SAD faces a crisis of legitimacy

THE Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) occupies a distinctive place in the history of India’s regional and democratic politics. Born out of a popular movement in 1920, it is among the oldest political parties of the subcontinent. Over the past 104 years, it has confronted many challenges and seen many changes. From the Partition in 1947 to Punjab’s reorganisation in the 1960s and the militant Khalistan movement of the 1980s, the SAD has been through many difficult times and survived.

Though its control over the SGPC remains, the SAD’s appeal among the Sikh masses has been on the decline.

Though a regional party that is also identified with the Sikh community, its leadership has often been at the forefront of articulating national-level concerns, particularly those related to questions of federal politics. It was also among the few political parties in India with a cadre base of jathedars and local-level organisations.

The SAD’s distinctiveness also lay in the fact that it represented a range of interconnected interests and identities: the regional aspirations of Punjab; the representative face of the Sikh community; and the economic interests of the landowning agrarian class. As a regional party, it has been the sole voice of Punjab.

Likewise, though not all Sikhs have voted for the party, they have looked up to the SAD to be the institution that represents their sense of distinctive identity and interests — as a Panthic institution. Sikhs living outside Punjab, too, have had a sense of ethnic identification with the SAD. After the reorganisation of Punjab in 1966, the party also emerged as a custodian of agrarian interests, with its leadership positions being almost exclusively occupied by individuals coming from the agrarian, rich, landowning caste of the Jats.

The success of the SAD leadership lay in its ability to cruise through these diverse axes of Punjab politics — region, community and class/caste — which helped it emerge as a regionally hegemonic actor. Even when its leadership chose to aggressively raise Panthic issues, it was hard to brand it as a communal or a sectarian party.

Its electoral allies have ranged from local communist parties to the right-wing Bharatiya Jana Sangh and the BJP. The early generation of its leadership also worked from within, or alongside, the Congress. Likewise, despite the narrow social base in terms of caste and class, it connected with all sections of the Sikh community. Even some non-Sikhs of Punjab have been voting for its candidates.

The SAD has been a part of the mainstream political culture in yet another way. Like many other regional parties, it has recently seen a growing hold of one family, the Badals, and has been marred by internal schisms and factional divisions. Over the past 50 years, many of its senior leaders have left the party and formed offshoots of the SAD, often positioning themselves as the radical Panthic alternative. But rarely has their political appeal been lasting. It is mostly the mainstream outfit, led by the Badals for nearly three decades, that has continued to dominate.

However, that seems like old hat. The challenges that the SAD confronts today are unprecedented. With the growing hold of the Badal family, the party has seen an erosion of its cadre base and organisational structure. Though its control over the SGPC remains, its appeal among the Sikh masses has been on the decline.

There has been a growing perception that the SAD leadership has intentionally prioritised its electoral arithmetic over Panthic sentiments/issues. The victory of two ‘radical’ Sikhs in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections was a clear signal to the SAD that the common Sikhs no longer trusted it with their communitarian and religious concerns.

To broaden its electoral appeal, the Badals-led SAD has given up on being a Sikh-only party and opened up its membership to all Punjabis. There is little evidence to suggest that such a ‘secular-regionalist’ turn has found traction among the non-Sikhs of the state. On the contrary, its prolonged proximity to the Hindu nationalist party, the BJP, has only eroded its federalist credentials.

Perhaps the biggest blow to its social and electoral base has come from its most secure social base, the rural-agrarian constituency. With a weakening cadre base, the SAD leadership appears to have lost connect with the emerging crises of the agrarian economy.

This was visible during the year-long farmers’ protest on the borders of the national capital against the three farm laws introduced by the Narendra Modi government. It was only when its leaders felt the heat due to the growing anger among Punjabi farmers that they raised objections to the Central laws. They had all along been party to the ‘reforms’ that the Modi government had been working on. The party’s decision to quit the NDA government could not restore the loss of trust. This was reflected in a rather sharp decline in its vote share, reduced to nearly half of what it was in the past.

In the political landscape of India, Punjab has often been an outlier. Its political dynamics tends to be shaped by its local context and history rather than by what appears to be the ‘national mood’. Although Punjab is not the only state in the Indian Union that has a strong sense of regional identity and a strong regional party of its own, the regional politics of the state has a distinct flavour.

The most important actor representing the regional sentiments of the state had been the SAD. Today, it appears to be at a crossroads, confronting an unprecedented crisis of legitimacy. Much of this comes from its inability to comprehend the changing concerns of the Sikh community, Punjabi society and, perhaps most importantly, the agrarian economy of the region.

What implications would its waning appeal among its traditional constituencies have for the identity and aspirations of the region? This is a phase worth watching.