When former British PM Harold Wilson said “a week is a long time in politics”, he might have had Maharashtra in mind, not Punjab. In Punjab, between one Saturday and Sunday, within almost 24 hours, the Congress high command effected a massive change that upturns the state’s history of selection of chief ministers. It not only pushed former royalty Captain Amarinder Singh to resign, but also installed an unlikely common man, a Dalit Sikh, as chief minister.
Before we come to the change of guard, here’s a generally asked question: how can Punjab, where Sikhs are 56 per cent of the population, and which suffered Operation Blue Star and the anti-Sikh pogrom at the hands of the Congress, repose faith in that party? Punjab, in fact, warmed up not to the Congress, but to a rebel leader within the Congress. Let me illustrate with three examples. First, Captain resigned from the Congress after Operation Blue Star. Second, in his last term, Captain’s big stroke was the Punjab Termination of Agreements Act, 2004, cancelling the sharing of river waters with Haryana and Rajasthan. The Congress high command and the then prime minister were very unhappy with the move, but Captain scored a brownie point and precipitated a constitutional crisis. Third, before this term, his authorised biography claims, he threatened in 2015 to quit the Congress and float his own party to fight elections if he was not made state chief.
Captain’s major draw has been that he has stood up to the high command in Delhi, hence he would protect Punjab’s interests. This was seen in Captain’s handsome victory over the BJP’s Arun Jaitley in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.
When the Congress was bidding for power in 2017, under Captain’s leadership, there were two dominant issues in Punjab: sacrilege of holy books, over 200 issues of the Granth Sahib, Gutka Sahib, Holy Quran, Ramayan, and desecration of Gurdwaras; and drugs—the notion that Punjab was in the grip of a lethal drug smuggling racket, abetted by Rahul Gandhi’s exaggerated claim that “7 in 10 youth are drug addicts” and movies like Udta Punjab. To negate the impact of the Aam Aadmi Party’s bid for power, on December 15, 2015, Captain vowed on the Sikh holy book, the Gutka Sahib, a shortened version of the Guru Granth Sahib, to “break the back of the drug menace” within four weeks of being elected; end corruption in public office; and provide employment to the youth.
This was a tall order, and realistically impossible. Yet, since Captain had said it, and it was sworn of the holy book, people took his word. During his campaign, Captain promised farm loan waivers to all, rallied against the sand, gravel, liquor and transport mafias, and asked for votes on the plea this was his last term. He wanted voters to enable him to leave a worthy legacy with Punjab back on the path of progress.
Once elected, people expected him to fulfil his promises. He didn’t. In his conduct, Captain has embodied royal disinterest in the affairs of common people. The first signs of failure could be seen when his famed promise to waive farm loans, from the Rs 73,000 crore estimated by universities, was limited to loans taken from cooperative societies, for farmers owning not more than 2.5 acres and a loan value of up to Rs 2 lakh. The actual waiver amount came down to Rs 4,624 crore till date.
In July 2018, the people of Punjab, frustrated with the drug menace, held a Black Week Against Drugs—‘Either Die or Protest’. The promise to break the back of drugs had led to major infighting in the police department, which was showing up to be hand-in-glove with the illegal trade. The mafias continued, unemployment remained high, corruption in public office did not abate. The CM’s office was run from Captain’s residence. There have been massive protests by unemployed and underemployed teachers, by farm labourers. In August 2019, Congress MLAs questioned Captain on his performance. There were no answers. Captain had the entire state machinery in his control.
Meanwhile, the all-important sacrilege cases, the unprovoked firing at Behbal Kalan and Kotkapura, on which Captain had even conducted a special assembly session and taken back consent from the CBI over the cases, also came to nought. This April, the Punjab and Haryana High Court quashed an investigation into the Kotkapura firing case. The informal discourse of sacrilege and firing targets the Badals, but once again they are off the hook. This is similar to how in 2017 Captain had fought from an additional seat at Lambi, just to help former CM and Akali stalwart Parkash Singh Badal win. The court quashing the probe prompted the Congress to set up a probe panel to sort out the issue. Finally, Captain’s error was that instead of preparing for succession, he betrayed his appeal to people and entered the bid for another term as CM.
Once Navjot Singh Sidhu took over as Punjab Pradesh Congress head in July, he entered a head-on fight with Captain. Developments in the past few days show Captain has had his comeuppance earlier than when party leaders normally have them—in elections, which are still five months away. The outcry over Captain resigning indicates two aspects: one, those opposed to the BJP are aghast how the Congress could mess with the one state it had handsomely won; two, most media has no inkling of what really goes on in Punjab. For years, Captain has remained a loud nationalist—baiting Pakistan, posturing over Kartarpur Sahib corridor, supporting the army officer who paraded a civilian tied to the front of his jeep in Kashmir. No one asked if these stances of the border state’s CM have been in the interest of Punjab, which elected him to power—or if he has been furthering arch rival BJP’s agenda.
Through the change of CM, given Punjab’s uneven electoral turf—Akali Dal and AAP are still in disarray—the Congress has moved deftly to pre-empt a debacle in the February 2022 elections. The change is huge because in Charanjit Singh Channi, for the first time in many decades, Punjab has a CM from outside its top ruling families. As far as the value of symbolic faces in an electoral democracy goes, it is a smart move. With a Dalit Sikh face from the neglected eastern Puad region, in the state with the highest percentage Dalits (31.9 per cent), the Congress has apparently checkmated the Akali-BSP alliance and the BJP’s overtures to Dalits, beaten AAP’s projection of a deputy CM candidate, and tried to retain its old voter base. But, as a veteran journalist says, and considering the fact that Dalits are not a monolith and do not vote together, “It is too early to assess the power of a whisper campaign. Who knows what will happen?”
While Channi is an interesting selection, the way the Congress high command fumbled to find a CM reveals it still does not understand Punjab’s ground realities. At this point, given the limited time Channi has before elections, unlike Captain’s bombast, he would do well to remain modest and cover as much ground as possible. And if Channi sees the party through the elections, the Congress must continue with him as the next full-term CM. Punjab, Puad and Dalits have been neglected for long. The Congress would do well to demonstrate its intentions are sincere and honourable.
(This appeared in the print edition as "Congress Bowls A Caste Googly")
(Views are personal.)
Amandeep Sandhu, Author of PANJAB: Journeys Through Fault Lines
