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After The Change, Akalis & BJP

Jan 6, 2005
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source: http://worldsikhnews.com/23%20December%202009/After%20the%20change%20Akalis%20&%20BJP.htm

Editorial - World Sikh News

After the change, Akalis & BJP

badal%20advani.jpg


For many years, Prakash Singh Badal has kept up a strong relationship with the BJP, and a peculiarly intense friendship with L K Advani ensured that Akalis were able to ride roughshod over the local BJP leaders in Punjab.

Along the way, the Badals lost much respect among the panthic circles, and will be at pains to stress their credentials when they face the SGPC elections shortly.

But with the RSS shadow getting longer and darker over the BJP, the alliance will come under renewed pressure as the Akali rank and file will find it difficult to swallow RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat's theory that anyone who lives in India is a Hindu.

Now that Advani is past his extended prime, and his protege Sushma Swaraj as Leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha will have to look more towards Bhagwat than to new party president Nitin Gadkari will not make Badal's task any easier. The fact that Gadkari himself is a hardcore RSS man will put the Akali Dal-BJP alliance under unprecedented pressure.

The friend-philosopher-guide Advani will be no more in a position to steer the Badals through difficult patches of SAD-BJP relationship.

Friendship with the Rathyatri has done little credit to Badal, and handshakes with someone who wants to see whole India "Sanghmayee" will only besmirch his reputation more.

Also, since Gadkari is an organizational man, he will accord much more respect to the views of his own party leaders in Punjab. It is a fact that the BJP is not taking it kindly that it is being run roughshod by Sukhbir Badal and his men.

Any protestations of the Badals that the BJP and the RSS were two separate entities now lie in tatters. The Justice Liberhan Commission has made it clear that the BJP is an appendage of the RSS and cannot go outside its command. It is something that not only Advani has conceded but even the RSS has proven by making sure that Gadkari replaces Rajnath.

At least the BJP is now completely Sanghmayee.

It is for Prakash Singh Badal to decide whether he wants to make the Akali Dal also "Sanghmayee." Many of course will argue that the party is already way down that path, thanks to the compromises that the Badals have been making for decades.
But if indeed that be the case, what are the other leaders in Akali Dal doing? Will they be able to face their Sikh voters and ask for support in SGPC polls?

If anything, Badals should be learning facts about intra-party democracy from the BJP. If a leader like Advani can be replaced, if someone like AB Vajpayee can be made dispensable, why are the Badals so indispensable?

Clearly, the BJP is not propagating at least family rule in the party. It still retains a certain norm of democracy in the party, something the Akali Dal has denied its leaders who are more than happy to leave all rights to Sukhbir Singh Badal to select names for Rajya Sabha, president of SGPC, candidates for Assembly, perhaps even vegetables for langar. So much so that which village or town will get to perform sewa at the langar is also decided by Bibi Surinder Kaur Badal.

It is a pity that the Badals completely refused to learn the minimum from their alliance partners. Will the alliance partner learn and shun the Akalis if the Sikhs decide to teach a lesson to those who are renegades of Sikh philosophy and culture? Wait for SGPC elections’ aftermath.

23 December 2009

 

spnadmin

1947-2014 (Archived)
SPNer
Jun 17, 2004
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Soul Jyot ji

There is some eerie about this article, that bothers me, particularly in the currents of the Professor Darshan controversy, and related incidents previous to that. I am not sure which way my intuitions are leading me on this. Or what it means for Sikhs under the administration of the SGPC. This story has some ends that look un-tied.
 

AusDesi

SPNer
Jul 18, 2009
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Dharmashtere Australiashtre
I think too much is made out of Akali-BJP alliance, atleast by conservative Sikh sources. The fact is they are political partners, if one doesn't benefit others then they will start to move away.

Differences between Sikhism on religious grounds should be dealt with in an adult way rather than both sides calling each other being influenced by RSS. As important as Punjab is, RSS has bigger samosas to make than Punjab.
 

spnadmin

1947-2014 (Archived)
SPNer
Jun 17, 2004
14,500
19,219
I think too much is made out of Akali-BJP alliance, atleast by conservative Sikh sources. The fact is they are political partners, if one doesn't benefit others then they will start to move away.

Differences between Sikhism on religious grounds should be dealt with in an adult way rather than both sides calling each other being influenced by RSS. As important as Punjab is, RSS has bigger samosas to make than Punjab.

AusDesi ji

I don't completely disagree with you. At the level of politics we are looking at a food chain to use an inelegant metaphor.

However, the reach beyond Punjab extends to the entire Diaspora when we are looking at the concerns of adherents to Sikhism. The backdrop for my concerns is that theology and practice are driven by political bargaining. You are right - RSS has bigger samosas than Punjab. However to consolidate political power Badal has to juggle a lot of smaller samosas -- and he has encouraged an impending train wreck (maybe - I am not certain of it yet). To a Sikh the ideal is "one Sikhee" and that is an ideal that is forever being reduced to a collection of pitiable events. The Sikh religion itself and its adherents worldwide rightly should guide the evolution toward achieving this idea. But they are not.

In plain English, on the one hand as agents of SAD and Badal, the jathedars and SGPC act to appease political agendas (which now have reached the point of being irreconcilable). The takhts are saying X to dera chiefs in the morning and Y in the afternoon to reporters. Badal himself in this article is portrayed as losing his own sense of how the pieces fit together. Not one single event that has resulted in expressions of public outrage in the last two weeks can be divorced from a "saffron" agenda -- and this is not about the Hinduism versus Sikhism either. It is starting to look like Sikhism the faith will become Sikhism the political creation. Each patron making demands, and SGPC presiding over how the demands will be reconciled. That is all I am talking about.

Politics historically has never been divorced from religion. This is different. This is not about how religions achieve their political voice. It is about how politicians cut out the tongues of adherents so all they can do is stammer, making words hard to comprehend and easy to ignore.
 

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