A century-old dinner has re-entered Punjab's political arena. Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann on Friday, 31 July 2026 launched a sharp public attack on Shiromani Akali Dal leader Bikram Singh Majithia, invoking the legacy of the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre to question the credibility of Majithia's tribute to its victims.

Posting in Punjabi, Mann wrote: 'ਕਿਸ ਮੂੰਹ ਨਾਲ ਸ਼ਰਧਾਂਜਲੀ ਦੇ ਰਹੇ ਹੋ ਮਜੀਠੀਆ ਸਾਬ੍ਹ' — 'With what face are you paying tribute, Mr. Majithia?' He alleged that Majithia's ancestors had hosted a dinner for General Reginald Dyer — the British officer who ordered troops to open fire on unarmed civilians gathered at Jallianwala Bagh, Amritsar — on the orders of the very colonial establishment that sanctioned the massacre. Mann closed with a pointed couplet: 'With those who killed, and also with those who died.'

The Dinner That Haunts the Majithia Name

The historical charge Mann is reviving centres on Sundar Singh Majithia, an early 20th-century Sikh leader and ancestor of Bikram Majithia who held prominent positions under British rule. The allegation — that Sundar Singh Majithia hosted or facilitated a dinner for General Dyer after the 13 April 1919 massacre — has circulated in Punjabi political discourse for decades. Dyer's troops killed an estimated 379 to over 1,000 unarmed men, women, and children who had gathered in the walled garden; the true death toll remains contested but the moral weight is not.

Mann did not specify the occasion on which Majithia was paying tribute, but the thrust of the attack is unambiguous: he is arguing that a family with such a colonial-era association cannot credibly mourn the victims of colonial violence.

A Recurring Weapon in Punjab's Political Wars

This is not the first time Aam Aadmi Party leaders have reached back to 1919 to challenge the Akali Dal's nationalist credentials. Punjab politics has a long tradition of weaponising colonial-era associations — who collaborated, who resisted, who dined with the empire — to delegitimise rivals in the eyes of a Sikh electorate for whom Jallianwala Bagh is not merely history but living memory and sacred wound.

Majithia, a former Punjab minister and one of the Akali Dal's most prominent faces, has not yet publicly responded to Mann's post. The Akali Dal's reply — and whether it contests the historical record or pivots to a counter-attack — will set the tone for what could become a sustained exchange as Punjab's political temperature rises.

Mann's closing line — 'ਮਾਰਨ ਵਾਲਿਆਂ ਨਾਲ ਵੀ ਅਤੇ ਮਰਨ ਵਾਲਿਆਂ ਨਾਲ ਵੀ' ('With those who killed, and also with those who died') — is the sharpest part of the post: an accusation of standing on both sides of a massacre, simultaneously mourning and enabling. That kind of charge, once lodged in public memory, is not easily dislodged.