CHANDIGARH: If the latest sacrilege episode that unfolded inside the Golden Temple on December 18 is an indication, it’d appear that the Punjab polls due in a couple of months would be fought around a theme that has been kept alive since 2015.
That year, two men had died and many others injured in police firing during a protest against a sacrilege incident that took place in Behbal Kalan village of Faridkot district.
The two incidents look disjointed in the backdrop of political circumstances, but follow the same narrative of religious appeal.
The newest one has taken place during the Congress regime, the other occurred during the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) rule.
The 2015 incident reached a flash point when previous chief minister Amarinder Singh, who had promised justice in 2017, was ousted amid charges that he went “soft” towards the Badals and did not go beyond setting up a special task force whose report was junked by the Punjab and Haryana High Court earlier this year.
Post-Amritsar episode, SAD is back to peddling its ‘panthic appeal’ in its attempt to put the Charanjit Singh Channi government on the mat. The 2017 polls saw a complete decimation of Akalis and political observers attributed the SAD-BJP defeat to the alliance’s handling of the sacrilege cases.
A look at the election results reveals the impact of the sacrilege case. In Faridkot district (where the sacrilege and subsequent police firing took place in 2015) with three assembly constituencies, SAD was a poor third, while AAP, which debuted in the elections, won two.
Similarly, in the neighbouring Bathinda district, which has six assembly constituencies — the highest among seven districts of Malwa region (southern Punjab) — the effect of the 2015 sacrilege case was visible. Three seats each went to AAP and the Congress while SAD, which had won four seats in 2012, scored a duck.
That the sacrilege case would be a pivotal issue in the 2022 polls, too, was clear even before the Golden Temple incident happened in which the alleged accused was lynched to death. Political parties started raising their pitch for justice in the 2015 case months ago. In fact, this was one of the key issues which saw the CM’s chair being transferred from Amarinder to Channi.
Even after the change of CM face in the Congress government, the party’s state chief Navjot Singh Sidhu has not let up the heat on the issue.
A few days ago, he visited the families of those killed in police firing in Behbal Kalan while protesting over the sacrilege issue, and reiterated his demand for speeding up justice.
On the other hand, the opposition is trying to step up heat on the Congress regime over the Golden Temple incident.
Political analyst Prof Kuldeep Singh says in 2017, the public perception went against SAD as Akal Takht (the highest temporal seat of Sikhs) had pardoned Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim at the behest of the Akali Dal in a case where the Dera chief imitated Sikh Gurus – a strict no-no in Sikh religion.
Attack on granth sahib
October 12, 2015: Torn pages of Granth Sahib found near Gurdwara in Bargari.
October 20, 2015: Torn pages of Granth Sahib were found near Gurdwara in Gurisar village of Bathinda.
November 4, 2015: Torn pages of Guru Granth Sahib were found scattered at Mallke village in Moga.
July 3, 2016: Another such case reported from Bhagta Bhai Ka in Bathinda.
September 12, 2018: Torn pages of the Guru Granth Sahib found in Ram Nagar village in Bathinda.
December 18, 2021: Attempted sacrilege incidents at Golden Temple in Amritsar.