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Political Jagirdars
Mansewak Singh
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The Badals, the
Dhindsas, the Brahampuras, the Kohlis, the Gulshans, the Talwandis,
the Atwals are puny men of the moment who not only did not have a
vision but failed the community even on little matters. For them, a
discussion on whether or not to have a memorial for the victims of
the Indian Army attack on Sri Akal Takht Sahib is enough to send
them crawling into the woodwork. |
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 The
freedom struggle in India threw up many great leaders who hailed
from poor back grounds and educated themselves to understand the
affairs of nation states and how governance is carried out. What
mattered were merit and the ability to manage contradictions and
take everyone along. Also mattered were your conviction to the cause
you espoused and the ability to stand in the face of adversity.
Men like Master
Tara Singh were a product of such churnings when a school master
convert from a Hindu family could rise to such heights in the Sikh
panth.
Now, the panth
is witnessing the rise of the Khandaani politician, much like the
rest of India is experiencing.
“Why can’t a
doctor’s son become a doctor?” goes the argument, and Prakash Singh
Badal offers it almost as an absolute truth.
 So as sons and
daughters of our panthic politicians take the seats, tickets,
nominations, memberships, we are losing out on immense
possibilities. People in key leadership positions in several parties
are anxious to hand these over to immediate and blood relations. The
MP-ship or MLA ticket is part of the family inheritance.
The Akali Dal is
in the thick of political jagir system. When a leader dies, the son
thinks of the cabinet berth or Assembly ticket just like a plot that
the father had owned. It should pass on to him or to his brother or
to his sister.
The Sikh panth
recently watched the shameless drama of family succession after the
death of Captain Kanwaljit Singh.
Examples come
dime a dozen, and a score for each little council membership in a
municipality. We in Punjab have seen the rise of an oligarchy, a
special class of people who think their only job is to govern other
people’s lives. Worse, they are not even interested in governing if
there is no chance of making a lot of money while doing so.
In small towns
and panchayats, this is sometimes more starkly evident and more
openly talked about. Mayoral elections and other municipal-level
elections offer an excellent microcosm to watch a phenomenon which
is now played out at all levels in political parties.
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The
Akali Dal is in the thick of political jagir system. When a leader
dies, the son thinks of the cabinet berth or Assembly ticket just
like a plot that the father had owned. It should pass on to him or
to his brother or to his sister.
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The larger scene
in India is no different. And then there are occasions where thanks
to the party machinery and the crony system of running the parties
or polity, the nominated son or daughter who is a greenhorn and is
pushed ahead at the cost of several senior leaders’ claims returns
victorious with huge margins of victory. We are told that he or she
has passed the final democratic test and thus ends the argument.
Unfortunately,
what such political jagir system is doing is to finish off the
political party system that you knew. Even those who had made a dent
in the polity as first generation “fighters” in politics — for
example, Karunanidhi, Thackeray, Mulayam Singh, Sharad Pawar, Purno
Sangma and innumerable many in the Congress and the BJP — hand down
opportunity directly to their families.
As the party
machinery is not exactly cranked up to help candidates uniformly,
those anxious about their scions pump in disproportionate amounts of
influence and money to ensure that they land a victory. The older
democratic process of the party machinery taking responsibility for
ensuring victories has been virtually replaced by a smaller (in the
short-term, more “efficient”) family core, which then proceeds to
run politics and campaigns like a contractor would, something which
ultimately saps traditional essence of a political party. This
system is not transparent and ultimately shuts the door to new
entrants and aspirations, taking away the only thing that has the
power to help people in an unequal society like India — the promise
of equality of opportunity.
In neighbouring
Sri Lanka, a Sirimavo Bandaranaike or a Chandrika Kumaratunga who
have seen and undergone miseries which are the stuff of screenplays,
something that earned them their place in the power matrix, family,
history, tragedy and personal fortitude all mixed in a way that
detangling them is not always possible or recommended.
 The problem is
not that children of leaders cannot do what their parents did. To
suggest that will be wrong. But what subverts the spirit of this
great democracy is when the only problem confronting leaders seems
to be to secure their kin a foothold.
For years now,
the key question over which the media has been speculating is when
will Sukhbir Singh Badal assume the job being held by his father
Prakash Singh Badal. So boringly repetitive has the question become
that it has stopped even interesting the readers anymore.
But in the
process, a rather pernicious thing has happened to our subconscious.
So many times have we heard this being debated that the larger
notions of democratic functioning of the Akali Dal have been lost in
the din. It is now considered almost the done thing, and when it
will happen, it will interest perhaps even less.
This success of
the politician to make us think or not think about important issues
in a certain way is what the death of ideology is all about.
The Badals, the
Dhindsas, the Brahampuras, the Kohlis, the Gulshans, the Talwandis,
the Atwals are puny men of the moment who not only did not have a
vision but failed the community even on little matters. For them, a
discussion on whether or not to have a memorial for the victims of
the Indian Army attack on Sri Akal Takht Sahib is enough to send
them crawling into the woodwork.
To run the
polity in the light and paradigm learnt from Sri Guru Granth Sahib
ji and the traditions of the Khalsa Panth will be a task too onerous
for their moral fibre.
30
September 2009
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