Punjab Government’s ban on display of firearms, songs extolling gun culture, shows lack of application of mind

While scores of people have been murdered in the last seven months, the ones that made news were those of kabaddi player Sandeep Nangal Ambian in Jalandhar in March, singer Sidhu Moosewala in May, and recently, Shiv Sena (Taksali) leader Sudhir Suri in Amritsar, and just a few days ago Dera Sacha Sauda follower Pardeep Singh, who was out on bail in the 2015 sacrilege case, in Kotkapura. Some statistics: Punjab is a bit over two per cent of the nation’s population but has over 10 per cent of the nation’s gun licences. They number close to four lakh. Each licence allows possession of earlier three, now two guns. That means Punjab’s people easily have around eight lakh licenced guns. The strength of the Punjab police is around 80,000; with one gun or two guns per personnel, the police have one-fifth the guns the people have.

Then there is culture. The growth of guns in Punjab is a result of the militancy in the state from 1978 to 1993 and an after-effect of the Green Revolution. During the militancy phase, the state provided licences and the prosperous new peasantry acquired guns. Now it is a practice to flash guns in marriage parties, at social gatherings, to have armed bodyguards — they bring status to the owner, a sign of having arrived. A government that thinks one letter will curb this half-century-old culture, betrays its ignorance about the people of Punjab.

The culture has a deep religious aspect. The majority population of Punjab is Sikh with a martial and valorous tradition going back centuries. The Sikh religion is based on the concept of Miri-Piri, spiritual and temporal progress, and bestows both the shastar — texts — and the shastr — weapons — to its followers. Both are integral to Sikh society, but the injunction is: “No first strike”. Arms are for protection. When under assault, stand up to protect oneself and the weak. Weapons in the Guru period were not firearms, but the idea of weapons as a part of the Sikh attire, as a symbol of pride and a mark of identity, is deeply embedded in the community’s mind.

Article 25 of the Constitution — the freedom of conscience and free profession, practice and propagation of religion — allows Sikhs to bear arms, the short-dagger, kirpan. A controversy erupted in 1990 when Member of Parliament, Simranjit Singh Mann, was first elected in 1989. He demanded that he be allowed to enter Parliament with his three-foot sword. Parliament rules forbade it and Mann resigned. This issue keeps coming up at various levels — amritdhari students are prevented from taking exams, and passengers are not allowed to board flights. The letter is silent on non-firearms — weapons like daggers, swords, spears and others which are on common display in Gurdwaras and at Sikh weddings and nagar kirtans to mark the anniversaries of the Sikh Gurus. But those too are arms; what is the government’s stance on them?

The larger issue with such diktats is that they are poorly worded and implemented without application of mind. In 2016, faced by incidents of sacrilege of the holy texts, the then Shiromani Akali Dal government led by Parkash Singh Badal brought in an amendment to the Indian Penal Code Section 295 A — “Injuring or defiling place of worship, with intent to insult the religion of any class” — by bringing in a law to award life imprisonment to those found guilty of blasphemy against Guru Granth Sahib. The Punjab assembly unanimously passed it but it was returned seeking clarification on the blasphemy of other holy texts and questioning how Section 295 A was not already a sufficient deterrent. The amendment did not go through.

Similarly, faced with a spate of drug-related deaths in 2018, the Congress government in Punjab led by Amarinder Singh had recommended death for drug smugglers, thrown thousands of small-time addicts in jail, and temporarily banned syringes without a doctor’s prescription. Syringes are essential for a host of other medical conditions; the government caused a temporary medical emergency until the rule was taken back. The proposal to the Centre did not pass muster. Both these instances, and this current letter, show us that whichever party might be in power, instead of engaging with the root cause of the issue, the blinkered governments want to curb the symptoms.

The government wants to ban songs that glorify gun violence. In every age, especially this digital and always-connected age we live in, the more a government bans a work of art, the more it flourishes. During the farmers’ protest, the government forced YouTube to remove Kanwar Grewal’s song Ailaan. The song moved onto mobile phones and became an underground anthem of the protest. Recently, the government forced YouTube to remove Sidhu Moosewala’s posthumous song SYL. The song became a major hit underground and brought more fans to the slain singer. The flip side of the government’s proposed ban on songs glorifying gun culture could be artists bringing gun culture into their songs to get them banned so as to become huge hits.

The only sensible point the letter made is that FIRs will be lodged and police action will follow hate speech against any religion or community. That is an important step to prevent Punjab from hurtling down the path of violence as in the 1980s. However, to curb gun violence, the government needs to implement law and order and ensure that the wounds of Punjab are healed. There have been three governments and four chief ministers since 2015, but incidents of sacrilege have not been solved and the guilty have not been punished; odd incidents continue to take place.

When people see the state deliver justice, their impulse to use guns to seek revenge or whatever the bearer of arms considers justice, will be curbed. The citizens in the state need to feel they are not under assault and creating that sense is the government’s real responsibility. Otherwise, even a common kitchen knife can be used to harm or kill. Would the government ban those as well?

The writer is the author of Panjab: Journeys Through Fault Lines