A Nihang order’s blue-robed sevadar allegedly attacked Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) chief Sukhbir Singh Badal with a kirpan at a Nanded gurdwara in Maharashtra on Thursday — the second try on his life in underneath two years, and one which reopened a decade-old rupture between the Badal household and sections of the Sikh Panth.
Jaspal Singh, a 64-year-old Pune-based lawyer who had served as a sevadar at Gurdwara Mata Sahib Devan Ji Mugat for almost two years, struck Badal round 1.50pm, shortly after the SAD chief accomplished darshan.
Badal suffered a stab wound to his proper forearm with a vertical fracture. He was operated on at Nanded’s Yashosai Hospital and was anticipated to be discharged on Friday.
Nanded police stated Singh had repeatedly claimed he acted on “an order from waheguru”, although he first instructed officers he was indignant over Punjab’s medicine drawback. Police stated that they had discovered no gang or felony historical past linked to him thus far.
The assault drew swift condemnation throughout the political spectrum, and from the Akal Takht and the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC). Jathedar Giani Kuldip Singh Gargaj stated “an individual who commits such an act can’t be a Sikh”, and SGPC chief Harjinder Singh Dhami referred to as the assault “a direct insult to the honour and sanctity of the Guru’s home”. AAP chief Baltej Pannu, condemning the assault too, famous that resentment over unresolved 2015 sacrilege circumstances remained “alive in the minds of Sikhs even today”.
Who’re the Nihangs?
The Nihangs are a Sikh warrior order distinguished by blue robes, conventional weapons and martial self-discipline.
The SGPC describes the phrase’s that means as “alligator” — supreme in water, because the lion is supreme amongst forest animals — and, in Sikh utilization, a synonym for “Akali”, or a staunch Sikh.
The custom traces to Guru Gobind Singh, who is claimed to have dressed one in every of his sons in blue battle apparel, fixing the color because the order’s visible marker ever since.
Nihangs and Akalis remained largely indistinguishable till the mid-Nineteenth century, after which separate Nihang teams developed their very own constructions whereas retaining customary weapons and military-style formations. The Nanded gurdwara the place Thursday’s assault occurred is run by one such group — a splinter of the Shiromani Panth Akali Budha Dal, a Nihang organisation.
A legacy underneath contest
The Shiromani Akali Dal has been entwined in a chronic debate over who speaks for the Akali and Panthic legacy — and what that legacy calls for of the SAD as we speak.
A lot of it goes again to the SAD-BJP authorities’s 2007-17 tenure in Punjab.
The 2007 Dera Sacha Sauda controversy, during which Dera chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh was accused of imitating Guru Gobind Singh’s apparel, triggered protests that the Akal Takht briefly tried to defuse in September 2015 by pardoning him. The pardon was withdrawn inside weeks after fierce opposition from the neighborhood. Days later, the invention of torn pages of the Guru Granth Sahib – the Sikh scripture – adopted by police firing on protesters in Faridkot hardened public anger.
Critics have lengthy accused the then SAD-BJP authorities of mishandling the response and failing to deliver these accountable for the “sacrilege” to justice.
These controversies are broadly credited with the SAD’s collapse within the 2017 Punjab election, the place the social gathering fell from ruling the federal government to fifteen seats within the state’s 117 meeting seats. The slide has continued since. SAD gained simply three seats in 2022, and it at the moment has a single MLA and MP every.
In December 2024, the Akal Takht additionally declared Badal “tankhaiya” — responsible of spiritual misconduct and ordered him and different former ministers to carry out non secular penance. Badal was shot at whereas performing sewa on the Golden Temple in Amritsar days later, and escaped unhurt, the primary of the 2 assaults now.
The SAD’s personal post-2022 evaluate acknowledged the social gathering’s unpopularity. A 13-member panel that toured Punjab produced a 20-page report with 42 suggestions, together with in search of forgiveness from the Akal Takht and the Panth, retaining distance from deras, reconnecting with ragis, granthis and pathis, and pursuing “Panthic unity”, amongst different measures — an implicit admission that rebuilding the social gathering meant rebuilding belief with the non secular neighborhood first.
The efficiency of SAD allowed different rivals to assert they had been the Akalis who may really characterize the Sikh neighborhood.
Formations reminiscent of SAD (Punar Surjit) and Akali Dal (Waris Punjab De) have positioned themselves because the “true” custodians of the Akali legacy. At a rally in Moonak final month, SAD (Punar Surjit) chief Giani Harpreet Singh immediately challenged Badal’s declare to characterize Akali ideology.
The BJP query, once more
Complicating the SAD’s tried course correction is recent hypothesis over a return to its previous alliance with the BJP.
Badal met Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi on August 7 for a gathering that neither facet has defined. Aides described it as an off-the-cuff assembly, but it surely revived discuss of the 2 events coming collectively once more forward of Punjab meeting election due early subsequent 12 months. SAD had give up the BJP-led Nationwide Democratic Alliance within the Centre in 2020 as Punjab and Haryana farmers agitated towards the now-withdrawn agriculture legal guidelines.
Each the events, although, have publicly dominated out a tie-up earlier.
