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Thirty-seven days after he mounted a dramatic escape to slide by a Punjab Police cordon, radical Sikh preacher Amritpal Singh was arrested from Moga’s Rode village within the early hours of Sunday. Particulars of the precise sequence of occasions are nonetheless falling into place, however it seems that Mr Singh delivered a speech in a gurdwara earlier than his arrest in a doable try to gas comparisons with separatist chief Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, who additionally hailed from Rode village. Over the past two years, the Waris Punjab De chief sought to vogue himself after the Nineteen Eighties chief, and surfacing within the latter’s ancestral village is one other such try, one which an alert authorities should nip within the bud. Any efforts by his followers to inflame passions or invoke the assist of the Sikh clergy should equally be acted towards.
Mr Singh, who’s accused of secessionist actions, spreading communal disharmony and attacking cops, and charged underneath the Nationwide Safety Act, ought to now be tried to the fullest extent of the legislation after a clear and rigorous probe. However past the quick circumstances of his rise, two units of considerations stay. The primary is surrounding his mysterious and meteoric rise after his abrupt return from West Asia. Who was behind his fast consolidation of energy simply months after coming to India? How did he coalesce assist for a barely disguised secessionist trigger in a state the place such emotions have been believed to be on the wane? What components, home or international, have been accountable for his anointment as the top of a controversial outfit that didn’t hesitate to make use of provocative methods equivalent to utilizing the Sikh holy e book as a defend whereas laying siege to a police station? And why did the state authorities not act towards him sooner? The second concern is concerning the socioeconomic panorama of the state. Mr Singh’s rise and enchantment amongst some sections uncovered a grim picture of a area the place falling per capita incomes, deepening misery in agriculture and social evils equivalent to drug use have stoked deep anxieties amongst younger folks, and laid naked the political vacuum that the sweeping farm protests left after they ended. These anxieties will have to be addressed by long-term and considerate governance methods that marry political outreach with an financial salve, not populism.
His arrest marks the tip of a turbulent section in a state the place the scars of separatism stay contemporary. The administration has arrested the trajectory of Waris Punjab De. However except this second is used to allay broader considerations and tackle points that aided his rise, the potential of such an eventuality will linger.
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