Lotus at Maghi

A Sikh martyrdom fair in Muktsar has become the unlikely battleground for Punjab’s next political realignment.

Punjab

The Maghi Mela at Sri Muktsar Sahib has never been a quiet affair. Every January, tens of thousands of Sikhs gather on the sacred ground where the Forty ‘Muktas,’ or warriors who returned to fight and die for Guru Gobind Singh in 1705, won spiritual liberation through sacrifice. The mela has always been heavily steeped in politics. For decades it has served as Punjab’s most unforgiving Panthak court, a place where governments are judged not just on their balance-sheets but on their fidelity to Sikh sentiment, history and honour. This time, it felt like a rehearsal for the 2027 assembly election.

What made this Maghi different was not merely the noise but the new choreography. For the first time, the Bharatiya Janata Party organised a full-fledged political conference at the mela. The Aam Aadmi Party, which used this very platform in 2016 to announce its arrival as Punjab’s insurgent force, returned after nearly a decade in power. Meanwhile, the Shiromani Akali Dal, the traditional custodian of Panthak politics, struggled to reclaim relevance. The Congress stayed away, citing an Akal Takht directive against political grandstanding on religious occasions – a move that betrayed political exhaustion.

Punjab today is weary of drugs that have hollowed out a generation, of gangsterism that mocks the rule of law, of corruption that has merely changed hands since the 2022 election. The AAP had come to power promising clean governance and dignity for farmers. Four years on, even its own critics no longer need to exaggerate. The Rs. 1,000-a-month stipend for women has vanished into the ether. Farm incomes remain hostage to uncertain procurement and delayed payments. The state’s debt has swollen.

It was this sense of drift that the BJP sought to exploit at Muktsar. Union Minister Ravneet Singh Bittu accused the AAP government of brazenly misusing state machinery while Sunil Jakhar, the BJP’s state president, struck a more strategic note, portraying AAP as a subcontractor of Delhi and the Congress as a house divided by corruption and identity politics. Nayab Singh Saini, Haryana’s BJP Chief Minister, offered a neighbour’s contrast: in BJP-ruled Haryana, he said, farmers receive minimum support prices, compensation for crop losses and timely payments that aren’t happening in Punjab.

There was also an unmistakable attempt to wrap this critique in Sikh history. The Forty Muktas and Mai Bhago were invoked not as museum pieces but as symbols of moral courage. Whether the BJP’s charges against the AAP stick is less important than the terrain they seek to occupy. In a state where political legitimacy is filtered through faith and memory, the AAP’s Delhi-first image leaves it exposed.

The Akali Dal, for its part, tried to remind Punjabis of AAP’s broken promises and alleged extravagance—thousands of crores spent on advertising, chartered planes for leaders, recruits parachuted in from outside the state. Yet its own long years in power, tainted by the same allegations of drugs, sacrilege and cronyism that now dog AAP, have dulled its edge. The Panthak vote is no longer the Akalis’ private estate.

Until recently, the BJP was a marginal force in Punjab, shackled to the Akalis and mistrusted by a Sikh electorate wary of majoritarian politics. But the split with the SAD in 2020 and the central government’s overtures have given it a chance to reintroduce itself. By staking a claim at Maghi, the BJP signalled that it wants to be the pole around which a new coalition might form.

Punjab’s politics is fragmenting as the AAP’s sheen has faded, the Akalis are diminished and the Congress is listless. In such a landscape, a party that can offer administrative competence, financial muscle from the centre and a credible respect for Sikh institutions stands to gain.

The Maghi Mela has always been about redemption after failure. Punjab, too, is searching for a way out of its present malaise. By choosing Muktsar as its stage, the BJP is betting that the road to power in 2027 runs through both Delhi and the Panth.