Chandan Mitra, an elected member of the BJP, speaks about the Punjab election to a group of journalists. (Jason Kehe)

DELHI — Packed into the small-time election in Punjab last month, in which a very big change occurred, were issues that seem to be animating wide swaths of this evolving country’s political discourse — issues of opportunism, secularization and changing approaches to campaigning. 

It began with a surprise. Up to this election, Punjabis were among some of the most predictable voters in India, old dogs incapable of learning new political tricks. For 48 years, since Punjab was first formed, they always voted the same way: against the incumbent. They believed the ruling party only got one chance to make a difference, and they were always let down.

But this time was different. Putting an end to a half-century-old tradition, Punjabis voted, albeit by a slim margin, to keep the ruling Shiromani Akali Dal-Bharatiya Janata Party coalition government in power.

Understandably, that was the major story out of Punjab this past election. “Historic” was the word of choice for media pundits, and rightly. But only some recognized the wider implications — that the vote, along with the reasons for it, seemed to represent the direction the country is moving in as a whole, or at least signified a subtle tectonic shift in Indian politics.

“It was the first time religion was not an issue in an Indian election,” said Mark Tully, a former New Delhi bureau chief for BBC who now lives in the city.

And in a county in which religion and politics have always been inextricably tied, that is just as surprising a development, if not more so, as the break in Punjab’s anti-incumbency streak. 

The ruling party in Punjab, India’s only majority Sikh state, represents an alliance between SAD, the Sikh-centric party, and the BJP, India’s right-wing Hindu nationalist party and the chief challenger to the ruling Congress. Both parties, in other words, have expressly religious agendas. In fact, SAD was formed with the sole intent of furthering the Sikhs’ religious, or so-called “Panthic,” causes; and the BJP’s stated mission has always been to preserve and advance India’s Hindu identity and culture. Contrast this with the Congress, which is said to have a secular agenda.

So it says something when two major religious parties run an entirely secular campaign, and that is what SAD-BJP did. They ran on peace and development issues, trying to convince Punjabis that their rule had improved the state in a way no former incumbent’s had. Rarely did they play the religion card by appealing to Punjab’s Sikh base. Ironically, it was the Congress that spent much of its time reaching out to religious communities in Punjab, hoping to use Sikh leaders to get votes. 

It didn’t work — the SAD-BJD’s secular campaign did. For that reason, it isn’t too far off to suggest that Punjab represents an endorsement of secular politicking in India, the first major instance of its kind. 

Manoj Mitta, a Times of India editor and expert on the 1984 anti-Sikh riots, cautions against proclaiming the entire process secular, but he admits that elections might be moving in that direction — and Punjab may be the best piece of evidence so far.

Additional evidence of secularization, Mitta suggested, is the alliance between SAD and the BJP itself. If the media is guilty — and it is, for good or ill — of painting the BJP as a far-right-wing group of Hindu extremists, bent on expunging India of minority influences, its alliance with a party representing a minority religion shouldn’t make any sense. But for whatever reason, few people are confronting either party about this unconventional marriage, leaving unchallenged that old, troubling commonplace about politics making bedfellows of strangely different groups.

That’s what the BJP wants. They don’t see their relationship with the Sikh party as strange at all.

“There’s no reconciliation,” said Chandan Mitra, a prominent journalist in Delhi and an elected member of the BJP. “Hindus and Sikhs don’t perceive themselves as antagonistic communities.”

Mitra goes on to say that the “political association is seen as an almost natural association which has survived the test of time.”

That is the BJP’s rationale: Sikhism, as an outgrowth of Hinduism, does not represent a threat in the same way that Christianity or Islam, non-native religions, do. In fact, Mitra says, Sikhs stand as the soldiers, the watchmen, of Hinduism, protecting it from itself and ensuring that its traditions don’t get out of touch with reality.

Such a sentiment, however, is not shared by all Sikhs, especially those outside of Punjab. Sikhism is not Hinduism, says Harbhajan Singh Sahni, a founding member and former president of Nishkam, a non-profit Sikh humanitarian organization based in Delhi. Sikhism was formed as an alternative to Hinduism, a way of escaping its rigid system of social stratification known as caste. Asked about the Sikh politicians in Punjab who work with BJP, Sahni has only one thing to say.

“They’re not Sikhs.”

Mitta suggests a middle road — that the SAD-BJP alliance might represent a kind of political opportunism for the BJP, a way for the party to prove it can be moderate and tolerant. That might be the best interpretation, because Mitra says the BJP is intent on wresting control of India back from the Congress; it’s a matter of when, not if. But to do that, its members will need to convince the media, and the world, that they’re not the intolerant, exclusive group they’re made out to be.

What will determine that is the fate of its alliance with SAD. If the BJP does eventually return to power, the question will be whether that marriage in Punjab — of love? of convenience? — is allowed to endure.