Chandigarh: While prime minister Narendra Modi visited and participated in the "shabad kirtan’’ at a Guru Ravidas temple in Delhi, Congress’ top leaders Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi went to the Guru Ravidas temple in Varanasi on the occasion of Guru Ravidas Jayanti Wednesday.
While no one has a grain of doubt about their respect for the great saint, the political significance of their visit is not lost on anyone, either. For, the single-phase polling for 117 seats in Punjab, which has a 32 % Dalit population, the highest in the country, will take place Sunday, February 20.
Guru Ravidas belonged to the leather workers (Ravidasias) community and is worshiped by a huge number of Dalits.
Also, it was in this wake that all the main political parties of Punjab had rushed to the Election Commission of India last month seeking postponement of the assembly election which was earlier scheduled for February 14, in the wake of Guru Ravidas Jayanti which falls on February 16, when a large number of his devotees from the state visit his birthplace, Varanasi. The poll was thus scheduled for February 20.
Dalit vote-bank has always been significant in Punjab politics and there are 34 reserved seats out of the total 117 in the state. Even though the state governments have almost always had Dalit ministers and in a number of other important political appointments, Dalits could never make it to the top slot, before Congress sprang a surprise by making the three-time MLA Charanjit Singh Channi state’s chief minister about five months ago.
However, in this high-voltage four-corner electoral battle, the Dalit vote-bank is in the spotlight and the target of all the political majors like never before. Channi has also been named a few days ago as Congress’ chief ministerial candidate for the upcoming polls too.
While Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Congress have had chunks of Dalit votes, the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) had last year joined hands with the Bahujan Samaj Party after snapping ties with its old ally BJP over now-repealed farm laws and announced that if elected they would have a Dalit deputy chief minister.
On Wednesday, AAP national convenor Arvind Kejriwal and AAP’s chief ministerial candidate Bhagwant Mann also paid obeisance at Sri Ravidas Mandir at Jalandhar.
The BJP which this time has alliance with Capt Amarinder Singh-led Punjab Lok Congress (PLC) and SAD (Sanyukt), a splinter group of SAD, had not only made Vijay Sampla, a Dalit from Punjab, a Union minister but had also a Dalit minister in the state coalition government with SAD.
However, despite being a huge number, Dalits continue to be a divided house in the political matrix in Punjab.
Elaborating upon this, Prof Ronki Ram, Shaheed Bhagat Singh Chair Professor of political science, Panjab University, Chandigarh, says that even though it is being seen as Congress' well-calculated move to field Channi as the face of the Dalit and the poor, it could also evoke counter-productive results.
He says that the SCs in Punjab are scattered into 39 castes, four mainstream religions and a large number of sects and faiths are also influenced by varied ideological viewpoints as well as affiliated with different political parties. Though the Congress move is expected to forge unity among the varied SC sub-castes as far as their political bent of mind is concerned, he opines, that there is also a common impression that it will lead to counter consolidation among the upper and dominant castes in Punjab against the expected SC vote consolidation.
