Sukhbir camp seeks answers to SAD’s biggest conundrum

JALANDHAR: Over a week after five Sikh high priests declared Shiromani Akali Dal president Sukhbir Singh Badal ‘tankhaiya’, the biggest question and concern in his camp is how he would wriggle out of this unprecedented religio-political crisis of his career, without paying a big political cost.

It is learnt that Sukhbir’s well-wishers are not only battling with the question themselves, but a few have also been reaching out to the Sikh intellectuals and activists, who have not been on the right side of the Akali Dal top brass for quite a few years, with queries around this fundamental question. Apparently, things have gone much beyond what Akali Dal’s in-house experts and spin doctors could perceive.

Ironically, the late Parkash Singh Badal was believed to have his finger on peoples’ pulse but most of the blunders, described as ‘decisions’ and ‘crimes’ by the Sikh high priests in their August 30 pronouncement, which hurt the Sikhs and Akali Dal very badly and for which Sukhbir finds himself in the dock, took place under Badal Senior’s watch.

The sequence of events and their political outcome in the last decade reflect that the Badals and their advisers, if any, consistently failed to correctly read the Sikh mind, their issues and situation on ground and then working out the right solutions. Rather, the steps they took boomeranged, and the situation has now reached a point where Sukhbir stares at an uncertain political future.

It is not for the first time that a top SAD leader is in the dock before the Akal Takht but this is probably the first time that the Sikh clergy is also facing the challenge of restoring the prestige of Akal Takht at a time when it will pronounce the ‘tankhah’ (religious punishment) on Sukhbir and others linked to SAD govts as pressure has been mounting on them to ensure that Sukhbir pays political cost. Their reasoning is that his ‘decisions’ and ‘crimes’ were Panthic-political in nature.

Though the Badals managed to reconcile quite a few major contradictions in their 1997-2002 term and then the 2007-12 term, through their absolute control on the party, Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) and by implication also on Akal Takht, and it was apparently this ‘successful’ reconciliation which brought the crisis to this complicated state at present.

The Badals’ major miscalculation was that they would manage to reconcile the big contradiction, rather the biggest till then, of appointing Sumedh Saini as the Punjab DGP, as soon as they returned to power for a consecutive term in 2012, even when he was facing very serious allegations of human rights violations during the period of militancy.

Then came the biggest misreading on sacrilege issue in 2015, even as the episode spanned over four-and-a-half months and pushing a unilateral pardon for Sirsa dera chief by the Akal Takht during this critical phase. Then the police firing at Kotkapura and at Behbal Kalan on October 14, 2015, in which two Sikhs were killed, with Saini at the helm of the state police, made the situation spiral out of control. It was the tipping point and since then the Badals have been failing to arrest the SAD downslide.

They continued to have control on SAD, SGPC and by implication on Akal Takht but with a significant section of Sikhs turning against the SAD, first came its rout in successive elections, then splits in the party and the latest is the Akal Takht pronouncement.

The Sikh clergy also finds itself in a piquant situation and on slippery turf as the community also expects the high priests to find a practical solution for survival and strengthening of Akali Dal.