The Rediff Special

Has peace a chance in Punjab?

Punjab goes to the polls on Friday. It is undoubtedly a most crucial election, coming as it does after the decade-long troubles in the state. N V Subramaniam travelled through the state recently for Sunday magazine -- with whose kind courtesy this report is published.

The hundreds of thousands of men and boys streaming into Muktsar town in Faridkot district on this mid-winter Monday morning for the annual Maghi Mela had little apparent political purpose. Only die-hards sat out in the cold shadows of the large pandals put up by the Congress party, the Akali Dal (Parkash Singh Badal group), the Akali Dal (Simranjit Singh Mann faction) and the Bharatiya Kisan Union on the sidestreets. But by 2 pm, with the arrival of assorted political stars of Punjab, and the sun being well up, these rapidly filled out.

This happens year after year. During the Emergency, defied by more than 50,000 Sikhs, the Akali Dal was forced to hold its durbar within the famous Muktsar Sahib gurdwara. Operation Bluestar became another rallying point. That tradition continues. The Muktsar Mela shows up, yearly and ruggedly, therefore, just how inseparable politics in Punjab is from culture, leave alone religion.

The excitement in the various political pandals this fortnight, however, was occasioned by a more desirable event. Elections to the Punjab assembly are due. Unusually, too, Punjab goes to the polls in relative peace after more than 13 years of terrorism. And, these promise to be truer than the one held five years ago that the Congress party won because Badal's Akali Dal boycotted them.

Yet, Parkash Singh Badal, twice Punjab's chief minister, one of its richest landlords, friends with nearly every anti-Congressman of consequence in the country and tipped for a third term of office, was leaving nothing to chance. On the dais with him was L K Advani with whose Bharatiya Janata Party his party will share seats in the elections. Both had winning smiles for photographers and for the crowds impatient for their speeches.

They spoke of corruption of the Congress nationally. They didn't take names. It was too early in the campaign for specifics. And, Advani's presence somehow detracted from dragging state politics all too suddenly in. But Advani and Badal were both there at Muktsar as at some sort of political swayamwara. Smiling contentedly, too, was the BJP's state president, Balram Tandon, a likely deputy chief minister and finance minister if the Akalis come to power and a total defender of Badal's outrageous poll promise to give free water and electricity to Punjab's farmers.

On show, meanwhile, at the Congress party's shamiana, half a kilometre away, was Punjab's first woman chief minister, Rajinder Kaur Bhattal. Sitaram Kesri was to come but he didn't. Speakers before her like the irrepressible former Congress MP, Jagmeet Singh Brar, and the state president, Santokh Singh Randhava, had set the tone with personal attacks on Badal and such Akali colleagues as the much-respected Surjit Singh Barnala. Bhattal carried forth.