A Pilgrimage with a Purpose: PM Modi at Dera Ballan Jalandhar and the BJP’s Punjab Pivot....by KBS Sidhu

Timed to Guru Ravidas Jayanti and the Union Budget, the Prime Minister’s visit blends devotion, symbolism and a renewed outreach to Punjab’s Scheduled Castes ahead of 2027.

A Pilgrimage with a Purpose: PM Modi at Ballan and the BJP’s Punjab Pivot

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s afternoon flight to Punjab, timed to Sri Guru Ravidas Ji’s 649th birth anniversary—Guru Ravidas Ji was born in Varanasi (Kashi), the parliamentary constituency the Prime Minister now represents—was projected as a devotional visit, yet was always likely to be read as politics wrapped in piety.

The timing lent it extra weight: it came on the very day the Union Budget was presented in Parliament. Rather than staying in Delhi to ride the budget headlines, he chose to be seen at Dera Sachkhand Ballan in Jalandhar—bowing at a major Ravidasia spiritual centre, meeting community leaders, and delivering an address that blended reverence, recognition and a familiar national-development pitch.

The signal was unmistakable: this was outreach by design and priority, not by convenience—devotional in form, political in intent.

Dera Ballan before the Prime Minister: the Mahant’s story of lineage, expansion and endurance

The stage was set by the Dera leadership through a tightly told institutional history. According to the Mahant’s narrative, the dera’s roots go back to the 19th century when Sant Baba Peepal Das Ji arrived in village Ballan and began his tapasya. With him was the child Sant Sarwan Das Ji, believed to have received divine vision at an early age. A small kutia was established, devotion was organised, and “naam daan” became the binding practice through which the sangat grew in numbers and cohesion.

The succession, he said, continued through Sant Haridas Ji and Sant Garib Das Ji, with the current gaddi held by Sant 108 Niranjan Das Ji Maharaj. Ballan was described not as a Doaba-only institution but as a networked spiritual centre: temples across multiple Indian states and an international footprint across dozens of countries.

The Mahant also invoked the Vienna attack during a satsang, in which Sant Niranjan Das Ji was seriously injured and Sant Ramanand Ji was killed, presenting it as a moment that tested the community yet did not stall its mission or its overseas presence.

This prelude mattered for one reason: it positioned Ballan as more than a place of worship. It is a community anchor and a social network with reach—precisely the kind of institution political parties seek to engage when they are trying to build acceptance beyond familiar vote-banks.

The Prime Minister’s address: reverence first, then recognition, then the budget

When the Prime Minister spoke, he kept the opening strictly devotional. He said it was his good fortune to be present on Magh Purnima and on the sacred occasion of Guru Ravidas Ji’s birth anniversary, and he offered salutations from the dais. He bowed to the land of Punjab and congratulated people across the country on the festival. The symbolism was reinforced with a deliberate personal touch: he invoked his long association with Kashi—Guru Ravidas Ji’s birthplace—and his own tenure as Member of Parliament from Varanasi.

It was not a casual reference. By locating himself in the geography of Guru Ravidas Ji’s life and teaching, he was claiming an organic bond rather than a ceremonial one. He invoked the widely known line, “Man changa to kathauti mein Ganga,” using it to argue that Guru Ravidas Ji’s message is timeless—inner purity as the highest pilgrimage. He also suggested that his presence in Punjab on this day felt like something beyond a scheduled visit, implying it was the saint’s इच्छा—an idiom that wraps a political choice in devotional inevitability.

He then turned to the host institution. He praised Dera Sachkhand Ballan’s work in education and health, and referred to the dera’s global role in spreading Guru Ravidas Ji’s ideas. In the same breath, he justified the Padma honour conferred upon Sant Niranjan Das Ji Maharaj as recognition of service and contribution. He congratulated followers for the honour, projecting it as collective pride rather than a state favour.

A softer political move followed. He recalled that an ardas had been performed at the dera on his birthday some months earlier and described it as personally significant. In one stroke, he shifted from “visitor” to “recipient of blessings”—a posture that creates emotional proximity and reduces the distance between a national leader and a community institution.

The one clear, Punjab-linked deliverable: Adampur renamed after Guru Ravidas Ji

If the Prime Minister’s speech had to be boiled down to a single headline action, it was this: he said Adampur Airport—near Jalandhar—had been renamed and would now be known as Sri Guru Ravidas Ji Maharaj Airport.

He offered it as an act consistent with Guru Ravidas Ji’s emphasis on equality and dignity, and placed it alongside earlier symbolic namings—citing Ayodhya’s airport being named after Maharishi Valmiki—to argue that such steps form part of a wider national pattern of recognition for saintly legacies and historically marginalised communities.

The politics of an airport name is not subtle. Unlike a plaque in a hall, an airport is repeated visibility. It appears on tickets, baggage tags, flight announcements, maps and social media—an everyday reminder that travels far beyond the immediate constituency. That is why such gestures endure, and why they are deployed in moments of targeted outreach.

He also referred to the inauguration of a new terminal building at Halwara, Ludhiana, offering congratulations to Punjabis and the nation. But that mention landed more as infrastructure optics than as a targeted community deliverable.

Begampura, Viksit Bharat, and the moral packaging of development

The philosophical centre of the address returned to Guru Ravidas Ji’s teachings. The Prime Minister spoke of equality and equal opportunity, and invoked the saint’s imagery about all being made of the same clay and shaped by the same potter—an explicit appeal to social unity. He then introduced Begampura, the ideal city described in Ravidas’s hymn, interpreting it as both spiritual and social: a place without fear, deprivation, humiliation or exclusion.

From there, he made a familiar pivot. He argued that Begampura could be read as an early vision of what the government now calls “Viksit Bharat”—a developed India where no one is compelled to live in poverty and where dignity and opportunity are universal.

It was a neat bridge: the saint’s moral imagination supplied the ethical frame; the government’s development slogan supplied the administrative promise.

And then the budget arrived—again

After that, much of the speech moved into a broad sweep of economic messaging that mirrored the standard architecture of a Finance Minister’s budget narrative: infrastructure spending, employment generation through construction, cheaper medicines (including cancer drugs), support for MSMEs, textiles, sports infrastructure, skill-building and export promotion. The venue changed, the audience changed, but the spine of the message remained national and generic.

He also referred to an India–European Union trade understanding and projected it as a market-opening moment for Punjab—especially for textiles in centres like Ludhiana and Amritsar, for Jalandhar’s sports goods industry, and for processed food from agrarian districts.

He urged manufacturers to focus on quality, packaging and design to compete globally, presenting “quality” as the real brand of Made in India.

The result was a speech that began as a devotional address, became an argument for recognition, and ended as a repackaged national economic pitch—well-calibrated for a community gathering, but light on new, specific policy commitments.

What did Punjab actually get—beyond symbolism?

This is the hard question a serious reader must ask. The answer, based on what was said from the dais, is straightforward.

What the Prime Minister clearly presented as concrete action:

• Renaming Adampur Airport near Jalandhar after Guru Ravidas Ji.
• Referring to the Halwara terminal inauguration.

What the Prime Minister did not announce, even though the context invited it:

• No dera-specific package for Ballan’s education and health initiatives.
• No Punjab-only welfare scheme, scholarship programme, entrepreneurship mission, or special allocation for SC-majority localities.
• No district-wise project list, timelines, or budgeted commitments tailored to Doaba’s socio-economic profile.

In substance, then, the address delivered one strong symbolic act with public permanence (the airport name) and one infrastructure reference, while leaning heavily on general budget-era themes. That does not make it irrelevant; it clarifies its nature. This was primarily the politics of recognition and outreach rather than the politics of targeted redistribution.

The political subtext: outreach to Scheduled Castes in Punjab

Read in Punjab’s political context, Dera Ballan looks like deliberate outreach to Scheduled Caste communities, including the Ravidasia constituency that carries significant social and electoral weight—particularly in the Doaba belt. The BJP’s long-standing difficulty in Punjab has not been a lack of leaders or organisational effort; it has been the gap between its national ideological brand and Punjab’s cultural-political reflexes.

A large part of the Jat Sikh community has historically not identified with the BJP’s agenda, and suspicion of the RSS continues to colour perceptions. The BJP has tried to counter this by inducting influential Jat Sikh leaders from other parties. But Punjab is not a state where elite defections automatically translate into mass social legitimacy. Acceptance is built through cultural resonance, not merely organisational arithmetic.

In that light, the Ballan visit signals a refinement: if broad Jat Sikh consolidation remains difficult, deepen resonance with constituencies where recognition, representation and respect can create a more receptive political mood—and where institutional platforms like deras provide both moral legitimacy and social reach.

A point of inflexion with February 2027 ahead

Whether this outreach succeeds only time will tell. Yet it is difficult to miss the intent: a Prime Ministerial visit on a major holy day, a high-visibility naming, and a speech that overlays community dignity onto the government’s development narrative. With Punjab elections expected in February 2027, the timing reads as preparatory politics—building relationships and recognitions that can be harvested later.

As for any potential rapprochement—much less an alliance—with the Shiromani Akali Dal, it remains a distant possibility, more speculative than programmatic. The BJP’s approach, at least as visible in this event, appears aimed at gradually assembling an independent social coalition rather than waiting for an old partnership to revive.

The bottom line

Dera Sachkhand Ballan offered the perfect setting for a carefully balanced performance: devotion at the front, recognition in the middle, and the budget at the back.

The renaming of Adampur Airport after Guru Ravidas Ji will likely be the enduring takeaway because it converts reverence into permanent public visibility. Yet the speech did not break new ground with Punjab-specific schemes or dera-specific projects; it stayed largely within the generic frame of national development and budget priorities.

That is precisely why this event should be read as a political signal: a BJP attempting, perhaps belatedly but deliberately, to find a new entry point into Punjab’s social landscape—through Scheduled Caste outreach, cultural recognition and institutional engagement. Whether it becomes a durable bridge or remains a well-scripted moment will become clearer as Punjab moves toward 2027.

February 2, 2026