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The Way Forward
Shunning the beaten electoral path is the key for panthic bodies
Gian Inder Singh
In a development
that could be the harbinger of a mature Sikh polity in action, Bhai
Daljit Singh Bittu of Akali Dal (Panch Pardhani) has announced that
his party will stay away from the electoral politics around the
upcoming Lok Sabha polls in India.
Accompanied by
fellow top brass of the party, including Harpal Singh Cheema,
Harinder Singh Khalsa, Kamikkar Singh, Daya Singh Kakkar and Kulbir
Singh Barrapind, Bhai Daljit Singh said most political parties in
India are suffering from intellectual bankruptcy, moral degradation
and ideological vaccum.
Of course, he
said the decision was limited to non-participation in the next Lok
Sabha elections and by all means, the party will pro-actively fight
the soon to be expected SGPC elections as well as other polls.
 While most
newspapers in Punjab dealt with Bhai Daljit Singh’s announcement at
a February 23 press conference in Jalandhar with perfunctory news
sense, burying or ignoring the news item, many intellectual quarters
within the Sikh community think that Bhai Daljit Singh may have
shown the community the way forward in politics.
For far too
long, people with their heart in the right place have spent far too
much energy, time and money in the electoral arena with results that
are nowhere commensurate with the resources put into the effort. Men
like Parkash Singh Badal and Sukhbir Singh Badal and parties like
the ruling Akali Dal, the BJP or the opposition Congress have
perfected the art of fooling the electorate and made the entire
political-electoral domain so much a game of money and muscle that
smaller parties with a clarity of agenda and pro-people ideas on
their priority list simply stand no chance.
The ruling Akali
Dal of the House of Badals has managed the party in such a way that
the entire second rung leadership has been dwarfed, powers
concentrated in one family and a father-son duo holds the four top
positions in government and party – Badal Sr is patron of Akali Dal
and CM; his son is President of the party and a Deputy CM. And the
entire Akali top brass does not even squeal when divested of all
power. Such is its stake in sheer survival!
As for politics,
Badals can afford to tell the electorate all the time that Congress
was enemy number one of the Sikhs and then induct Gurcharan Singh
Galib from the Congress straight into the Akali Dal and give him a
ticket for Lok Sabha. Akali Dal candidates fight on BJP election
symbol in
Delhi
and all lines between a panthic party and RSS-BJP are completely
fudged. After all of this, the Badals have the gumption to say they
are the pristine pure samples of political behaviour, and they get
away with it. Advertisements now talk of Badal and Sukhbir as
“Darvesh Siyasatdaan”!
In a state where
nearly 15 lakh families, i.e. approximately 75 lakh people, are in a
queue for cheaper atta-daal (flour and pulses), there is no end to
an ad-spend of crores of rupees painting a picture as if Punjab will
be turned into a Los Angeles by next week-end.
Which panthic
party has the guts to do all this? Which party with its priorities
right and its heart in the right place will pass laws to ensure that
liquor is more freely available and is sold in departmental stores?
Under what kind of dispensation will the largest head for income for
a state be liquor?
Which political
leader can afford to publicly announce, tens and scores of times,
from public stages, rallies and gurdwaras, that a member of the
Badal family will fight a particular Lok Sabha seat?
In the game of
money-propelled politics, muscular tactics of managing and herding
the youth through Students Organisation of India, de-legitimising
the atmosphere of the universities through daily interference,
family control over SGPC and “hum do, hamara sab kuchh” as
party philosophy, the electoral arena in Punjab is too slippery for
men and women with good intentions to either suffer a humiliating
fall or get sucked into the vortex of dirty political games.
In times like
these, the decision to stay away from electoral politics can be a
key path forward but only if we are clear that such a decision has
come from ideological clarity and an understanding that the levers
of power do not only operate through electoral domain.
Recent years all
over the world have shown that non-politicians in a traditional
sense are also men and women of power. Many NGOs have shown that.
Aruna Roy is a great example, so is Sunder Lal Bahuguna. Those who
have pushed for Right to Information Act or the Rozgar Guarantee
Yojana have done more to help their people than those who have won
elections.
Of course, we
caution against attempts by politicians to spread the canard that
politics is dirty business. It is not. Politics is what decides what
will be on your breakfast table, what kind of schools your children
will go to, how your teenage kids will travel to shores far away and
whether someone can block that beautiful view of a rising sun from
your bedroom window by coming up with a six-storey mall right in
front of your sweet little home. Can such a vocation be dirty? What
could be a more pious duty than to follow one’s conscience and
participate in this game called politics?
But electoral
politics is not the only form of politics. In fact, those who have
succeeded in capturing the electoral arena, the morally degraded and
intellectually dishonest and bankrupt parties in
India,
have succeeded by primarily de-politicising the political notion.
We saw how in
the United States people’s feelings on the question of
Iraq
were swayed by the Bush administration because of Americans’ near
total de-politicisation; the success of Barack Obama lay in
sensitizing the electorate to the politics of it all.
Punjab is
already passing through election mode, and Badals have declared
victory. Everyone takes it with a pinch of salt. At times like this,
if the decision to stay away from electoral politics is also
translated into a decision to pursue by all means other paths to
politics, then there could be hope for the community that is passing
through a crisis where our youth have little to look up to. The
choices are stark: either be frustrated and become a nihilist, or
join the SOI of Sukhbir and wait for a slice of influence that may
come your way, or become indifferent and claim that politics is
dirty business.
Ideology has
fallen out of fashion, but people’s hearts always wait for the one
whose own heart is in the right place. Bad times are also times for
the great and the truthful to simply be themselves and step forward
to underline that value systems can stay intact even in the field of
politics.
It may take some
time, but then neither was
Rome
built in a day, nor has
Punjab been
destroyed in a week.
25 February 2009
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