Why Kejriwal needs to relearn Punjab's history

“Amritsar will be declared a holy city”, Arvind Kejriwal’s poll promise, may have come three decades too late - as many in Punjab, including the ruling SAD-BJP coalition’s deputy chief minister Sukhbir Singh Badal, have correctly pointed out.

While any devout Sikh living in the Majha – region of Punjab north of the Beas river – would vehemently contest the suggestion that you need any self-serving politician or even the "electorally driven" Kejriwal to bestow the status of "holiness" on Amritsar, the centre of the world’s youngest religion, there is also the minor detail that it’s already been done.

Venteran journalist Jagtar Singh, who’s had a ringside view of events through Punjab’s troubled 1980s and 1990s, reminds us that it was actually Indira Gandhi who made the announcement on February 27, 1983, over a year before she ordered the Indian Army to flush out Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and his armed supporters from the precincts of the Golden Temple in June 1984.

Gandhi’s decision to decree the Old or Walled City of Amritsar a "Holy City" was part of a unilateral overture aimed at dousing the communal fires that were beginning to engulf Punjab.

Gandhi, besides moving liquor, tobacco and meat shops out of Old Amritsar, also agreed to (according to tattered old documents and newspaper clippings of the day dug out by Singh) the long pending Akali demands of direct broadcast of kirtan from the Golden Temple by All India Radio and permitting amritdhari or baptised Sikh men and women to carry nine-inch kirpans (with a six-inch blade) on board Indian Airlines' flights.

Gandhi made the proclamation at Delhi’s Bangla Sahib gurudwara where she went to thank the Sikh community for its support in local body elections.

“Kejriwal and his advisers need to brush up their knowledge of Punjab history,” Singh says, adding, “He should also know that there has also been the demand for according Vatican status to Amritsar and Nankana Sahib in Pakistan.”

And as if that - and AAP's earlier gaffe of printing images of party symbol the jharoo (broom) upon a picture of the Golden Temple on the face of its youth manifesto released some months ago - wasn't enough, Kejriwal and AAP seem to have exhibited similar ignorance about Punjab with their manifesto for farmers, that was released by the AAP convener himself at a huge public rally at Moga on September 11.

In promising difficult-to-deliver loan waivers, crop-loss compensations and lower foodgrain prices, besides a whole host of sops and freebies, the party seems set to dig itself into a veritable hole, like most other political parties.

“Farm debt is essentially a byproduct of other more basic maladies that afflict agriculture in Punjab,” says political scientist Pramod Kumar, insisting that like other parties, the AAP too is unhesitatingly indulging in “narrow populism” with an eye on the elections rather than trying to explore real solutions that could rescue the farm sector in Punjab.

Also read: Can Kejriwal become Punjab's first non-Sikh chief minister?