Gurpurb lessons for Centre, Punjab

“I am thinking of two of Guru Nanak’s keywords ‘nirbhau’ and ‘nirvair’ — ‘without fear’ and ‘without enmity’ — tweeted the good JNU professor Surinder Jodhka on the morning of Gurpurb — who added, “I’m hoping that they can somehow infuse our lives, our interactions, our politics.”

It seemed as if he’d been listening to an interview I had conducted with BJP leader Sunil Jakhar earlier this week (he hadn’t), in which Jakhar seemed to wrestle with a variety of thoughts and feelings — often, it seemed, as if he was talking to himself, rather than responding to the questions in the interview. Some comments, of course, pertained to his own turbulent journey, first in the Congress and latterly in the BJP; many others related to the turmoil in which Punjab finds itself in this particular moment in its history, far larger than the personal to-be-or-not-to-be dilemma that Jakhar seems to be grappling with.

What better day than Gurpurb to face the mirror? Perhaps you can begin with ‘nirvair’ and end with ‘nirbhau’?

Certainly, there’s a lot to be said about the Marxist schools which believe that individuals are but specks in the large drama of time — guess Marx must have devoured his Shakespeare — and certainly, the current dramatis personae both in the state and in Delhi sometimes seem like little men whose silhouettes are extraordinarily large shadows, albeit reflected on an imposing canvas.

But as we all know, shadows disappear in the cold light of the morning. By noon, they are underfoot, ready to be trampled upon. At any time of the day, they have little or no substance.

So let’s start at the beginning, with what we know. First, that Jakhar has told PM Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah that he will no longer continue as the state party president. Second, he won’t return to the Congress either, a party he served for several decades, because he is hurt by the way it treated him — we know that another Congress veteran, a Hindu Punjabi leader, Ambika Soni, had said a few years ago that Jakhar cannot become the chief minister of Punjab “because he is a Hindu” — and also because Jakhar feels Rahul Gandhi has “no control” over party factions.

And then there are the larger questions — beyond party loyalty and party interest. Questions about identity, faith, ability and trust. Why, for example, is the BJP in Punjab unable to expand influence and gain the confidence of its people when it fights without the support of the Akali Dal? Is the Akali Dal’s decline and fall a result of its close cinch with the BJP or should it look for other reasons within? Moreover, do Sikhs fear the RSS-BJP will undermine this special, egalitarian quality that ‘nirbhau’ and ‘nirvair’ spawns and envelop Sikhism into Hinduism’s fold?

On Gurpurb, especially on the 555th birth anniversary of the great Guru, the questions seem even more insistent. At the Nada Sahib gurdwara on the outskirts of Chandigarh as well as in scores of gurdwaras across the region, as Hindus and Sikhs — and indeed, people of other faiths — wait patiently for a glimpse of the holy Guru Granth Sahib, you wonder if Punjab’s society today is ready to absorb Guru Nanak’s charmed mantra (“na koi Hindu/na koi Mussalman”). Meaning, would the state’s predominantly Sikh population (about 57.7 per cent) rather be led by a person of its own faith, than a non-Sikh, perhaps a Hindu?

Imagine for a moment that people say that it doesn’t matter, that Hindus are also fine, because the man may even be a good leader — and that Hindu families, until recently or perhaps, even now, ‘gave’ their eldest sons to the Sikh faith. In that case, what happens to the nagging fear at the back of your head about Hinduism’s ability to be so conciliatory and tolerant that it will absorb you long before you realise that Gurpurb really falls on Kartik Purnima?

Only an outsider like me can vouch for the fact that while Punjab faces a score and a half problems — drugs, crime, extortion, young people fleeing to Canada and leaving empty villages with ageing parents behind, huge unemployment, overdependence on agriculture, a falling water table, an extraordinary leaching of the soil, corruption, no money to even employ a full-time principal at the Ludhiana Government College which gave the country the mathematician and aerospace engineer Satish Dhawan as well as scores of other brilliant sons and daughters, and more — that there is a strength and a self-confidence in Punjabis that has little to do with the fact that they only occupy 13 seats in the Lok Sabha of 545 MPs.

The problem with the BJP-ruled Centre is that it considers numbers to be the bottomline. Only 13 seats? Okay.

That’s when conversations between Delhi and Chandigarh begin to meander, slow down, taper off. So when you have a crisis over paddy procurement, Delhi doesn’t need to do much more than throw the rule-book at Chandigarh. Officials will wag a disapproving finger at the moisture meter in the mandi which checks the moisture content of the paddy being weighed as soon as it skips the 17 per cent mark, and sigh loudly. Too much moisture in this paddy. This consignment cannot pass muster. All entreaties and pleas and wheedling (“bhai sahib, jaane do”) fall on deaf ears. The official has withdrawn his pleasure. Nothing else matters.

Few remember the time when Parkash Singh Badal, the former Akali chief minister, persuaded Delhi to allow 20 per cent moisture content in paddy because unseasonal rain happened to have hit Punjab. Few remember today, because few want to remember. There is such an impasse between Delhi and Chandigarh that it is no longer about the differences between AAP and BJP — Punjabis are beginning to wonder whether they are being punished because they stood up to the three farm laws brought by the Modi government. And whether ‘Hindus’ want to punish ‘Sikhs’.

Some of this may sound fanciful, even bizarre. The problem is that the impasse between the Centre and the state is turning into a chasm, where conversations are drying up, if not freezing over. And some drawing-room conversations in Chandigarh are beginning to echo with the question, whether ‘Jai Shri Ram’ is a war-cry, a ‘lalkar’, or an entreaty, a ‘pukaar’.

At the Nada Sahib gurdwara, you pay only Rs 50 for a leaf-filled bowl of ‘karah parshad’, everything else is free, in the service of the great Guru Granth Sahib. Across the Shivalik hills on the other side of the gurdwara in Una district of Himachal Pradesh, the sacred Chintpurni shrine board has decided it will soon charge Rs 300 for a ‘swift darshan’, where you basically jump the queue to pray to the goddess.

What better day than Gurpurb to face the mirror and ask all these questions of yourself again? Perhaps you can begin with ‘nirvair’ and end with ‘nirbhau’?