Highland Clans Get Low

Family honour and boarding school rivalry take over campaigning

CHARGES OF BOARDING school bullying may have rocked Sanawar, a tiny Himachal hamlet that’s home to the famous Lawrence School here, but there’s a more interesting case of rolled-up sleeves some 300 km away. It involves old boys, and in another sort of battle—for the Lok Sabha seat of Bathinda, Punjab. Here, in the sweltering heat of May, Sanawarians are being accused of bullying voters. The charge is being levelled by a bunch of Doscos, which describes all former and current students of The Doon School, Dehradun. This bunch of old boys is rallying behind the Congress’ Raninder Singh, a Dosco and Patiala royal family scion who is pitted against the Shiromani Akali Dal’s (SAD’s) Harsimrat Kaur, wife of Punjab’s Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal, a Sanawarian himself.

Raninder Singh has written to the Election Commission (EC) in New Delhi that the Sanawarians, led by Sukhbir Badal, are busy arming men to intimidate voters on election day. “They are using all kinds of strong-arm tactics. I visit a trader’s home and they send the sales tax inspector to raid him,” says the Congressman.

Much is at stake here. It is Doscos versus Sanawarians, for sure. It is also the Congress versus SAD or UPA versus NDA. But above all, the clash is really about which clan will go back with droopy whiskers once the result is out on 16 May.

“The battle of Bathinda will decide who is fit to rule Punjab,” declares Sukhbir Badal at election rallies. “The Sanawarians are not even fit to fight the Doscos,” announces Raninder Singh.

It’s meant to sound thunderous. And the electorate is supposed to know exactly who is who. Sukhbir Singh’s father, Parkash Singh Badal, is now Punjab CM for the fourth time. Candidate Harsimrat Kaur is not just the daughter-in-law of the Badal clan, she is also the daughter of the Majithias, a powerful aristocratic family in Punjab since the days of Maharaja Ranjit Singh.

The network of clans is strongly knit. If the senior Badal’s nephew Manpreet Badal is Punjab’s finance minister, Harsimrat Kaur’s brother Bikramjit Singh Majithia, also a Sanawarian, is a cabinet minister too. Not just that. Badal senior’s son-in-law, Adesh Pratap Singh Kairon, is also in the cabinet and brings with him the might of the Kairon clan. His grandfather Pratap Singh Kairon, a Congressman and friend of Jawaharlal Nehru, was the CM of undivided Punjab.

Ranged against this network is the Patiala royalty. Raninder Singh’s father Captain Amarinder Singh was the Congress CM just about two years ago, while mother Preneet Kaur is the current Congress MP from Patiala. Besides the royals of Patiala, there is a string of princely campaigners from near and far canvassing for Patiala’s prince. Cousins, uncles and aunts from the Bharatpur royalty in Rajasthan and the Nalagarh Raja’s descendants from Himachal Pradesh have travelled some distance, but none can beat Jigme Wangdi Wangchuck’s effort. This member of Bhutan’s royal family has left the cool mountain breeze of his Himalyan kingdom (in transition to democracy) to spend the summer facing the hot loo (hot and dry wind that can cause sunstroke) of Bathinda.

Harsimrat Kaur laughs off the Bhutan Royal’s presence as “frivolous campaigning” by her rival, as she prepares to address a rustic gathering at village Dodra in Mansa. The district has among the lowest sex ratios in the country, with 784 girls for every 1,000 boys. “I hope to change that,” she tells Open. “There are no dispensaries here, no facilities for women,” she adds. But, when she gets up to speak to the crowd, there is no mention of the sex ratio and missing dispensaries. It is Badal versus the Patiala royalty all the way. Clan versus clan. Then, the freebies. “We will give atta (wheat flour) at Rs 2 per kilo and diesel will be cheaper by Rs 10 a litre,” she says, and the crowd roars. Sukhbir himself has been promising “to change the face of Bathinda” if the wife wins.

The villagers weigh the Badal daughter-in-law in ladoos (sweets) on a huge weighing scale, wrapped in saffron cloth. The scale is the party’s election symbol and saffron is the Sikh Panth’s favoured colour. The SAD makes no bones about portraying itself as a party pursuing Sikh interests, and thus the symbolism. “Sukhbir is watching how each village responds,” says a villager.

Raninder Singh, on his part, is trying to dishevel his rival’s projection of power. “Look at the Akali banners. Sukhbir has made Baba Nanak’s scales smaller than his own photograph,” the Dosco tells another village gathering, some distance away, in Khiala. “Punjab is unable to breathe in the younger Badal’s tyrannical grip. All eyes are on you,” he says, adding for good measure, “Defeat them in Bathinda and within a month, we will send the father and son packing from Chandigarh to their village.” The state government in Chandigarh, run by the SAD-BJP combine, has little to do with this election to the Lok Sabha in New Delhi. But such displays of machismo count in Punjab.

Going by the overall mood across the state, though, the Congress seems upbeat while the SAD appears on the defensive. In the 2004 election, the SAD-BJP alliance bagged 11 of Punjab’s 13 Lok Sabha seats. The Congress hopes that anti-incumbency will play itself out. This trend has been read by the SAD as well, claim Congress supporters (and sundry Doscos), which is what explains the strong-arm plans, they add. “They have taken two dozen houses on rent in Bathinda city alone where they are stocking up sticks and guns, but the Congress is ready too,” alleges Gurmail Singh, a party supporter.

What’s more, the Dosco camp claims that their opponents have a Rs 350 crore budget for this election, a large part to buy votes. “Amarinder proved to be a shady CM and the people know it. We will win,” says Bikramjit Singh Majithia, Harsimrat Kaur’s brother. “The Akalis are getting desperate because they have nothing to show in the name of governance,” says international shooter and Raninder’s fellow Dosco Randeep Mann. The clan rivalry will go on, regardless of who wins this time round.

About The Author

Jatin Gandhi

Jatin Gandhi has covered politics and policy for over a decade now for print, TV and the web. He is Deputy Political Editor at Open.