Chandigarh: The sudden appearance of the late Rajiv Gandhi in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s campaign speeches ahead of voting in Punjab is deliberate. It is based on BJP’s astute political understanding that neither Modi’s magic nor its anti-Pakistan rhetoric, through the Balakot air strikes, are likely to resonate with voters in the border state.
In the ongoing Lok Sabha election campaign, Modi had famously said that first-time voters should dedicate their votes to those who conducted the reprisal air strikes on Pakistan after the terror attack on CRPF personnel in Pulwama. But, now, ahead of elections in Punjab on 19 May, he wants to shift voters’ attention to the 1984 Sikh violence and Rajiv Gandhi.
The formidable foe in Punjab
In Punjab, with its 2.03 crore voters, Modi’s national security pitch is up against a formidable foe — Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh, a former Army man and military historian who has not ceded the nationalism plank to the BJP like other Congress leaders.
Amarinder has been slamming Modi for trying to take personal credit for the Balakot air strikes, saying the prime minister had not done anything.
“Was he there in 1965, 1971 or Kargil? the chief minister asked at a recent campaign rally at Khatkar Kalan, pointing out that Indira Gandhi attributed the 1971 victory to the valour of the Army. It is what Modi should have done now, Amarinder said.
The chief minister also said that surgical strikes were just new jargon for the cross-border raids that have been happening for the last 70 years, adding that it was India’s Army and nobody’s personal possession.
Modi’s weak magic in Punjab
A combative Congress chief minister in the state also comes atop a weak Modi.
Even at the height of the Modi wave in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, Punjab voted against the national mood. Four candidates of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) won in Punjab, the only state in India to do so. The SAD-BJP alliance won five of the 13 seats and the Congress won four. Both the Congress and Akalis had lost major chunks of their vote share to AAP.
The BJP’s vote share in the state reduced from 10.1 per cent in the 2009 Lok Sabha polls to 8.7 in 2014. The BJP’s hold in the state worsened in the 2017 assembly polls, when out of its 23 candidates, only three won and the party’s vote share further reduced to 5.4 per cent. This was in spite of the high popularity that Modi was enjoying following the first surgical strike of September 2016. The BJP’s ally, SAD, won in only 15 of 94 seats it contested in the 117-member state assembly.
“Punjab is a border state and anything that sounds like warmongering is taken very seriously by the state’s population. It is Punjab that will face the first impact of a war with Pakistan,” said Ranbir Singh, a resident of Amritsar.
“Business will be affected, trade, normal life. And Punjabis know this. People here do not want war at any cost.”
After the Uri attack, the union home ministry had ordered the evacuation of villages in a 10-km belt along the Pakistan border. Thousands had to leave their homes in Amritsar, Gurdaspur, Tarn Taran, Ferozepur, Faridkot, Abohar and Fazilka. Schools and other institutions were shut down.
Anti-Pakistan rhetoric
A few years ago, an NDTV attitudes poll asked Indians if they wanted better ties with Pakistan. The results showed that the largest percentage of respondents who said yes were in Punjab.
Also read: Row over Sidhu in Pakistan exposes us as a nation of paranoid, ignorant, immature idiots
Also when Modi promises to “guard” the country against Pakistan in his speeches, Punjab has heard it all before. Amarinder, a hyper-nationalist in his own right, has also been belting strict warnings to Pakistan to behave itself and “not try its dirty games” in Punjab.
More importantly, analysts say that Punjabis do not look upon Pakistanis as foes.
“Punjab has a common culture with Pakistan and those who came from Pakistan following Partition are still nostalgic about what they left behind. Abusing Pakistan is not going to get anyone votes here,” said Chanchal Manohar Singh, chairman of the Promotion of Peace. “Instead if he (Modi) were to talk about peace with Pakistan, it might attract Punjabis to him.”
The BJP knows that the national security issue is not going to work in Punjab, and that is why Modi has shifted the focus to Rajiv Gandhi, said Dr Kanwalpreet Kaur, a Chandigarh-based political analyst. The Delhi Sikh riots, Modi believes, would be a more emotive issue in Punjab, he said.
“Punjabis generally cannot tolerate arrogant and authoritarian leaders. And with Modi the more arrogant he sounds in his campaign, the more disenchanted the Punjabi voters will be,” said Sukhjinder Randhawa, cabinet minister and a prominent Congress leader from Majha.
Also read: Answer to Modi’s Rajiv Gandhi challenge to Congress lies in Punjab’s 1985 elections
The Kartarpur corridor
The decision of the Imran Khan government to open the Kartarpur corridor, for Sikhs to visit one of their holiest shrines in Pakistan, has gone down very well with the people in Punjab.
“The corridor is a long-standing demand of the Sikhs of Punjab. Our efforts have been on since 2011 and finally, the prayers of Sikhs worked,” said Bhupinder Singh, the India in-charge of the Kartarpur Sahib Marg project envisaged by the United Sikh Mission.
“Congressman Navjot Singh Sidhu, credited with having taken it up with Pakistan, was the first one to be informed about it. For Sikhs in Punjab, it would be a historical journey.”
Bhupinder also lauded the Pakistan government for the project. “The government of India was sitting on the project for years,” he said. “It was only when India realised that Pakistan was about to go ahead and announce the corridor, Modi’s external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj jumped in and hurriedly said ‘ok’ to the project to make it look as if India took the initiative. Nothing can be farther from the truth.”
- The copy has been edited to correct the number of voters in Punjab, which is 2.03 crore. The error is regretted.