After Veer Bal Diwas, Pravasi award: Eye on Punjab expansion, BJP steps up Sikh outreach

The conferring of the prestigious award to Dhaliwal came close on the heels of the commemoration of the first “Veer Bal Diwas” on December 26, which marks the martyrdom of the tenth Sikh Guru Gobind Singh’s young sons Baba Zorawar Singh and Baba Fateh Singh. A major event held on this occasion was presided over by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. While the much-televised event was appreciated by many, the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC), the Sikh community’s apex elected body in charge of its shrines, strongly objected to the day’s nomenclature.

Earlier in November, the PM had gone to the residence of the National Commission for Minorities’ chairperson Iqbal Singh Lalpura to take part in Gurpurab celebrations.

These are not isolated recent moves as the BJP has been making a concerted effort to woo the minority Sikh community for some time now. Months ahead of the February 2022 Punjab Assembly elections, PM Modi chose November 19, 2021, which marked Guru Nanak Dev’s birth anniversary, to repeal the three contentious farm laws that had sparked a massive agitation by farmers, mainly from Punjab, at Delhi’s borders besides leading to the break-up of the BJP’s over two-decade-long partnership with the Badals-led Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD).

Subsequently, in January 2022, the PM declared December 26 as the Veer Bal Diwas. As the farm laws crisis, which had made the BJP a pariah in the sensitive border state, blew over, the party started inducting a large number of Sikhs into its cadre. These included individuals with panthic credentials, the most notable being Prof Sarchand Singh, a spokesperson of the Damdami Taksal – a Sikh seminary once headed by the polarising figure of Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale who was killed in Operation Bluestar in June 1984 – and Kanwarveer Singh Tohra, grandson of Gurcharan Singh Tohra, the longest-serving SGPC president.

Besides them, the BJP also co-opted prominent members of the Sikh community in Delhi, including Manjinder Singh Sirsa, former president of the Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee (DSGMC). In recent months, the DSGMC leaders have sought to show the SGPC in poor light by highlighting the latter’s alleged inability to prevent conversion to Christianity in the region.

The BJP made several other moves such as bringing out a publication listing the steps the party-led central government has taken for the community, including reopening the Kartarpur Corridor, and recitation of Sukhmani Sahib, a text from Gurbani, in their offices. Union minister Gajender Singh Shekhawat specially flew from Delhi to Patiala to take part in the death anniversary prayers for Gurcharan Singh Tohra last year.

PM Modi himself launched a “tea diplomacy”, calling diverse people from the Sikh community, from NRIs, businessmen and religious leaders to former bureaucrats and serving librarians for tea at his residence. Even though the BJP fared poorly in the Punjab polls, the PM carried on with his outreach – Darshan Singh Dhaliwal was part of the Punjabi gathering he hosted in April last year.

The PM also commemorated the 400th birth anniversary of Guru Tegh Bahadur in April 2022 with an address to the nation from the Red Fort, from where Mughal emperor Aurangzeb had given orders for the Guru’s execution. It was the first time that a PM addressed the nation after sunset from the Red Fort. “In front of Aurangzeb’s tyrannical thinking, Guru Tegh Bahadur ji, becoming ‘Hind di Chadar’, stood like a rock,” Modi said.

The Sikh clergy, closely aligned with the SAD, has not taken kindly to these overtures, often accusing the saffron party of trying to subsume the community into its Hindutva agenda. Last fortnight, SGPC president Harjinder Singh Dhami rejected “Veer Bal Diwas” and appealed to the Sikhs to beware of the “government’s conspiracy to undermine the Sikh history”.

The SGPC has also been up in arms against the formation of a separate managing committee for gurdwaras in Haryana, which is now being presided over by Mahant Karamjit Singh, who was once invited for tea by the PM.

Punjab BJP general secretary Subhash Sharma says the party is making “incremental gains” in the state with many people from the Sikh community joining its ranks. The large-scale defection from the Congress to the BJP has now resulted in the latter having a slew of prominent Sikh faces led by ex-CM Capt Amarinder Singh.

The BJP may have won some allies in Punjab too. A new Sikh entrant to the party pointed out how the community should “stop trying to always swim against the tide”, making a reference to the state’s historically inimical relations with the “Dilli Sarkar”.

However, there are many who are uncomfortable with the saffron camp’s alleged anti-Muslim stance and the polarising narrative peddled on social media that seeks to label Sikhs as “Khalistanis”. Even though bodies like Sikhs for Justice (SFJ) and their overseas referendum moves do not have any resonance among Sikhs in Punjab, it has often been used to target the community on social media, many a time by trolls that brandish their proximity to the ruling party. As a political observer put it, “Its overtures aside, it is this trust deficit that the BJP has to bridge if the party is serious about wooing the community.”