Sikh Politics in India

By Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer

 

Punjab is one of the most strategically important states in India. It borders rival Pakistan, the disputed territory of Jammu and Kashmir, and is one of the buffer states between Pakistan and the Indian capital, Delhi.

The Akali Dal, formed in British-ruled India in 1920, has ruled the state for a longer period than any other political party since the creation of the Punjabi-speaking Sikh-majority state in 1966, though it lost power to the Congress Party in the 2017 legislative assembly election. 

It articulates the aspirations of Punjabi regional nationalism along with trying to protect the interests of the Sikhs as a religious minority in India and abroad.

Sikhs, as a community neither Hindu nor Muslim, have always sought a separate status on the subcontinent. Before the British annexation of Punjab in 1849 and the eventual merger of Punjab with the rest of colonially occupied India, it had defied India’s Muslim Mughal emperors and existed as a sovereign state for 50 years under the rule of a Sikh monarch, Ranjit Singh. 

Sikhs became a majority in post-1966 Punjab and the Akali Dal first gained power as the state’s government a year later. 

The party demanded greater autonomy for states in India’s federal structure. It wanted implementation of the Anandpur Sahib Resolution, a 1973 document outlining its regional aspirations.

But its failure to get Punjab’s demands accepted led to strengthening extremist Sikh tendencies. Conflicts with Indira Gandhi led the prime minister to dismiss the party’s government and institute direct rule from Delhi in 1980.

This eventually resulted in the bloody confrontation in 1984 known as Operation Blue Star between the Indian army and armed Sikh militants led by Jamail Singh Bhindranwale who had occupied the Golden Temple in Amritsar. 

They were supporters of the Khalistan movement, which sought to create a separate country called Khalistan as a homeland for Sikhs.

In the late 1970s Gandhi’s Congress Party supported Bhindranwale in a bid to split the Sikh votes and weaken the Akali Dal, its chief rival in Punjab.

Gandhi was assassinated in the aftermath of the Indian Army’s assault. This was followed by a wave of violence against Sikhs throughout the country. At least 6,000 were massacred.

So fierce has its anti-Congress attitude been since then that the Akali Dal has in recent years allied itself on the national level with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), even though the BJP espouses Hindu nationalism. 

The Akali Dal has broadened its ideology to emphasize an all-Punjabi identity. Hence its demand for inclusion in Punjab of the city of Chandigarh and other Punjabi-speaking areas left in Haryana and Himachal Pradesh following the partition of the state in 1966. 

Chandigarh had become the joint capital of that state and Hindu-majority Haryana. The city is not a part of either state but is governed directly by the Indian government.

If these areas were to be included in Punjab, it would lead to a decline in the Sikh proportion of Punjab’s total population, so this reflects a Punjabi nationalist dimension in its policies.

But the Akali Dal does continue to defend and promote the interests of Sikh minorities in the other states of India and abroad.

Dec. 12 is UK's Brexit Election

By Henry Srebrnik. [Saint John, NB] Telegraph-Journal

 

The Great Recession and mass immigration during the past decade upended traditional voting patterns in much of Europe, including the United Kingdom. The old left-right axis, which used to correlate with class, no longer matters much.

The anger displayed in 2016, when the British electorate voted to leave the European Union, brought these new divisions into sharp focus.

As Theresa May’s government proved unable to extricate itself from the EU’s embrace, angry Brexiteers started backing Nigel Farage’s upstart Brexit Party. 

A Brexit candidate nearly won a parliamentary by-election in Peterborough in June, winning 29 per cent and pushing the Tories into a poor third with less than half the vote they took just two years earlier. 

And so we now have an unabashed Brexiteer, Boris Johnson, leading the Conservatives. He vows to depart Brussels come hell or high water.

Meanwhile, YouGov, the polling agency that accurately predicted the results of the 2017 vote, released its poll on Nov. 27. Over the previous seven days it interviewed approximately 100,000 people.

A technique called Multilevel Regression and Post-stratification (MRP for short)t used polling data to produce estimates for each of the 650 parliamentary constituencies that, YouGov states, has a 95 per cent accuracy rate.

The model predicts the Conservatives are on course for a sizable majority. They would win 359 seats, a gain of 42, on 43 per cent of the vote. Meanwhile, Labour, taking just 32 per cent, would lose 51 seats, down to 211.

But since the impetus for Brexit came from voters in England, the rifts with the other parts of the UK have widened.

The future of Northern Ireland has been a major Brexit sticking point. Because the fear that a hard border with the Irish Republic, which remains in the EU, would undermine the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, the only solution Johnson could find involved putting a de facto customs border in the Irish Sea, separating the British mainland from Northern Ireland. 

Ulster Protestants fear that if different rules apply to its relationship with the rest of the UK, this might become a slippery slope eventually leading to Irish unification.

Northern Irish Catholics are fervent “remainers,” of course, since they want that very thing and wish to keep the border as “soft” as possible.

If Brexit does occur, Scotland can be expected to hold another referendum on leaving Great Britain.

Nicola Sturgeon, the Scottish National Party leader and First Minister of Scotland, wants to stop Brexit, and calls Johnson “dangerous and unfit for office.”

In the 2014 independence referendum, 55 per cent of Scots voted to remain in the UK. In 2015, Sturgeon remarked that “something material would have to change,” before she would propose another referendum.

The “something” she referred to did indeed arrive in 2016 with Brexit, and Sturgeon has announced she wants another referendum on Scottish independence, perhaps as soon as next year.

The YouGov poll has the SNP looking to make gains on Dec. 12, taking five seats from Labour, two from the Conservatives and one from the Liberal Democrats, ending the night with 43 seats.

The deal that Boris Johnson finally struck with the EU could eventually lead to a united Ireland and an independent Scotland.

A Caribbean Plural Society

By Henry Srebrnik. [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer

Rather than being what used to be called a “melting pot,” the Caribbean island nation of Trinidad and Tobago constitutes a “plural society,” that is, a place where two distinct ethnic groups live largely separate lives. 

Tthe population of some 1.36 million comprises Indo-Trinidadians at 35.4 per cent, Afro-Trinidadians at 34.2 per cent, and “mixed” at 22.8 per cent. 

The population also includes smaller groups of Whites, Chinese, Syrian-Lebanese and Amerindians.

Trinidad and Tobago’s plural society encompasses a multitude of religions such as Roman Catholicism, Hinduism, Islam, the Anglican and Baptist faiths, Pentecostals, Seventh Day Adventists and others. All this is reflected in its politics.

The 41 members of the House of Representatives are elected by first-past-the-post voting in single-member constituencies.

The People’s National Movement (PNM) is one of the two main parties. Founded by Dr. Eric Williams in 1956, it is the oldest political party in the country. Most of its supporters are Afro-Trinidadian, the descendants of people who were brought as slaves.

The Indo-Trinidadians, originally indentured labourers from South Asia, have voted for a number of parties through the years, most recently for the United National Congress (UNC), established in 1988 by the party’s former leader, Basdeo Panday.

Both parties have governed the country. The only other party to gain power through elections was the National Alliance for Reconstruction (NAR), under the stewardship of Arthur Robinson.

It was voted into office in 1986 with a landslide victory over the ruling PNM by 33-3 seats. But the party only served one term and never won another mandate.

An election is scheduled to take place next year. Prime Minister Keith Rowley’s PNM currently holds 23 seats, while former UNC prime minister Kamla Persad-Bissesar has 17. Carolyn Seepersad-Bachan of the Congress of the People, an offshoot of the UNC, also sits in parliament.  

The nationalist movement aimed to unify the population into a singular mixed nation; however, it was exclusionary of Indo-Trinidadians due to the rivalry between the PNM and the Indian-Hindu opposition. 

Furthermore, Indo-Trinidadians were viewed as strong adherents to their culture, which made them more resistant to racial mixture and creolization. Conversely, Afro-Trinidadians were considered more likely to adopt creolization.

In fact Indo-Trinidadians feel they were systematically oppressed by the PNM, which has ruled the state for the majority of its history after independence from Great Britain in 1962.

So the postcolonial multicultural movement did not succeed since the two main parties were divided along ethnic and religious lines -- largely Hindu Indians and Christian Africans. They remained largely rooted in inter-racial animosity.

This was the product of a colonial “divide and rule” strategy and the effect of inbred competition in labour that British colonialism created. It was designed to prevent unity between the colonized groups.

Afro-Trinidadians worked in urban centres, whereas Indo-Trinidadians worked in rural areas. the Indians were given better living conditions and wages. The historical divide continues to shape the community today and creates geographic segregation.

However, there has been the rise of a “douglarization” ideal, where a racial and cultural mixture is seen as a possible solution to end interracial issues and jealousy. But it will not be easy to overcome the mistrust that exists.