When a national party dumps nationalism NATIONAL INTEREST
Punjab CM Amarinder Singh has taken on Canada’s Khalistani sympathisers, but PM Modi might grab the diplomatic point
At a public conversation in my ‘Off The Cuff’ series last Wednesday, newly elected Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh said several things that wouldn’t have made his party happy. The first was his reply, to a question on his party’s suspicion of electronic voting machines, that if these could be rigged, “some Badal” would be sitting here, not he. It was on just the day his party president and vicepresident had led a protest at Rashtrapati Bhawan.
Next, he said his victory showed that national parties now must accept the importance of having strong regional leaders. People need to know who they are electing to lead them, he said, and that times when national leaders could come and get your votes are over. Third, he said one reason the Congress did so well this time was also because he was given the free hand to choose the candidates. Last time, he said, he was allowed to pick only 46 of the 117 and the party lost against the run of play. None of these statements would please his party’s non-electable darbaris.
I am not sure how his party would have reacted, however, to the most headline-making statement he made: A frontal, no-holds-barred, Sikh Regiment (in which he served)-style assault on the Sikh radical sympathisers in Canada, particularly those in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s much-admired liberal government. He said he wouldn’t even meet the Canadian defence minister, former Colonel and an Afghan war hero of sorts, Harjit Singh Sajjan, on his forthcoming visit to Punjab for his “Khalistan links”.
All four of the Sikh ministers in Canada were Khalistani sympathisers, he said. He was uncluttered as only a Punjabi or a soldier can be — and he is both. He said he wanted to go to Canada and speak to the Punjabis there and it was under pressure from “these Khalistan activists” that he wasn’t allowed. He said he shared worldwide admiration for Mr Trudeau’s liberalism, but why does he then deny him his freedom of speech by barring his entry into Canada?
That the Canadian government reacted immediately, defending its ministers and stating that Mr Singh was welcome to visit Canada is only a side-story although the only reason our usually breathless warrior media has not hailed it as a brilliant diplomatic success is partly because Mr Singh is not from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and partly because Punjab is so out of sight, out of mind.
But what if the BJP were to rise to the occasion now and welcome his courage and forthrightness in the supreme national interest and lend heft to his criticism of overseas Sikh radical groups?
Surely, Amarinder was provoked by the fact that a large number of wealthy, overseas Sikh radicals descended on Punjab to help his main rivals, the Aam Aadmi Party — “mostly from Canada and some Australia”, he said. They tried reopening the wounds of 1984. But he was also raising a point any Indian patriot, especially the leader of a pannational party should have been making.
His own party was too somnolent to respond to such situations, and probably also nurses a bad conscience over its own role in that past. But the BJP? In his keenness to reach out to world leaders, to attract their admiration for India and himself, did someone as astute as Prime Minister Narendra Modi also miss a trick? Why did he not attack these Khalistanis-come-lately types in the election campaign for the threat they represented? Why did his government not raise at least a point some place, reminding Canada of the antecedents of its new Sikh ministers and seeking a clearer assurance that they had gotten over that fantasy?
The fact is at least three of these ministers have a dodgy past from India's point of view. Mr Sajjan’s father was one of the founders of the controversial World Sikh Organisation (WSO). He is an Afghan war veteran who also, subsequently, ran a Vancouver-based private intelligence consultancy that advised allied forces. Another minister Navdeep Singh Bains is the son-in-law of Darshan Singh Saini, who used to be the spokesman for the banned Babbar Khalsa and his own past leanings were never hidden. Yet another minister, Amarjit Singh Sohi, was, in fact, incarcerated in India on terror charges and then released by courts as nothing was proven.
Private assurances have been given to India by Ottawa, but there has never been an unequivocal statement that this old campaign is over. It is a further surprise, therefore, that neither the BJP nor the Congress had so far raised this red flag even though radical forces from Canada were funding and campaigning for their adversaries.
Amarinder may sound too blunt and undiplomatic like a bash-on-regardless infantryman, but he is a pucca politician. As I was seeing him off after the conversation, I complimented him for the clarity, especially on the Canadian issue. “Thanks,” he said, “now tell me, how will the BJP deal with this Sajjan? I have called him a Khalistani.” How will they roll out the red carpet now to a Canadian Sikh minister he had outed like this?
This was political point-scoring at one level. But if you analyse it a bit more deeply, it also underlines a deeper political issue. For more than a decade now, his party has ceded nationalism to the BJP. The United Progressive Alliance was never soft on Pakistan, terrorists and even China (it didn’t back off in spite of Chinese threats when the Dalai Lama visited Tawang in 2009) but Sonia Gandhi’s Congress rightly earned a “soft” image on issues of hard national interest, leaving the field open for Mr Modi to take it and wrap it around with his implicit Hindutva to build an unbeatable popular appeal.
Remember how Digvijaya Singh ruined his own party’s case, raising doubts over the Batla House encounter — in which a police inspector was killed, was decorated with Ashok Chakra, the highest peacetime gallantry award by his own government. Or how Binayak Sen, convicted under sedition laws for support to Maoists, was helped along with a reprieve, which was one thing, but then also lionised by being appointed on an important committee of the Planning Commission, completely convincing the voters that the party was in cahoots with Maoists, had given up Indira Gandhi's old hard line on national security and had started thinking like an NGO.
Amarinder, its own leader, has now created an opening to embarrass the Modi government over such an emotive “national security” issue. How will it welcome the Canadian defence minister, and will it demand a clearer commitment to India’s integrity and non-interference in its internal affairs?
The Congress, however, is sleeping as usual. It probably thinks “isn’t this guy talking too much”. Knowing how sharp Mr Modi is, he would have made a mental note and will grab the first possible opportunity to raise this, get some kind of a solemn assurance or clarification and use the opening provided by Amarinder to his advantage. TheCongressisnowsobrain-washed,itisincapableofseeing nationalism as being distinct from Hindutva, and somethingnopoliticalparty,leastofallanationalpartycan afford to abandon. It shows in its electoral fortunes.