An ‘Emergency’ in Punjab – The Tribune

BACK in Mumbai this weekend, the whole city, not just Bollywood, remains engrossed with who stabbed Saif Ali Khan and why, in what is a perfect life-meets-Hindi-movie moment.

Here in Punjab, though, the undercurrent of fear and loathing that has greeted Kangana Ranaut, the actor-director of a biopic on Indira Gandhi, ‘Emergency’, is scaling new unsavoury heights, with the SGPC preventing the film from being screened in theatres even as it was released across the country on Friday.

Now we know that SGPC president Harjinder Singh Dhami is a member of the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) and that the Sikh

institution, which celebrates the 100th anniversary of it becoming a legal body — along with the RSS — is still largely controlled by the Sukhbir Badal-led party. You could argue that an SGPC functionary’s description of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale as “mahaan” or “great”, even as he illogically explained why the SGPC was boycotting Kangana’s movie — ostensibly because “Sikhs are portrayed in a bad light”, because “Bhindranwale is seen as telling Mrs Gandhi that he will ensure her the Sikh vote, if she gives a separate state”, meaning Khalistan — cannot belong to a world in which fact and fiction are obviously distinct and separate and movies clearly belong to the latter.

But this is Punjab, a state that is not doing too badly on some parameters — it is certainly able to feed, clothe and educate itself, otherwise its cities and villages wouldn’t be full of immigrants from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar — but where the political sentiment is mostly so overwrought that nothing is really what it seems.

So here’s the big picture against which the anti-Ms Ranaut and ‘Emergency’ protests are taking place — five loose strands are clear. First, Kangana is a polarising figure, critical of the farmer agitation that has been taking place on and off these last several months; a CISF constable even slapped her on this count in June last year.

Second, the farmer protests are back, with farm union leader Jagjit Singh Dallewal’s hunger strike entering its 53rd day, spurring another “marjeevda jatha”, literally, a “do-or-die” group of 111 farmers determined to cross into Haryana and therefore into Delhi, to get their demands fulfilled.

But it’s equally clear that the farmers have not been able to capture the imagination of Punjab, like they did four years ago — leave alone that of Delhi — which had then forced PM Modi to withdraw the three farm laws, the only time he has been seen to go back on his own word. Dallewal’s so-called ‘satyagraha’ is failing today because it is largely seen as blackmail.

Third, you would expect that as a consequence of the people’s irritation with the farmer protests, the ground would at least a tad shift towards the BJP. And that, simultaneously, the BJP would hope that the rapidly urbanising Sikh peasantry as well as Punjab’s middle class — much more at home in Canada than in the garbage-strewn streets of Ludhiana, Jalandhar and Amritsar — would increasingly gravitate towards Modi.

Fourth, that’s where the BJP is wrong. Fact is, even if everything is wrong with the farmers’ protest, the BJP isn’t gaining from it. In fact, quite the contrary. The politics of Punjab may be splintering in many directions — there are as many as three Akali Dals today, ranging from the newly minted Khadoor Sahib MP and radical Sikh leader Amritpal’s ‘Waris Punjab De’ to Simranjit Singh Mann’s Akali Dal (Amritsar), to Badal’s grand old party, which is also internally split; even as disgruntled politicians are party-hopping across the spectrum, mostly in the direction of AAP — but the BJP is still seen as anathema. Party candidates, like former finance minister Manpreet Badal, either lost their deposits or finished last in the recent bypolls.

Fifth, the question is why. Why does Punjab fancy itself as the “other pole”, doing exactly the opposite of what Delhi likes to do, the “Akal Takht” versus the “Dilli Takht”? The answer is equally simple. Punjabis believe Delhi either doesn’t care enough, that if it did it would help by working with the state government on fixing its many problems — ranging from the procurement of paddy, and now wheat, to the drones-and-drugs problem, failing law and order plus gangsterism and a million more.

But the most important reason why the SGPC — and a large section of unhappy Punjabis — are against the screening of ‘Emergency’ is because they are afraid the film will show Punjab up to the rest of the country and the world “in a bad light” — meaning, as latter-day “Khalistanis”, not much worse than Bhindranwale. The thought that the rest of India could believe that Punjab today may be going back to those awful years because it has elected a radical Sikh jailed under both NSA and UAPA as an MP, besides the son of Indira Gandhi’s assassin as a second MP — is enough to give the people nightmares.

Rebellious, yes, but radical? Truth is, few understand how Punjab turned upon itself during those awful years. (No wonder, Canada beckoned.) And now that nightmare may be back, in technicolour, telling Punjab what’s wrong with it.

It’s enough to depress a people. Jagrup Singh Sekhon and Paramjit Singh Judge, two political scientists in Amritsar, who have watched the decline and fall of Punjab these past several decades, speak today of a listlessness, a lack of trust in institutions, an agrarian crisis, an unclear roadmap. “Logon ne dil chhod diya hai,” Sekhon said, the people have lost their will. Judge, more optimistic, insisted that the tide will turn either soon or someday, especially as politics abhors a vacuum.

So, think again, dear Reader, as you flock to watch ‘Emergency’. Understand what’s special about Amritpal’s father Tarsem Singh and Faridkot MP Sarabjeet Singh Khalsa sitting together on an open platform at the Maghi Mela in Muktsar earlier this week to launch Akali Dal (Waris Punjab De). Fact is, it’s only in Punjab that a political party can be headed by an MP who is jailed under NSA and UAPA, but has sworn an oath to the Constitution. Only in Punjab that this party, catering to radicals, has been approved by the Election Commission.

Only in Punjab that the past and the present are so intimately held that it’s sometimes difficult to separate one from the other, especially when you’re watching a movie.