Strategic polarisation by BJP has potential to dislocate social secularism in Punjab Jagtar Singh Chandigarh: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent visit to Dera Sachkhand Ballan in the Doaba heartland—an area where Dalit social and religious formations wield considerable influence—has once again revived the debate on the role of deras in Punjab’s complex religio-political landscape. Punjab, a border state that has historically witnessed alternating cycles of violent and remarkably peaceful mobilisations over more than a century, continues to remain politically sensitive and socially layered. This is typical Punjab whose political discourse has invariably been dictated by the Sikh religio-political discourse, at least till recently. This dominant Panthic religio-political discourse has now got fragmented over the period, thereby yielding space to new permutations and combinations in the state’s religio-political matrix. It can safely be said that Punjab is in a flux. The ...