Ghosts of the ’80s

Even Jarnail Singh,the world’s gentlest shoe-thrower,is unlikely to have been able to foresee the storm that his lobbed tennis shoe set off. Barely a few days later,the trauma of 1984 is back in the headlines; the quiet rehabilitation by the Congress of Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar has been derailed; and the elections in Punjab — and to an extent in Delhi — could conceivably hang in the balance again. There are many possible outcomes of this,and the Congress party has moved to try and dampen the worst outcomes for it,politically,by announcing that Tytler and Kumar will not be permitted to contest as Congress candidates after all. Still,this is late in the day; the genie might not get peaceably back into the bottle.

Of all the possible outcomes of this period of ferment,however,the worst imaginable one is if Punjab politics returns to a place that it appeared to have been effectively leaving behind. It is easy to forget that within the living memory of even the relatively young,holding elections in Punjab was considered difficult,and a significant proportion of its elite and of its political discourse appeared unrecoverably radicalised. With the spectre of 1984 and its aftermath haunting the hustings again,the temptation for parts of Punjab’s ruling alliance to gesture in the direction of the anger of those years might be severe. But it is something that must be avoided at all costs.

The moderate Akalis under the Badal family might feel emboldened by their success in marginalising the more radical Akalis such as those led by Simranjit Singh Mann — but,if they were to allow the politics of Punjab to slide back to the vituperative rhetoric of the last millennium,that perceived advantage could be swiftly reversed. The sidelining of Punjab’s radical fringe was one of the great achievements of Indian democracy recently. The Congress should have recognised the dangers that not exorcising the ghosts of 1984 posed: not only for its own prospects in Punjab,but for that state’s political recovery.