AAP and Issue of Religion in Punjab: Advantage or Trap?

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has completed four years in power in Punjab and it has started gearing up for Assembly elections early next year. Despite the tragic and troubled past with the experience of Partition riots and then the Sikh militant movement in the 1980s, Punjab has remained peaceful and various religious communities have been coexisting without any conflict or confrontation. In comparison to the rest of North India, communal politics has not worked so far.

AAP came to power with lots of promises and the people, tired of two parties replacing each other, overwhelmingly voted for it. There is no denying the fact that immediately after taking up the reins of the state, the party strived to fulfil the promises it made to the people. However, its state leadership could not escape from the mindset prevalent among almost all parties. The AAP leadership has also got trapped in a similar mindset when it initiated the process of alienating the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) from the people. SAD had already been facing challenges and declining popularity among Sikhs due to various reasons.

Before completing two years, the Bhagwant Mann government launched the first phase of the Mukhmantri Teerth Yatra Yojna and introduced free bus service for people above 50 years of age for visit to various religious sites. The second phase was started in 2025. Since this  benefit was meant for all and was confined to various pilgrimage sites in Punjab and around, it received tremendous response.

In November 2025, the Punjab government declared three sites as Holy cities, namely, Amritsar Walled City, Anandpur Sahib and Talwandi Sabo. Finally, after a series of events, inquiries and struggles triggered by the cases of sacrilege of the Holy Book of the Sikh in 2015 and the failure to satisfy the protesting people, the government amended the act this year, namely the Jagat Guru Granth Sahib Satkar (Amendment) Act, 2026. Before finally sending it to the legislative Assembly, various sections of the Sikh clergy were consulted. 

Will such steps help AAP win elections due to be held early next year? It is quite difficult to answer in the affirmative. There are two aspects of unpredictability entangled in the existing situation and the state’s past history dating back to the late 1960s.

Let us first look into the state demography and the political dynamics related to it. It is clear from the AAP government’s actions, especially two of these that were undertaken to please Sikhs. The Sikhs constitute 57.69% of the total population of Punjab, according to the 2011 Census. This also means that there is a substantial population of other religious communities, though most of them are Hindus.

The Sikhs and Hindus are politically divided into various parties. There is no clear pattern of party affiliation and religious background of its members, though a far smaller number of Hindus could be found in SAD and the number of Sikhs in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is not quite high.

Historically, with the exception of BJP, the major leaders of all other political parties, including communists, have been Sikhs. It seems that the objective of taking decisions with regard to Sikh religion is connected with reducing the influence of SAD, which has been already facing various challenges. Knowing full well that SAD still has a strong base in Punjab, these steps could be treated as a kind of reinforcement of the process of further marginalising it.

This is not the first time that a political party has made an attempt to tamper with Sikh religion in order to reduce the political support of SAD. The Congress, under Giani Zail Singh in the early 1970s, made a similar attempt, but the consequences of his actions were catastrophic.

However, in the present environment, where religious identities have begun to occupy centre stage in the country, the AAP government seems to have been emboldened by it. The party needs to be reminded that religious politics in the electoral realm may have some effect when the communities are polarised through the ideology of hatred. Free visits to pilgrimage sites are not new in the country, as other states have also introduced it, but the other two actions of AAP are emerging as a challenge. In the Holy city of Amritsar, a large number of businesses face displacement without any provision of rehabilitation. Among these is the fish market, a crucial part of the cuisine of Amritsar’s people.

Also, in view of the fact that legal provisions already exist to punish any person proved to have disrespected any religion or its Holy Book, there was no need to provide for harsher punishment equivalent to the one related to murder. If the existing provisions have not been a deterrence, then there is no guarantee that the new legislation would work. In the end, it may be stated that such earlier attempts have invariably proved to be futile. 

Though the Sikhs constitute a majority in the state, elections have never been fought on communal issues. It should be noted that even during Sikh militancy, Hindu-Sikh relations remained unchanged and cordial. There is no need to treat voters as religious entities. Recall, that SAD and BJP, both representing two religious communities, had an electoral alliance for more than two decades.

It is not expected from political leaders to mess with religious issues in a secular state, though the contemporary trend has been quite different. By focussing on Sikh issues, therefore, AAP is proving to be no different from SAD. If such an impression gains momentum, then it may lose votes of other religious communities.  

The writer was a professor of sociology at the Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar, and former president of the Indian Sociological Society. The views are personal.