Panjab’s Khalistan destiny
Wise men say never trust an Indian to write the story of India. An outsider, the man who doesn’t belong, bereft of tendentiousness, partisanship and pre-conceptions is the one to be trusted to chronicle histories of civilisations without infecting it with distortions of a jaundiced mind. Amandeep Sandhu could well have been that man. As he himself says, “Unlike people born in Panjab who have a direct connection with, and hence a memory of the land, I have no liminal or tangible marker of belonging to
Panjab. While my family did hail from Panjab, I was neither born here, nor do I live here. I have no address, bank statement, Aadhaar card, passport or land ownership to prove my connection to Panjab.”
Mr Sandhu’s “outsider” status, as he realises innumerable times during his journeys through the state has turned out to be a boon. For Mr Sandhu’s Panjab is a fascinating account of its economy, society, religion and its politics; a work of passion that chronicles present day Punjab like few authors of this day and age have done. This is not to say that Mr Sandhu has produced a completely unbiased book. There are instances where his communist leanings, his disenchantment with present-day Sikh theocracy and a dangerous preoccupation with the Khalistan question are evident. But that doesn’t take away from the achievements of Panjab. This is essential reading for all those who wish to understand the state as it stands in 2019.
A near constant throughout the book is references to Punjab’s militancy days, the Khalistan movement and its protagonist Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale. It extensively details the crisis the Sikh faith is facing; the very fight among Sikhs to define who can be called a Sikh. Mr Sandhu is ruthless in highlighting the Shiromani Gurudwara Prabandhak Committee’s (SGPC) role in fomenting a crisis in Sikhism through its exclusionary politics. The SGPC has over the years tried to keep Sikhs who have cut or trimmed their hair out of the organisation that manages religious affairs. Mr Sandhu reasons that this narrow definition of a Sikh was hurting the religion and polarising Punjab’s society. Mr Sandhu even offers a tantalising theory with a Hindutva design. He writes, “The RSS strategy in Panjab is not to get confrontational but facelessly permeate the Sikh ethos in such a way that one can’t make out if a phenomena is because of Hindutva influence or because of Sikhs not knowing their own code of religion well. Through history, the Sikhs have been known to do well against an enemy with a face. Now the opposition — Hindutva thought — has entered the Akali Dal leadership, the working of the SGPC and the very practice and day to day living of Sikhs, and the