, the BJP is doing in Punjab what it does in most difficult political terrains —clutching at the last straw. From wooing the minority Hindus to reaching out to the Dalits through Modi’s visit to Dera Sachkhand Ballan and making an outreach to the Sikhs, through Girish Mahajan’s “shaheed” militants’ remarks, and by making a Jat Sikh, Kewal Singh Dhillon, its Punjab unit chief, the BJP is leaving no stone unturned. If the SAD chief, Sukhbir Badal, notices the potential and comes running for an alliance on the BJP’s terms, well and good. If not, the BJP can always hope for the best in a four-cornered contest. Even a hung assembly wouldn’t disappoint the ruling party at the Centre.
DK Singh is Political Editor at ThePrint. He tweets @dksingh73. Views are personal.
(Edited by Insha Jalil Waziri)