Jalandhar: Senior advocate H S Phoolka, the face of the legal battle for justice for the victims of the Nov 1984 massacre of Sikhs,joining the BJP on Wednesday is the saffron party’s biggest catch
so far from among prominent Sikh faces. For more than four decades, he has identified himself with Sikh issues and causes.Yet, the political impact of his move may not be linear, because
strong apprehensions about the BJP continue to exist within the larger Sikh community.
The usual secular-versus-communal binary used for the Congress and BJP does not hold much meaning for Sikhs. The community has a bloody history with the Congress, marked not only by the
army action at Darbar Sahib but also by the genocidal massacre of Nov 1984. But that does not automatically make the BJP a natural beneficiary. For large sections of the Sikh community, decades-old legacy issues concerning both the Sikhs and Punjab remain unresolved.
The extent of this apprehension was visible in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. By then, the Shiromani Akali Dal
(SAD) had already lost a significant part of its support base in the Sikh community. Yet, instead of drifting towards
the BJP, Sikh voters moved largely towards the Congress to block it. At the same time, where they had a choice,
they ensured the victory of independent candidates Amritpal Singh and Sarabjit Singh, son of Beant Singh, one
of Indira Gandhi’s assassins, from Khadoor Sahib and Faridkot respectively.
Historically, Sikhs voted for the BJP in Punjab mainly because of its alliance with the Shiromani Akali Dal and their deep resentment against the Congress over the cataclysmic events of the 1980s.
But after 2014, the equations began to change. Having returned to power in 2012, the Parkash Singh Badal-led SAD-BJP alliance govt was already under pressure from a politically active section of the Sikh community over Sikh issues, besides facing governance-related criticism. In that atmosphere, the AAP managed to snatch the
Sikh card from the SAD in the 2014 Lok Sabha election.
It did so by fielding Phoolka, former diplomat Harinder Singh Khalsa — who had resigned in protest against
Operation Blue Star — in Punjab, and journalist Jarnail Singh in Delhi. Jarnail had become a prominent Sikh face
after throwing a shoe at then home minister P Chidambaram over Congress tickets to Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan
Kumar in the 2009 Lok Sabha election.
Once the BJP came to power at the Centre in 2014, it also became directly answerable for its policies towards
Punjab and the Sikhs. Then came the farm movement of 2020, which forced the SAD and BJP to part ways. The
biggest political beneficiary of that rupture was the AAP.
The Sikh card worked very well for the AAP. In 2014, it capitalised on the demand for justice for the 1984 massacre
victims and related Sikh concerns. In the 2022 Assembly elections, it drew political mileage from the Bargari
sacrilege and Behbal Kalan police firing cases of 2015. But justice in the latter cases is still nowhere in sight, and
the party is now facing questions of its own.
Sikh politics, meanwhile, remains fluid. It was widely expected that the Dec 2, 2024, edict from Akal Takht would
provide an opportunity to reinvigorate the Shiromani Akali Dal. Phoolka too had strongly advocated
strengthening the Akali Dal and had even announced his intention to take its membership.
But things changed quickly. The crisis over the implementation of the Dec 2 edict ended up pulling even the Sikh
clergy into its vortex. Akali politics today remains badly fragmented, with multiple factions making rival claims
and firing salvos at one another.
Against this backdrop, more than Phoolka, the BJP will have to address both the legacy and contempo