Assigning the responsibility to Charanjit Singh Channi as the chief minister of Punjab  just a few months before the assembly elections in the state, has evoked a rather unusual response from the popular media and the political class. A few weeks back when the chief minister of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-ruled state of Gujarat was changed, the reactions were very different. Political commentators did express surprise at the incumbent being an unknown face, but it hardly raised any questions and hence lacked any intense discussion. Neither did the change of guard in Gujarat find enough space for commentary in the editorial columns of the national dailies nor in the television chat rooms. Channi’s elevation, however, has generated a different scale of interest. It also raises many questions, the most important of these being issues related to his caste identity. His being a Dalit has raised, particularly among the Sikhs, a much larger question as to what would be its immediate implications for the upcoming assembly elections in Punjab and the longer term politics in the state.

Since the reorganisation of Punjab in 1966, the state politics has been almost exclusively controlled by the landed Jatt Sikhs. With the exception of Giani Zail Singh (1972–77), all chief ministers have been Jatt Sikhs. This, in a way, has only been an extension of their overall position in rural Punjab and its agrarian economy, where they have been a dominant caste community, both in numbers as well as in their economic status.

As an administrative cluster, the Scheduled Castes (SCs) make for more than 32% of the total population of Punjab. Together, their numbers may be equal to, if not higher than, that of the Jatt Sikhs, but the SCs of Punjab are made up of 39 communities. Except for the Mazhabis and Balmikis or the Chamars, Ramdassias and Ravidasis among whom distinctions are blurry, they mostly have clearly marked, distinctive identities. They also have had diverse social histories and occupational traditions.

However, administrative identities also have possibilities of acquiring lives of their own. Their demographics have recently become a source of some interesting speculation about the ­political possibilities for the state. For example, hoping to work out a viable electoral arithmetic after its divorce from the BJP, the Shiromani Akali Dal recently sealed an alliance with the Bahujan Samaj Party, hoping to gain enough votes from Dalit groups to help it win the state elections. In return, it also promised the position of deputy chief minister to a Dalit. This perhaps explains why Mayawati was among the first major politicians to denounce the elevation of a fellow Dalit to the position of chief minister as a mere “electoral stunt.”

The BJP, too, has been toying with the idea of building an alternative communal arithmetic in the state by stitching the Dalits to its conventional electoral base—the urban Hindus. Such a coalition of communities, they perhaps hope, could be potent enough to make the Jatt Sikhs, or even Sikhs as a whole, irrelevant vote banks for electoral victories. Perhaps those who read it this way view the Congress’s move in Punjab as “a political masterstroke.”

However, such a reading tends to fall back on the older theories of patronage politics when SC leaders who gained visibility and prominence in the Congress party were all mere pawns, picked up and positioned cleverly by senior leaders, who were all from the elite castes. Indeed, it might be true that Channi would not get elected as the leader of the Punjab legislative assembly on his own, and his elevation is largely a result of the factional politics within the Congress party, when he seemed to suit everyone, perhaps as a “night watchman.” Yet, it is not merely a reflection of the caste demographics of Punjab. His being from a Dalit caste would have made it easier for Channi to emerge as the most desirable candidate, but to dismiss it as a “mere electoral gimmick” would be wrong.

Caste realities of Punjab have undergone a sea change over the past four or five decades. The green revolution nearly completely transformed the earlier relations of dependency and patronage. Though relatively much poorer than their fellow Jatt Sikhs and rarely owning agricultural land, the Dalits of Punjab have come to acquire a political agency of their own. Channi, too, is a self-made politician who personifies this reality.

This is perhaps why his elevation has generated so much excitement, anxiety, and uncertainty among members of the political class across parties and the popular media. A Dalit Sikh becoming the chief minister is far too important a development to be treated as tokenism. Its “symbolic” value could go far. Symbols have always been structuring variables in the making of politics. A Dalit being accepted as a chief minister must also be read as a reflection of the above-mentioned shifts that have taken place underneath, in the social and economic matrix of Punjabi society.

Finally, though at the moment it may still appear a far-fetched idea, there is an interesting “elective affinity”—to use Max Weber’s term—between the ongoing farmers’ movement and Channi becoming the chief minister of Punjab. The predominantly Jatt Sikh farmers on the “streets” seeking an alliance with the working-class Dalits, kisan-mazdoor ekta, itself speak of a new phase of horizontalisation of caste politics and a new politics of “accommodation,” perhaps replacing the earlier politics of hegemonic domination