Khadoor Sahib, Punjab: It’s a sweltering 44 degrees Celsius in Khadoor Sahib and the sun is about to set on the last Saturday of May. A crowd of more than hundred people, including women and children, are waiting in a pandal erected on the roadside for Bapu Tarsem Singh to address them.
After a delay of over an hour, Bapu Tarsem Singh enters the pandal with a group of supporters. People rush to greet him. Within minutes, he has dozens of garlands around his neck. Chants of ‘Amritpal Singh Khalsa, Amritpal Singh Khalsa’ rent the air. Tarsem Singh nearly gets mobbed for selfie requests even before he can reach the mic to speak.
Bapu Tarsem Singh is the father of Sikh separatist Amritpal Singh, who is incarcerated in the Dibrugarh jail in Assam under the National Security Act (NSA) for the past over one year for activities “prejudicial to the security of India and the maintenance of public order.”
Amritpal is running as an Independent from the Khadoor Sahib parliamentary constituency, and is giving candidates of the four main parties in the fray a run for their votes. Virsa Singh Valtoha of the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), Manjeet Singh Manna of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), cabinet minister Laljit Singh Bhullar of the Aam Aadmi Party, and Kulbir Singh Zira of the Congress are his rivals.
Apart from his father, Amritpal’s mother Balwinder Kaur is also campaigning on his behalf.
Amritpal, 31, was working in the transport company of his uncle in Dubai when he returned to Punjab in 2022. He became a baptised Sikh and started moving around Punjab villages, initially speaking against rampant drug abuse and the need to baptise Sikh youth. Over the months, he also started espousing the cause of Khalistan and the need for Sikh youth to weaponise themselves. The self-styled preacher openly declared that he did not believe in the Constitution of India.
Soon, the police cracked down on Amritpal and his men, arresting hundreds of his supporters and close associates. Amritpal himself was arrested after a month-long manhunt April 23 last year.
As campaigning peaks, the constituency is awash with a wave for sympathy for the jailed Sikh separatist. Bapu Tarsem Singh addresses almost a dozen small gatherings in village after village, overwhelmed by the unexpected response his jailed son is getting.
And it’s not Khalistan but the issue of rampant drug abuse that is pulling supporters in hordes to these meetings. In fact, the word Khalistan is completely missing from Amritpal’s campaign. The 10-point manifesto printed on yellow handouts include the end of drug culture and extortions in Punjab; justice in sacrilege cases; struggle for the release of the Bandi Singhs; containment of both inward and outward migration; reduction in soil, water and air pollution; improvement in the economic status of farm labour; containment of religious conversions through the use of misinformation and monetary benefits; protection of the properties of NRI Punjabis; opening of international trade through Punjab’s borders and economic and social protection to traders community.
“For us, the main issue in these elections is that the problem of drugs needs to be sorted. An entire generation of Punjabis is trapped in this social menace. The only way they can be brought out of it, is to bring them into the fold of their religion. The solution is to give them an alternate intoxicant of Sikhi and its principles,” Tarsem Singh says at the meetings.
People of the constituency see Amritpal as someone who had undertaken social reforms, not someone who was out to create Khalistan. “There is no support for Khalistan..it can never be created and it should not be created,” says Nishan Singh of Khanpur village.
Harjeet Singh of the same village adds that Amritpal was fighting against drugs and alleges that it is a drug lobby that got him arrested. “Anybody who tries to finish drugs in Punjab is thrown out because it is such a big business.” .
Jasbir Singh of Fatehabad village said that the people of Punjab had paid a huge price for the militancy of the 1980s and 1990s. “In village after village in this area, there are women who are still trying to find their sons. Nobody has forgotten those dark times, and nobody wants to go back to them,” he says.
In Gopipur village, Sukhdev Singh, a small shopkeeper says that if anyone talks of Khalistan, he will not get any votes in Punjab. “The main issue in this area is drugs.. in many places, it is delivered at homes.”
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Significance of Khadoor Sahib
The Khadoor Sahib constituency (earlier Tarn Taran) is considered to be a “Panthic” seat and remained the hotbed of militancy in the 1980s and 1990s. The area traces its history to the 16th century when the fifth Sikh Guru, Guru Arjun Dev, laid the foundation of the Tarn Taran town.
Several historical towns, including Goindwal Sahib, are part of this constituency. The third Sikh Guru, Guru Amar Das, lived in Goindwal Sahib for 33 years and is considered to be the first centre of Sikhism often referred to as ‘Sikhi da dhura’.
The constituency has been a stronghold of the SAD. From 1996 to 2019, the Akali MPs ruled over the seat. In 2019 Akalis lost to Jasbir Singh Gill of the Congress. This time, the Akalis have fielded militant-turned-politician Virsa Singh Valtoha on the seat. At his election meetings, Valtoha says he was jailed under the NSA for over seven years and was arrested again immediately after his release.
“I worked for the Panth and served the way I could. I was just 15 years old when I started working for the Panth,” he tells the crowd in a village in Jandiala Guru Monday. Apart from drugs, he says that the big cause before the Panth is the release of the Bandi Singhs — the Sikh militants who have been in jails for several years and not allowed to come out on bail or parole. “In many cases,” he says, they have completed their sentences. Valtoha also reminds the gathering of the welfare schemes launched by former chief minister Parkash Singh Badal.
Attacking Amritpal, SAD chief Sukhbir Singh Badal last week said that he was a nominee of the Centre. “Amritpal lawyer who announced his decision to contest election, is the Malwa incharge of the RSS (Rastriya Sikh Sangat). Also the ease with which Amritpal’s nomination papers were cleared by the Government of India raises several questions,” Badal had told ThePrint.
In an interview to ThePrint, Amritpal’s father Tarsem Singh said that Badal had no right to talk about central agencies considering it was in power with the BJP for such a long time in Punjab.
“Following the Akalis’ defeat in 2022, a committee was formed to find out why they had lost. It was said that he should step down as president; but it was ignored. Every day, they are taking anti-Panthic decisions, which hurt the Sikhs. In 2019, they put up a candidate against Bibi Khalra (the wife of missing Sikh activist Jaswant Singh Khalra). It was a big mistake, and people still feel bad about it. Now, we had hopes that they would learn from their past and not repeat their mistakes, but this time too, they are putting so much effort to defeat their own man (Amritpal),” he said.
“…such a huge effort is being put into defeating this person (Amritpal). I think even this is worsening their image among Sikhs. You are not fighting their (the people’s) battle with Delhi, but against your own man, who is loved so much by the youth. This is only leading to the Akali Dal damaging its reputation among the youth and the common people, too,” he asserted.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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