The meeting that missed the headlines-but may reshape Punjab politics......by GPS Mann

A new barely registered in the national news cycle but it caught my eye and I considered it politically very important to take a note of: the head of Dera Sachkhand Ballan meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Delhi and inviting him to the Guru Ravidas Jayanti celebrations at Kashi.

A few photographs, a polite report, and the story moved on. But beneath this quiet visit lies a political tremor that Punjab’s commentariat has largely ignored a shift deep in the state’s social architecture that could redefine its electoral future. To understand its significance, one must begin with a moment of rupture.

In 2016, during the Prime Minister’s visit to the historic Guru Ravidas temple in Varanasi, the Dera Ballan chief was not allowed to meet him. Security officials formed a human chain to block his movement.

The result was immediate outrage: Dalit organisations protested across Punjab, effigies of the Prime Minister and a BJP minister were burnt, and the incident was read as a humiliation of both the Sant and the Ravidasia–Ad Dharmi community. It was a reminder that gestures of disrespect even unintended carry deep political consequences in Punjab’s charged social-religious landscape.

Fast-forward to December 2025. The same Dera Ballan leadership now sits across from the Prime Minister in a dignified, formal meeting. An invitation is extended for Kashi Jayanti celebrations. A wide-ranging agenda is presented including temple matters, national commemorations, and even airport naming. This is not merely a cordial interaction; it is a reset after a decade-old wound. A community once aggrieved now appears willing to re-engage. And the BJP, once dismissive of the Dera’s sensitivities, seems determined to rebuild the relationship.

Punjab’s social spectrum has changed dramatically over the last two or three decades. Deras have emerged as formidable institutions — shaping identity, managing social conflict, and influencing electoral behaviour. They command lakhs of followers, operate sophisticated communication networks, and possess social legitimacy that weak political parties can no longer easily manufacture.

Dera Ballan, at the centre of this moment, is not a minor shrine. It is the central spiritual anchor of the Ravidasia–Ad Dharmi community, Punjab’s largest Dalit bloc. With Dalits forming nearly 32% of Punjab’s population, and with Dera Ballan’s influence cutting across Doaba, Majha, and even parts of Malwa, any shift in its posture has major political implications.

When its head meets the Prime Minister with confidence and purpose, it marks a new phase in Dalit political mobilisation and signals the BJP’s willingness to court a constituency it has long struggled to reach.

But this meeting is not isolated. It fits into a quiet but unmistakable pattern.

The BJP already enjoys tacit support from Dera Sacha Sauda in Sirsa, whose vast following in Malwa has repeatedly demonstrated its electoral muscle. Meanwhile, something even more unusual is happening: the Radha Soami Satsang Beas leadership traditionally apolitical and aloof is visibly active, meeting other dera heads and engaging in spiritual diplomacy across Punjab. That does not happen without intent.

When three of Punjab’s most influential deras Ballan, Sirsa, and Beas are simultaneously in motion, it is not coincidence. It is a reconfiguration of Punjab’s social power structure.

For decades, Punjab’s politics rested on three pillars: Sikh religious institutions, the Jat Sikh–dominated rural landscape and its farmer unions, and party cadres. Today, all three stand weakened. The panthic space is fractured. Farmer leadership is divided after the farm law protests. Party credibility is at its nadir. Into this vacuum step the deras — socially embedded, organisationally disciplined, and connected to communities that conventional parties no longer understand or represent.

The BJP has grasped this shift more effectively than others. Lacking deep roots in Sikh institutions or farmer networks, it has begun constructing an alternate route to political relevance by aligning with Punjab’s powerful social-religious centres.

With Dera Sirsa, it secures mobilisation machinery in Malwa. With Dera Ballan, it gains access to a large Dalit vote that can determine 25–30 seats. And if Radha Soami Beas leans even symbolically toward a narrative of social harmony and stability, the BJP acquires a cross-community legitimacy unmatched by any Punjab party today.

This is not about explicit endorsements deras rarely issue them. It is about mood, subtle messaging, and momentum. The warmth of a dera towards a political formation shifts family conversations, influences social media circuits, shapes community WhatsApp groups, and colours interpretations of national events.

As I attempt in this op-ed, the very act of decoding this small news item is itself part of the messaging ecosystem deras can generate. In Punjab, elections are often decided less by manifestos and more by the atmosphere in which they are read and deras shape atmosphere more decisively than any party office.

The deeper question then is: why are deras choosing to become politically active now?

Because Punjab is in flux. In my previous op-ed, I argued that the 2027 elections will hinge on law and order, gangsters, and governance collapse. Add to this economic stagnation, agrarian anxiety, declining trust in political leadership, and rising social fragmentation — and a vacuum of authority emerges. Deras, with their vast social capital, are stepping into this vacuum as stabilising institutions. And the BJP, with its national profile and symbolic politics, sees opportunity in partnership.

The Dera Ballan visit may have appeared as a minor line in a newspaper. But it is the latest marker in a silent realignment: the rise of a new political equation in Punjab built not through party structures but through spiritual influence, community authority, and powerful social-religious networks.

Punjab’s next election may not be decided in rallies, manifestos, or alliances. It may be shaped in satsangs, deras, and quiet meetings that never make front-page news.

And if this realignment consolidates, the BJP for the first time in decades could become a serious political force in Punjab without relying on old Sikh-majoritarian or farmer-centric formulas.

Sometimes, the most important political shifts begin silently and I think that this meeting in Delhi was one of them.

December 8, 2025