India's National Magazine
From the publishers of THE HINDU

Vol. 16 :: No. 05 :: Feb. 27 - Mar. 12, 1999

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THE STATES

A dangerous drift

In having Akal Takht Jathedar Ranjit Singh suspended and replaced, Chief Minister Prakash Singh Badal may appear to have marginalised his far-Right opponents in the Shiromani Akali Dal; however, his abdication of temporal authority to the clergy constitutes a serious threat to peace in Punjab.

PRAVEEN SWAMI
in Chandigarh

THE Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) has reached what appears to be a terminal stage of meltdown. Although Chief Minister Prakash Singh Badal has succeeded in marginalising his opponents on the SAD's far Right, the processes that he put in place to do so constitute the most serious threat to peace in Punjab since terrorism was put down in the State in 1992. That Badal was able to put his stamp of authority on the Sikh theocratic apparatus by deposing Akal Takht Jathedar Ranjit Singh and Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee (SGPC) chairman Gurcharan Singh Tohra is not, as most people believe, a triumph of the moderates in the SAD. It has in fact served only to reinforce the centrality of the religious establishment to the deployment and working of power in the party.

Badal's war against the Tohra faction climaxed in Amritsar on February 10, when 10 members of the SGPC's 15-member executive committee placed the Akal Takht Jathedar under suspension. Ranjit Singh, the executive committee members said, had abused his religious authority to settle "personal scores" and was also guilty of using abusive language at the Akal Takht and assaulting a religious figure on its premises. Thousands of supporters of Badal had gathered at the Golden Temple on February 10 to witness the event, which many people believed would provoke violence. Nothing of the kind happened, perhaps owing to the presence of the Punjab Police on a scale unprecedented in recent times.

NIRMAL SINGH DHIR
Giani Puran Singh offers prayers at the Akal Takht on February 15, the day he took over as the 19th Jathedar of the Akal Takht.

Ranjit Singh's suspension was in fact a thinly veiled dismissal. For one, the seven-page press release issued after the executive meeting made no reference to any further inquiry into the Jathedar's affairs and suggested that he would have no official opportunity to clear himself of the charges against him. Nor was there any mention of how long the suspension will last. The executive committee's decision to suspend rather than dismiss Ranjit Singh seems to have been motivated principally by procedural ambiguities over just how an Akal Takht Jathedar may be removed from office and how his successor's independence can be curtailed to the maximum extent possible.

Tohra reacted to the suspension with an attack on Badal. "Ahmad Shah Abdali, Massa Rangarh and Indira Gandhi damaged only the Golden Temple and Akal Takht buildings," he proclaimed, "but now we are faced with our own Duryodhan and Kansa who are bent on destroying the very ideals that the Gurus set for us." The SGPC president claimed that the Jathedar could be removed only through the instrument of a Sarbat Khalsa, a practice of organising general assemblies of all practising Sikhs which was revived by far-Right groups during the Khalistan movement. Speaking at a meeting in Chandumajra village, home to his supporter and SAD member of Parliament Prem Singh Chandumajra, Tohra announced that both he and his five supporters on the SGPC executive, who had refused to attend the February 10 meeting, would now resign from the body.

This de facto split in the SAD promptly, and unsurprisingly, received Ranjit Singh's endorsement. Describing Badal as a latter-day Babar "who had unleashed untold misery on Sikhs", Ranjit Singh proclaimed that he was still the Akal Takht Jathedar. He was forced, however, to postpone a February 11 meeting of the Golden Temple high priests, called to hear charges of heresy against Keshgarh Sahib Jathedar Manjit Singh and editor of the newspaper Ajit and Rajya Sabha member Brajinder Singh. Both are key figures in Badal's caucus within the SAD and had been summoned to face a trial that could have led to their excommunication from the Sikh faith.

That Ranjit Singh could not conduct the hearings against Manjit Singh and Brajinder Singh illustrated his fragile grasp on the theocratic establishment. Head priest Mohan Singh and granthi (scripture reader) Charan Singh failed to appear for the trial process, as, more predictably, did Manjit Singh and Brajinder Singh. The suspended Jathedar was left claiming that Mohan Singh and Charan Singh had been kidnapped by Badal's supporters and were being held incommunicado. Mohan Singh had refused to take up the job of the Jathedar after the executive committee meeting, but most people believe that his absence at the Akal Takht the next day had little to do with coercion and everything to do with an accurate appraisal of the emerging political landscape.

NIRMAL SINGH DHIR
An overview of the Golden Temple complex in Amritsar. In the foreground, crowds have gathered outside the locked gates of the Guru Nanak Niwas, where the offices of the Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee are located.

RANJIT SINGH'S decision of January 25 to force Manjit Singh and Brajinder Singh to appear before the Akal Takht was the last of a series of events that led to the showdown. Ranjit Singh, who returned to the Akal Takht after former Prime Minister I.K. Gujral arranged to commute the life term he was serving for the assassination of Nirankari sect leader Gurbachan Singh (Frontline, November 28, 1997), had through last year been a persistent irritant to Badal. In essence, Ranjit Singh sought to place the institution of the Akal Takht Jathedar at the centre of Sikh political life. In this project he was enthusiastically aided by Tohra, who saw an opportunity to undermine Badal's unchallenged authority within the SAD.

A series of increasingly bizarre religious enterprises were set in place through 1998. Revivalist puritanism was one key theme, designed to subvert the liberal cultural ambience that Badal's ascendancy was premised on. Akal Takht edicts banned the conduct of marriages in hotels and wedding halls, opposed Sikh women riding motorcycles and scooters wearing crash helmets, and attacked an assortment of supposed heretics. One edict passed last April, demanding that Sikhs overseas end their long-standing practice of eating the community langar meal seated in chairs, led to the assassination of the respected and secular Canadian newspaper editor, Tara Singh Hayer (Frontline, December 18, 1998), and a shootout in a Florida gurdwara, which claimed several lives. Jathedar Manjit Singh, who opposed these edicts, was barred from the precincts of the Akal Takht on the grounds that he had failed to hand over accounts for the controversial World Sikh Council.

Badal's opposition to these acts of aggression proved ineffectual, but events were soon to force him to act. The centre of conflict became the Badal Government's plans to celebrate the tercentennial of the creation of the Khalsa, the sect baptised by Guru Gobind Singh. Ranjit Singh, with Tohra's backing, opposed the Rs.300-crore Central Government funding for the event, demanding that the SGPC have primacy in conducting the celebrations. Ranjit Singh went on to boycott the official celebrations at the Anandpur Sahib gurdwara, arguing among other things that a monument that the Badal Government was building there was premised on flawed theological principles. At a commemorative march that he organised (Frontline, January 1, 1999), Ranjit Singh singled out for attack Sikh police officials who trimmed their hair and beards.

VINO JOHN
Chief Minister Prakash Singh Badal.

BY early this year, then, the battle lines were drawn. Brajinder Singh transformed Ajit into a platform for opposition to the Akal Takht Jathedar, resistance that was to provoke fanatics to burn the paper on several occasions. Jathedar Manjit Singh, in turn, took on the Akal Takht's edicts, claiming that they were illegitimate as they were issued in his absence. Tohra separately demanded that Badal resign his post as SAD president, leading the party to issue disciplinary notices to him and his supporters in the party. Five SAD Ministers resigned their offices on December 14 to protest the action against Tohra (Frontline, January 15, 1999), while Chandumajra resigned as SAD general secretary shortly afterwards. Badal's supporters retaliated by demanding the dismissal of the SGPC president.

Tohra had clearly lost the political battle: to pose a credible threat to Badal's Government, he needed the support of at least 25 of the party's 75 MLAs. It was evident that he did not command such strength. Ranjit Singh now came into play in this expressly political theatre, issuing a hukumnama (religious decree), ordering Badal and Tohra to cease their conflict until April 15. This, he claimed, would allow the tercentennial celebrations to pass without controversy. Since Ranjit Singh had himself played a considerable role in whipping up the controversy in the first place, this concern for the tercentennial was laughable. The real purpose of the hukumnama was to buy Tohra enough time to gather support from within the SAD and to signal to MLAs that Badal's authority was ineffectual enough to make joining in an uprising not too much of a risk.

The Chief Minister planned his revenge systematically. Badal's 10 supporters in the SGPC executive committee appealed to Ranjit Singh to withdraw the hukumnama, and at once wrote to Tohra complaining about the "one-sided" action, which they claimed violated "Sikh principles". Tohra himself, their letter made clear, was bound by the Sikh Gurudwaras Act, 1925, which gave the SGPC president no real powers other than summoning executive committee meetings. A day after this appeal was issued, a joint meeting of the SAD and the SGPC at Anandpur Sahib gave Badal exclusive powers to conduct the tercentennial celebrations, making clear the fact that he commanded majority support in both the political and the theocratic establishments.

SHANKER CHAKRAVARTY
SGPC president G.S. Tohra.

The heat was kept on Ranjit Singh and Tohra. Badal ordered the reconstitution of the Sikh Gurudwara Commission, the quasi-judicial body charged with hearing disputes related to the management of religious shrines. Tohra's supporters Kashmir Singh, Raghbir Singh and Dara Singh were removed by an Ordinance issued by Punjab Governor B.K.N. Chibber; they were replaced with Manmohan Singh, Amrik Singh Randhawa and Ajwant Singh Mann. Badal denied that there was any political motive for the move, but events soon gave the lie to this claim. The new Commission promptly restrained Tohra's most important proxy from discharging his duties as SGPC secretary and ordering the executive committee meeting. Tohra took the Commission issue to the Punjab and Haryana High Court, but failed to obtain a stay.

Preparations for Tohra's flaying were not complete, but the summons to Brajinder Singh and Manjit Singh forced Badal's hand earlier than he might have wished. No new Jathedar was in place, since the SAD's overtures to Darshan Singh Ragi, the controversial figure who presided over the Akal Takht twice during the terror-torn 1980s, had led nowhere. In the event, there was to be considerable confusion after Ranjit Singh's suspension, since the obvious choice, head priest Mohan Singh, refused to take the job. Punjab Police intelligence sources told Frontline that Mohan Singh's decision was in large part governed by telephone calls from persons considered close to terrorists, who threated harm to his son, who lives abroad.

That left Puran Singh to be the 19th Jathedar of the Akal Takht. Installed amidst tension on February 15, Puran Singh was hospitalised soon after, with a mild cardiac problem. The stress is understandable. Puran Singh is certain to come under attack from Ranjit Singh, who continues to insist he is the real Jathedar, and from ultra-Right elements. Head priest Mohan Singh, on his part, did not attend Puran Singh's installation ceremony, indicating that fault lines are emerging among Sikh clerics. Puran Singh, in turn, will tap his own connections in revanchist preacher Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale's far-Right Damdami Taksal seminary. A close associate of Bhindranwale, Puran Singh had been dismissed in May 1988 along with five other high priests and the then Jathedar, Jasbir Singh Rode, on the basis of a terrorist-sponsored Sarbat Khalsa. That gathering marked the seizure of control over the religious establishment from clerics by armed groups. Puran Singh's choice as Jathedar was clearly shaped by Badal's desire to ensure that fundamentalists did not rally behind Tohra.

S. ARNEJA
Ranjit Singh, who was replaced as Akal Takht Jathedar.

INDEED, Ranjit Singh's suspension is anything but a triumph for the political establishment over the theocratic apparatus. Calls for Badal to affirm his commitment to what the Jathedar described as the Sikh Agenda, including a separate Sikh personal law and the honouring of the Khalistan movement, have pushed the Chief Minister to buy peace with the Right. On January 30, for the first time since taking office as Chief Minister, Badal shared a platform with a group associated with the Khalistan movement, the Sikh Students' Federation (SSF). At the meeting, Badal lavished praise on SSF leader Harminder Singh Sandhu, a terrorist who was close to Bhindranwale and who was killed in a 1990 police encounter. Several figures at the meeting were also close associates of Bhindranwale. The SSF returned the favour to Badal by issuing a resolution attacking Tohra.

Badal may have removed Tohra, but he has clearly paid an enormous price. For one, to ensure that the SGPC president is marginalised, he has been forced to give fascist groups space in Punjab's political arena. The SAD's renewed flirtation with the SSF and figures such as Rode is alarmingly reminiscent of the competitive bidding for fundamentalist support by various centrist factions in the late 1970s and the 1980s. Figures who were marginalised by the return of peace in Punjab are now back on centre stage and are crucial to the balance of power within the SAD. Tohra could well respond by sponsoring an even more aggressive chauvinist mobilisation. Clearly, the traditional analytical categories for SAD politics, those of moderates and extremists, are more than a little problematic: in the past, as now, supposed moderates have affiliated with pro-Khalistan causes and factions in order to secure their position.

The real reasons for the abiding influence of communalism in the SAD have to do with its core ideology. Despite Badal's repeated claims of commitment to a secular polity, the themes outlined in Ranjit Singh's Sikh Agenda are certain to resurface. This is because Badal needs the endorsement of far-Right religious groups not for political power but to secure ideological legitimacy as a Sikh spokesman. The SAD exists, in important senses, to defend the idea that Sikh faith and Sikh politics are inseparable. Its factions are united in this fundamental philosophical construct: a construct that forces politicians to abdicate their temporal authority to the clergy.