In Punjab, BJP’s challenge is not to be heard, but to be believed | Political Pulse News
Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s words, spoken after meeting three families devastated by Punjab’s drug menace, may have struck a chord in rural Punjab, terrain the BJP has often found a no-go.
For long, the BJP has struggled to make a dent in the state, amid the dearly held belief, especially among intellectuals, that it will never gain an inch given the historically rebellious mood of the border state. There was quiet jubilation in the Opposition when Shah presided over a lacklustre rally marking the culmination of the party’s “nasha mukt (free from addiction)” marches. It showed, went the refrain over the next 20-odd days, how little the party resonated with the masses. Then Shah came calling again, this time on Dussehra, and stole a march on the day good defeats evil.
That the BJP has made drugs its main poll pitch is there for everyone to see. But can it stir emotions when this menace has been normalised? The state has seen far too many crusades and promises to weed out drugs to really believe in a new one.
The ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government and the opposition Congress, and to a lesser extent the Shiromani Akali Dal, speak in one voice when it comes to countering the BJP’s narrative. Both Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann and newly installed Punjab Congress chief Pargat Singh, a hockey Olympian, are on the same page when they ask two questions: Why has the BJP not been able to stop drugs from coming across the border manned by the Centre-controlled Border Security Force (BSF)? And why has it not been able to stop them from arriving at Kandla port and being distributed from there?
What is BJP game plan?
As the party increasingly takes the centre stage, Punjab is agog with speculation about its game plan. Is it playing the long game: increasing its vote share and the number of seats, making inroads into rural Punjab in the 2027 Assembly elections and using that to pave the way for victory in 2032? Or is it there to win by might or right? Will it “co-opt” legislators en masse to install itself? Then there is a third view: will it woo Punjab like never before?
The latter is a favourite of the glass-always-half-full gang. There are hushed conversations about the rabbits the party may pull out of its hat to reach out to the strong-headed Punjab. Those close to farming circles have their own suggestion: promise to address the debt burden of farmers. But the hard-nosed insist that no promise will count unless the party announces concrete measures, given the long-held mistrust that began with the farm agitation. Then there is another speculation: the party might announce the transfer of Chandigarh to Punjab. To this comes the counter that it might then lose Chandigarh and perhaps Haryana.
It is against this backdrop that Shah’s day-long visit gains significance, at a time when his hands are full with elections in Uttar Pradesh and the Cockroach Janta Party in Delhi.
BJP’s Punjab focus
It is not as if the BJP has not been taking Punjab seriously. It started doing so soon after parting ways with the Akalis in 2020, when it became an outcast in the countryside. The party was quick to capitalise on the Congress’s ouster in 2022, welcoming many of its veteran leaders into its fold. They brought not only more turbans into the BJP camp, making it more broad-based, but also their voter base, however depleted in some cases. Subsequently, the party raised its vote share to 19% in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, its highest ever in Punjab, though it failed to win a single seat.
Then began the Punjabi-fication of the party itself, a far cry from the days when some of its leaders drove a campaign for Hindi. There was also a more visible outreach to Sikhs. The Centre instituted Veer Bal Diwas to honour Sahibzada Zorawar Singh and Sahibzada Fateh Singh, the younger sons of Guru Gobind Singh, who were martyred for refusing to abandon their faith. Guru Tegh Bahadur, revered as Hind Di Chadar, is also being commemorated with greater visibility, not only in Punjab but also in Delhi.
Jhota killing
It is not wrong to say that drugs have been normalised in Punjab. Even something most abhorrent can become ordinary when we live with it long enough. That is our default way to remain sane. But the BJP’s pointed attention on chitta, as heroin is called in Punjab, and the toll it is taking, along with pharma drugs, could slowly begin to prick even those who have become immune to it.
The killing of anti-drug activist Parvinder Singh Jhota, shot by a chemist after he questioned the sale of banned drugs, has left behind a family that refuses to be consoled with money. His father, Bhim Singh, a retired soldier, declined the hiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee’s offer of fixed deposits for his two young grandsons, saying the family wants justice, not charity. His widow, Manpreet Kaur, and their two little sons now stand at the centre of a grief that Punjab can no longer look away from.
They may yet do what Jhota could not do in his lifetime: stir the state out of its drug-induced numbness.
Bhim Singh, who can go from sounding fiercely emotional to infinitely wise, is dealing with grief in a manner no father should have to. Yet, even under the all-pervasive media glare, he keeps coming out with words that unite. When an army of reporters, eager to get an “I will boycott Shah” quote from him, crowded around him, he stared them down with the simple, rustic logic of a soldier. “I have served on the border; he is my Home Minister. He is welcome to my home.”
Later, when Shah was leaving, Bhim Singh saluted him. The simple act of a disciplined soldier. In Punjab, the BJP’s challenge is not to be seen or heard, but to be believed.
(Manraj Grewal Sharma is National Editor, North, The Indian Express)
