Punjab sacrilege incident is more about venal politics than religion
The virulence of communal politics has poisoned India’s democracy for decades, and Punjab has been particularly afflicted, drawn into nearly a decade-and-a-half of malevolent religious terrorism through the 1980s and the early 1990s, and thereafter into a rising politics of communal polarisation that has perverted both the dominant faiths of the state—Sikhism and Hinduism.
While abusive exchanges between purportedly ‘religious’ figures appear to have diminished since the killing of Sudhir Suri of the Shiv Sena—Taksali in broad daylight and in the presence of a large contingent of security personnel in November 2022, the rash of lynchings and killings for ‘sacrilege’ (beadbi) by Sikh fanatics continues.
Suri, among others, had been delivering inflammatory speeches against the Sikhs and Sikhism, across Punjab, but Hindutva radicals in the state have toned down their rhetoric, now realizing that the security provided by indulgent governments is far from failsafe.
Ostensible Sikh ire against ‘sacrilege’, however, shows no signs of abating, despite the fact that the very idea is incongruous within the context of a faith that was itself born out of dissent within and revolutionary reform of ancient religious authority and practices, and a warrior tradition that explicitly prohibits violence against an unarmed enemy. In the latest incident, on May 4, 2024, a 19-year-old man was lynched at a gurudwara in Bandala village, Firozepur, after allegedly ‘desecrating’ the Guru Granth Sahib. Family members of the victim, Bakshish Singh, claimed that he was mentally challenged and had been on medication for two years.
This was the fifteenth case of lawless killing for the alleged offence of ‘sacrilege’ in Punjab since the Bargari incidents of 2015. Of these, five killings have been connected to the notorious Bargari Kand alone. Crucially, even where cases have been registered and judicial proceedings are ongoing, the bloodlust is not slaked. In June 2019, for instance, Mohinder Pal Bittu, the prime accused in the Bargari case, was beaten to death with iron rods in Nabha Jail by inmates Maninder Singh and Gursewak Singh, both serving life terms for murder.
The killings reflect the tip of the iceberg of the religious ferment over ‘sacrilege’, as Punjab has consistently topped the country in the number of sacrilege cases recorded over the past years. Data from the National Crime Records Bureau indicates that, between 2018 and 2022 (the last year for which numbers are available), Punjab has consistently led the country in the number of cases under Sections 295 to 297 of the Indian Penal Code, which relate to the malicious and deliberate intention to hurt the religious sentiments of others.
Thus, in 2018, Punjab’s sacrilege crime rate (number of cases divided by population in lakhs) was 0.7, while in other states across the country this ranged between 0.1 and 0.4. The figure for Punjab was 0.6 in 2019, 0.5 in 2020, 0.6 in 2021 and 0.7 in 2022. The all-India sacrilege crime rate was 0.1 in 2022. Incidents of sacrilege have been consistently exploited by political parties and by politico-religious authorities in Punjab, with persistent efforts to justify the violent response to any such allegation, and a cyclical effort to fan the flames in the proximity of elections. In the latest case at Bandala, the Jathedar of the Akal Takht, the highest temporal seat of the Sikhs, sought to justify the incidents on the grounds that people were ‘forced to seek justice on their own’ when the state ‘fails miserably in performing its duty.’
In this, and in the complex efforts to harden the Sikh identity, ‘religious’ leaders are taking the devout further and further away from a faith that seeks learning, enlightenment and truth, to one that seeks to subordinate unthinking believers to an established and authoritarian politico-religious priesthood, which can be exploited for partisan political ends, or for sheer profit. The Sikh faith —as, indeed, is the present trend within the Hindutva fold—is drowning under ritualism and the oppression of new priesthoods that have come to control the faith. There is a continuous effort to Abrahamise Sikhism (and Hinduism), particularly in patterns that are beginning to resemble the vicious Islamist fanaticism that constantly cries for blood in neighbouring Pakistan, forever proclaiming that the faith is in danger.
Growing religious intolerance is essentially part of a wider movement of chauvinism, bigotry and repression that is sweeping across India under the influence of ideologically bankrupt leaderships. It is high time that religious communities in the country realise that the real beadbi lies, not in the occasional acts of physical damage or profanity in places of worship, but the contamination of the essence of a noble and universal faith for base political and venal ends.
Ajai Sahni
Executive Director, Institute for Conflict Management, South Asia Terrorism Portal
ajaisahni@gmail.com