A man not known to be more than a troll during the farmers’ agitation in Delhi in 2020-21 quietly flew from Dubai to Amritsar on August 20, 2022. Before he took this flight to fame and his arrest on April 23, he was one of the thousands of unknown Amritpal Singhs from Punjab. Last August, the much-maligned Punjab Police was busy in preparing the chargesheet in the rapper-cum-singer Sidhu Moosewala’s killing, while facing a lot of pressure. They would scarce have known the tumult that was to follow this Amritpal's return.
Deep Sidhu And Amritpal
Amritpal Singh, who sought to be known as Bhindranwale 2.0, was working alongside his father Tarsem Singh in Dubai since 2012. He was active on Facebook for about 11 years. However, his posts revealed no hint of him being a Khalistani. It was during the farmers’ agitation that Amritpal became an ardent supporter of the lawyer-turned-model-turned-actor Deep Sidhu, and much like Deep, was clean-shaven and sported t-shirts and jeans.
If Amritpal’s emergence was sudden so was his one-time peer Deep Sidhu’s. To know about Amritpal and his emergence, it is important to know about the sudden surfacing of Deep Sidhu.
Deep Sidhu campaigned for BJP MP Sunny Deol in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. Then quite suddenly from being a supporter of the Hindu right-wing party he became an adherent of the Khalistani movement, which showed that he was either clueless about ideologies or chose ideologies to serve his own interests.
The end of the farmers' agitation saw a political vacuum in Punjab. But Deep Sidhu, a side-act who garnered a lot of eyeballs in the farmers’ agitation, had by September 2021 formed the “Waris Punjab De”, a political organisation that would fight for the rights of the farmers of Punjab.
Amritpal’s Media-Aided Rise
To exploit the political vacuum, and ever-ready to occupy the centrestage was SAD(A) supremo and Sangrur MP Simranjit Singh Mann, who breathed the fire of fundamentalism into Waaris Punjab De. Then on February 22, 2022, Deep Sidhu died in a road accident.
And within a month, Simranjit Singh Mann announced that a certain Amritpal Singh will head “Waris Punjab De” after Deep Sidhu’s death. Subsequently, Amritpal reportedly went to Georgia to allegedly train under the ISI.
And then on August 20, he quietly landed at Amritsar airport and the media gave an open platform to Amritpal Singh. The frivolity of it being that he was a doppelganger of Bhindranwale – he was tall, lean, had a deep but soft huskiness in his voice, and a forward tilt to his head. The local TV anchors screamed out loud: “Who is this Bhindranwale lookalike called Amritpal Singh? Who is behind him? Is the Khalistan movement back in Punjab? The attempt wasn’t to deliver the news but to gain quick TRPs (Target Rating Points).”
Why Bhindranwale 2.0 Spin Fell Flat
The significant difference was that Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale had spent 12 years at Damdami Taksal, the institution where the spiritual teachings of Gurbani were taught and recited. And after spending those many years, Bhindranwale was anointed as its chief by Kartar Singh Khalsa in 1977, ahead of Kartar Singh Khalsa’s own son.
On the contrary, Amritpal’s induction into the movement was quickly done after a crash course about Khalistani ideology. In fact, in Amritpal’s case, everything was quick. He was baptised at Anandpur Sahib on September 25 and four days later on September 29 his dastarbandi (ritualistic tying of the turban) took place at Rode, the ancestral village of Bhindranwale.
While Bhindranwale took refuge at the Akal Takht in 1984 to take on the might of the Indian armed forces, Amritpal brought out the holy book – Guru Granth Sahib – into the Ajnala Police Station in February this year, allegedly to use it as a shield so that Punjab Police thinks twice before a crackdown on him and his supporters. TV grabs of the incident showed that he carried an uncompromising Bhindranwale-like look on his face.
But just a few weeks later, he was on the run having managed to give a slip to tens of thousands of Punjab Police personnel. And this answered the crucial “Can Amritpal be equated with Bhindranwale” question. The answer is NO. Many in the hinterlands of Punjab had started saying, “Asli-asli hota hai, aur nakli-nakli hota hai”.
Amritpal Singh is certainly just a pawn in a larger game. But who is fomenting the fire in Punjab: The byzantine “deep state”, the Khalistani “deep faith” actors, or the likes of Simranjit Singh Mann? And then there’s the media, ever-ready to breathe life into such pawns unmindful of the consequences.
Shamsher Chandel is an independent journalist based out of Chandigarh. Views are personal and do not represent the stand of this publication.
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