Sunny Deol, Vinod Khanna: Ghosts of elections past still haunt Gurdaspur

When the late actor Vinod Khanna entered politics, taking electoral baby steps from Punjab's border district of Gurdaspur in 1998, he was just over 50, extremely handsome, and had a confidence that came with the years. A 22-year-old actor, however successful, may not have withstood the rough and tumble that is the country's politics. He won, snatching the seat from a longtime Congress leader Sukhbans Kaur Bhinder, who represented the constituency six times. That Lok Sabha was quickly dissolved, and Khanna contested again the next year. He won—again in 2004 and 2014. For a short while, he was even a minister.

In actor Sunny Doel, who joined the BJP on Tuesday and became the party's candidate the next day, Gurdaspur again has a macho star with a dhai kilo ka haath, a popular dialogue that is his catchphrase. Actor Akshay Kumar was believed to have been eyeing the constituency ever since Khanna passed away in April 2017. He even made films on subjects close to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's heart—Toilet: Ek Prem Katha, for example. But the 63-year-old Deol, a powerful and popular actor even if not in the same league as Khanna, pipped Kumar.

Why did Akshay Kumar lose out to Sunny Deol? Deol is the son of Garam Dharam Dharmendra, who was a BJP MP representing Bikaner once. A few senior party leaders have, in conversations, said he brought them nothing, and did nothing for his constituency. They even contrasted him with Hema Malini, who had worked harder as an MP. So, bloodline is clearly not the answer. What worked out in Deol's favour was his role in the 1997 J.P. Dutta film Border, set around the Battle of Longewala in the 1971 Indo-Pak war. He played a turbaned Major. The film was a big hit particularly in the border villages of Punjab.

When Vinod Khanna launched his campaign in Gurdaspur, his 22-year-old son Akshaye Khanna, who essayed the role of a second lieutenant in Border, was a major pull. Crowds thronged to see the young Khanna, in the backdrop of that year's biggest hit song 'Sandeshe Aatein Hain'. The song rent the air, and people could not be bothered about BJP, its slogans, its other leaders, their speeches and their flags. It was a vote for Border. It is quite likely that the BJP expects an encore performance from Border, with the hero this time not a young subaltern's father, but a major who has aged. With nationalism, the role of the armed forces, Pulwama and Balakot all part of the party's political discourse in the current campaign, it suits the BJP to field Major Kuldip Singh Chandpuri aka Sunny Deol.

Sunny comes with other value additions. In Gadar Ek Prem Katha, he played Buta Singh, a Sikh soldier in the British Army during World War 2. Buta's love story is a legend in Punjab, almost on the scale of Romeo-Juliet or Heer-Ranjha. He first rescues a Muslim girl in the run up to partition, marries her, and forces his way into Pakistan to rescue her later.

Gurdaspur has always been a star-struck constituency. From a tiny village called Gharota in this district, a young man ran away to try his luck in Bombay. He was Dev Anand, who never returned to Gurdaspur since. Vinod Khanna, however, kept coming back, even if the film and television institute he promised remains just that—a speech most people have forgotten. The BJP has made no bones about why it chooses film stars and other celebrities as candidates—they help expand its footprints. Though Akshay Kumar did not get a ticket, his interview with Prime Minister Modi dominated the news cycle, as useful for Modi as fielding him from somewhere would have been.