When the Aam Aadmi Party entered the political arena, it promised nothing short of a revolution in education, health, and governance. It also made Bhagat Singh, the avowed atheist revolutionary, its political icon. But politics makes even the firmest ideologies flexible. The party is now navigating the more traditional waters of faith.
It first walked the Sikh path, enacting an anti-sacrilege law and giving a prominent state touch to the 350th anniversary celebrations of Guru Tegh Bahadur’s martyrdom. Now, it is turning towards Ram. The government is staging Humare Ram, a play featuring actor Ashutosh Rana. And the political turn is hard to miss. Bhagat Singh rejected religion. The AAP embraced him as its icon. Today, Ram and Sikh religious occasions are finding space in its political calendar. The education and health revolution may still be work in progress. The political one, clearly, is not.
When minister Tarunpreet Singh Sond got divine reassurance
It was a day of contrasts for Punjab Tourism Minister Tarunpreet Singh Sond. In the Assembly, Sond found himself in the line of fire from his AAP colleague and MLA Manwinder Singh Gyaspura, who took a sharp dig at him during the proceedings, telling him that the Vidhan Sabha was not a place to tell lies. By evening, however, the political heat appeared to have given way to a moment of calm. Sond sat in the first row during the staging of the play Humare Ram. In an unexpected moment during the performance, the actor playing Ram stepped down from the stage and walked up to Sond. Placing his hand on the minister’s head, he blessed him and said, “Why do you worry about the future?” It was, of course, a dialogue from the play. But for Sond, after a bruising day in the House, the timing could hardly have been more striking.
Raghav Chadha’s meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi this week may have been routine politics, but the optics were not. Chadha made sure the meeting got ample play on social media. Coming a day after SAD chief Sukhbir Singh Badal met Modi, it was watched closely in Punjab. His supporters have since been dropping hints that Chadha could soon be seen more often in the state. That has perhaps added to the unease in AAP circles. Once a resident of the plush government bungalow No. 50 in Sector 2, Chandigarh, as an AAP Rajya Sabha MP known in political circles as the de facto CM, Chadha may now have to figure out a less-fancy address. But a house may be the least of his concerns. He may not have a posh government bungalow anymore, but he certainly has something that can cause anxiety in the AAP camp: familiarity. He knows the party, its organisation, and many of its leaders from the inside.
