Punjab’s new militancy

The state’s Hindus, predominantly traders, are currently nursing a feeling of alienation due to the non-abolition of octroi, an election promise the CM failed to fulfil. It is this alienation the BJP hopes to exploit, with the covert assistance of the RSS and the Bajrang Dal — earlier negligible entitities in the state. Their campaign is the most perceptible in the underdeveloped border district of Gurdaspur, constituency of BJP MP Vinod Khanna and home to the largest number of Christians in the state. Most of them are Dalit converts. RSS luminaries reveal that they may begin a programme of re-conversion to bring wayward Christians back to the Hindu fold. This region has already been inundated with an army of committed swayamsewaks, and formed the venue for a“we love Muslims and Christians ” speech by BJP chief Bangaru Laxman a few months ago. His speech prompted the SAD to kickstart a campaign to woo Hindus. For the first time in the party’s history, it organised a huge yagna in Gurdaspur district,conducted by thousands of pandits “to pray for the CM’s prosperity”.

In what appears to be an orchestrated campaign, the militant Bajrang Dal has gone into overdrive in the past six months. While their state membership hovers at a modest 20,000, this year’s target is an ambitious 30,000. “Hindu-minded”youngsters are lured by the promise of physical fitness. Bedtime reading of Panchjanya and Organiser reinforce the sentiment that their identity is under siege by the state’s handful of Muslims and Christians.

What is disturbing is that Punjab Bajrang Dal no longer remains the exclusive preserve of urban slumdwellers and traders. Thanks to intimate, house to house campaigns, sons of advocates and farmers are also signing up. Particularly from border areas like Ferozepur and Fazilka, where the Dal has held a whopping 3-4,000 sammelans. On the cards is a mammoth sammelan at the historic site of Hissainiwala on the Indo-Pak border. The choice of venue is deliberate — an attempt to re-kindle the brand of patriotism symbolised by heroes Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev. Since 1992, after the death of terrorism, the Dal has been religiously organising arms training camps in different cities of the state every year. There are now plans to double their number and increase their duration, to enable recruits to “acquire more proficiency”. Party ideologues stress that youngsters should learn to be more aggressive for they live in a border state.

The RSS has been equally hyperactive — the number of shakhas are up from a daily 250 to 500. They have meticulously divided Punjab into 199 blocks, where a Jansampark abhiyan is underway. They are magnanimous enough to describe Sikhs as Keshdhari Hindus, paving the way for breaking down all distinctions between the two faiths. Recently a booklet distributed in Punjab schools hailed the founder of Sikhism, Guru Nanak, as a social reformer and gifted poet.

The campaign of Hindu revivalism in a Sikh majority state bordering the Hindu state of Himachal is doubtless aimed at consolidating the BJP votebank. But in a recoil effect Sikh radicals have suddenly got a shot of adrenalin. Hardliner chiefs of the SGPC and the Akal Takht are chalking out new strategies to combat the “saffron invasion”and distortion of Sikh history. In the battle of supremacy between the two protagonists, the common man and Punjabiat stand to suffer.