Why is a Tamil-speaking Khalsa woman taking on Priyanka Gandhi in Wayanad

Wayanad: The Wayanad Lok Sabha by-election has almost been reduced to the long-awaited electoral debut of Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra — over 25 years after she first campaigned for her mother, Sonia Gandhi, in Bellary in 1999 — and whether she will secure one of the biggest winning margins in Indian election history.

The Congress General Secretary in charge of Uttar Pradesh will face CPI’s farmers’ leader and state Assistant Secretary Sathyan Mokeri (71), once known as the 'roaring lion' in the state assembly, and BJP’s Mahila Morcha leader and two-time Kozhikode Corporation councillor Navya Haridas (39).

However, the Wayanad election will take an intriguing turn with the entry of A Seetha, now known as Seetha Kaur, dressed in her Khalsa attire — a blue turban, steel wristband, and a kirpan (dagger) slung across her shoulder — along with her Tamil identity worn on her sleeves. Like Priyanka Gandhi, Seetha is 52 years old, a mother of two, and a skilled orator. However, their journeys to Wayanad have been very different.

Seetha Kaur is the candidate of Bahujan Dravida Party (BDP), an outfit mostly of Tamil Sikhs following social reformers Periyar and Kanshi Ram, the founder of Bahujan Samaj Party, with the stated mission to uplift the Dalits, Adivasis and the other oppressed communities.

In the Lok Sabha election held earlier this year, the Bahujan Dravida Party fielded seven Tamil Sikh candidates in Tamil Nadu. Seetha Kaur contested from Tenkasi, while her husband, Rajan Singh, ran in Kanyakumari. The party fielded 40 other candidates, mostly those aspiring to embrace Sikhism, in constituencies outside Tamil Nadu.

They were initially drawn to the caste-less ideology of Sikhism, but it was the 2020–2021 farm protests — where farmers from Punjab stood united for 16 months — that inspired them to take the plunge, said Seetha Kaur, who embraced the religion in 2023.

BDP National President Jeevan Singh Malla, a Supreme Court lawyer who takes up public interest litigations for the oppressed communities, contested in Punjab's Hoshiarpur as a tribute to Kanshi Ram's victorious outing in the Lok Sabha constituency in 1996.

"We are contesting elections to propagate the Dravidian and Bahujan ideologies for discrimination-free liberated governance and society. Until there is a cultural change, Dalits, Adivasis and other backward classes cannot escape caste discrimination," said Jeevan Singh, who started learning about Sikhism and reciting Gurbani in 2014 and was initiated into the religion in 2023.

The party now has units in 14 states, including Kerala, said the Thoothukudi-born leader. "I have asked all 14 state presidents to reach Wayanad after the nomination papers are scrutinised on October 28. We'll work as a united team. Our two legs will be our campaign vehicles," he said.

Wayanad constituency is spread across three districts and is made up of Mananthavady (ST), Sulthan Bathery (ST), and Kalpetta in Wayanad district; Thiruvambady in Kozhikode district; and Eranad, Nilambur, and Wandoor (SC) in Malappuram district.

The by-election was necessitated after Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, having won two seats in June, decided to relinquish Wayanad and retain the strategically important constituency of Raebareli in Uttar Pradesh.

When Seetha Kaur and Rajan Singh arrive in Wayanad on Thursday, October 24, to file her nomination papers, they will be welcomed by BDP's small team led by its Kerala president, Vayalar Rajeevan from Alappuzha district.

Seetha, a document writer in Ambattur, on the outskirts of Chennai, said caste discrimination and environment would be her main plank in Wayanad. "I was in Wayanad with relief materials after the landslides, and I could easily relate with the people," she said.

Seetha Kaur said she has been wearing the Khalsa attire since she was initiated as a Khalsa in 2023. "The saree is a Brahminical garment, and I find it restrictive. I feel liberated and fearless in my Khalsa attire. People are always curious when they visit my office or see me on the bus, but I'm happy to share my story," she said.

From the tea gardens
Seetha was born in 1952 to Arunachalam and Perumal Ammal, a couple from the Pallan Scheduled Caste community. They worked on the Manjolai tea estates near the dense woods of the Western Ghat Ranges in the Kalakkad Mundanthurai Tiger Reserve Area in Tirunelveli, a district in southern Tamil Nadu.

Her future husband, Rajan, was born into a Dalit Christian family and also spent his childhood in the same tea estates. "Up to Class 8, we lived on the fringes of the forest, surrounded by wild animals," she said. They went to the primary school in the tea estate.

Seetha started facing caste discrimination when she was put in a village school, downhill at Alavanthankulam village, for Class 9. "One day, I addressed an elderly upper caste woman, 'patti' (granny), and she ranted against me, asking if she were my father's mother. In schools, Dalit students were made to sit separately and outside the classrooms, too. Such practices could be there even now," she said.

After her schooling, she moved to Chennai to pursue a diploma in computer science and became a document writer. Rajan too got a job as a conductor in Metropolitan Transport Corporation in Chennai. "Even in school, I was drawn towards atheism and Periyarism. Yet, in society, we face a lot of discrimination. It did not change after moving to a city," she said.

In her adult life, she, like many in the Bahujan Dravida Party today, was drawn towards Kanshi Ram's Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). They quit the party after BSP supremo Mayavati removed Periyar from the party's list of Maha Purush (great men).

Initially, they, led by Jeevan Singh, started Bahujan Dravida Party as a movement in 2019. Several of them contested as independent candidates in the Assembly elections.

Jeevan Singh and his followers took out three yatras from Anandpur Sahib, the birthplace of Kanshi Ram in Punjab, from Erode, the birthplace of Periyar in Tamil Nadu. When he visited a Gurdwara in Punjab in 2019, he expressed his wish to become a Sikh, which would be his third religion. "They asked me to grow a beard and return after six months," Jeevan Singh said. Today, he looks every bit a Sikh.

Jeevan Singh's parents were Hindu Dalits and converted to Christianity before he was born. There was no escape from discrimination in the Christian community either, he said. As an adult, he converted to Buddhism. "But I found Sikhism to be the philosophy that could eradicate the caste system," he said.

He has been studying the religion since 2014. He transformed his home at Korampallam in Thoothukudi into the School of Miri Piri, a centre for politics and culture, where Tamil Sikhs gather for discussions and prayers. There are around 25 practising Tamil Sikhs.

By 2023, their movement became a political party and they started contesting elections under the banner of Bahujan Dravida Party. During conflicts and natural disasters, the party collects relief materials from states such as Punjab, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu and visits the affected zones, said Seetha Kaur, the national convenor of BDS's women's wing. Sometimes, the small group of Tamil Sikhs organise Langar (community kitchen) too. "We went to the riot-hit Manipur too with relief materials," she said.

Seetha Kaur said her party was ideologically against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which espoused the Hindutva ideology, and the Congress, which she said put up a secular face. "BJP is a black poisonous snake on the green grass, but the Congress is the green snake on the grass," she said, paraphrasing a quote Kanshi Ram once used to compare the BJP and the Communists.

When asked if she liked Priyanka Gandhi, her rival in Wayanad, Seetha Kaur took offence. "I don't know her personally for you to ask me such a question. This is a political fight for change."