| Issue 25 Vol II, October 15, 2006 | Archive |
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THE SIKHS AND PARTITION OF THE PUNJAB- 3 We present before the readers of www.southasiapost.org a series of articles by eminent historian and former Vice Chancellor of the Guru Nanak Dev University and former Chairman and Director of the prestigious Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, Professor J.S.GREWAL on the partition of India and the role played by the Sikhs and Muslims from Punjab.
The Cabinet Mission arrived in New Delhi on 24 March and met a large number of Indian leaders before moving to Shimla. At this juncture a few Sikh intellectuals, notably Sadhu Swarup Singh and Gurbachan Singh and Lal Singh Gyani put forth the idea that the Sikhs were a ‘nation’ and therefore, they w ere entitled to a sovereign state. They felt convinced that the Congress would not resist the demand for Pakistan and India would be divided in the near future into Hindustan and Pakistan as two independent countries. Freedom for Hindus and Muslims would bring ‘slavery’ to the Sikhs who, as a nation, had the right to ‘self determination’. This was admitted to be the ‘right of nations all over the world’. No constitutional safeguards and weightage were adequate for ensuring the growth of the Sikhs as a ‘nationality with a distinct religious, ideological, cultural and political character’. An autonomous Sikh State, therefore, was the ‘unconditional, absolute and minimum demand and political objective of the Sikh Panth as a whole’. The proposed state was to be ‘democratic in constitution’, it was to have ‘a socialistic economic structure’, and it was to give ‘full protection’ to the minorities.
In 1940 came the Pakistan Resolution. The Indian National Congress sought to appease the Muslims at the cost of the Sikhs. ‘In this situation emerged a further step in the old Sikh demand for splitting up the Punjab, called the Azad Punjab Scheme’. Its purpose was to ensure that the Sikhs held ‘the balance of power’ in the new Province. They were canvassing for this idea when the ‘Raja-Gandhi Formula’ was floated. Its acceptance would have divided the Sikhs into two parts in two different states. Therefore, the Sikhs asked for a separate Sikh state. This was the only way in which they could survive ‘in the midst of aggressive communalism’. The authors underline that in the present-day world of total organization and mobilization of peoples no ‘minority’ could survive without ‘political strength’. The aggressive communalism of Muslim and Hindu majorities presented a grave threat to the Sikhs and their identity. They needed a State in which they were free from aggression and in which they could make laws for themselves. ‘The Sikhs do not seek to dominate anyone. They want to establish a secular democratic state, in which the bulk of the Sikh population may be concentrated. The economic basis of life, bound to be socialistic, in accordance with the traditions of the Sikh society, and the inner urge of the hardy, self-respecting Sikh peasantry’ was the corner stone. Sikh nationhood was essentially the product of Sikh history. Organized as ‘the Khalsa’, the Sikhs acted as a distinct and separate nation in the days of the misls and Ranjit Singh (late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries). They established a theocratic political organization first, and then a monarchical system. As emphasized in the idea of the Sikh state, the Sikhs were now organizing their national life on the democratic principle. The Gurdwara Reform Movement was a decisive landmark in the revival of the Khalsa. They began to run ‘a kind of paralled Government’ in the form of the Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee which ‘issued commands and ordinances, organized jathas, fought the bureaucracy and through its actions galvanized the entire Sikh people with a powerful feeling of their aroused nationhood’. With the emergence of the concept of the ‘Indian Nation’, Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs came to be treated as ‘communities’, with the result that these ‘nations’ were subordinated to the Indian Nation. The Sikhs have come out of this illusion ‘fostered’ by the lust for domination by the ‘Hindu majority’. Having formed a true conception of their status, they have demanded ‘a National State for themselves’. No Sikh entertained any doubt about his nationality being different from that of the Hindus. The latent nationhood of the Sikhs had reasserted itself. Gurbachan Singh and Lal Singh give a whole chapter to the views of a number of political thinkers and leaders to prove that the Khalsa constituted a distinct nation. They go on to argue that modern ‘political theory has recognized in practice the principle of providing national States to the various nationalities’. More than forty new nation-states had emerged in Europe. The Jews had been promised a national home in Palestine, ‘their sacred land’. The Sikhs were demanding nothing more than establishing themselves as a ‘governing group, along with other groups in a democratic system’. The areas asked for the Sikh State were the areas covered by the Sikh homeland, ‘a broad compact area of which the Central Punjab is the nucleus’. This ‘Sikh Zone’ covered the Lahore and Jullundur divisions, parts of the Ambala and Multan divisions, the Sikh States and the State of Malerkotla, and certain hill areas in the north and north-east. ‘It is in this land, which by virtue of proprietorship, development, historic-associations and religious sanctity already belongs to the Sikhs, where the Sikhs wish to find a safe home, free from interference’. More than eighty per cent of the Sikhs lived in this zone and owned more than a quarter of its land. Gurbachan Singh and Lal Singh do not mention the percentage of Sikhs in the total population. Nevertheless, they refer to ‘minorities’ within the Sikh State to whom a free, prosperous, happy and contended life is promised. If the Sikhs were to be politically dominant in the Sikh State, it could not have a democratic constitution. If it was simply assumed that there would be no absolute ‘majority’ in the Sikh State, then this state differed from the Azad Punjab only in being sovereign. In no sense could it be called ‘a Sikh State’. The theoretical rationale for a Sikh state did not correspond to the empirical realities. [To be continued] |
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20 February 1946, Prime Minister Attlee announced a special Mission of three
Cabinet Ministers to seek agreement on the principles and procedures
relating to the constitutional issue in India. On 9 March 1946, the SGPC
passed a resolution in favour of a ‘Sikh State’. The Working Committee of
the Shiromani Akali Dal made a similar demand on 22 March, amplifying that
the ‘Sikh State’ should include ‘a substantial majority of the Sikh
population and their shrines with provision for the transfer and exchange of
population and property’. If the argument of the Muslim League was that
Muslims had ruled over India, the argument of the Akalis was that the Sikhs
had ousted the Mughals and established their own rule. In fact, by creating
a ‘Sikh State’ the British would only return to the Sikhs what they had
directly got in trust from them.
Gurbachan
Singh and Lal Singh go into the background of the demand for an autonomous
Sikh State. Its origins could be traced to the ‘historical traditions’ of
the Sikhs, their ‘inner urges’ and their ‘political ideals’. So long as
there was no discussion of ‘any political future’ there was no occasion for
giving expression to the concerns of the Sikh Panth. With the Simon
Commission, however, the situation began to change. The Muslims of the
Punjab began to clamour for a permanent majority in the Province and the
Sikhs responded by suggesting to Mahatama Gandhi in 1930 that a new province
should be carved out of the existing Punjab. In 1931, they made the same
suggestion to the Viceroys, Lord Irwin and Lord Willingdon. This demand was
presented at the second Round Table Conference by Sampuran Singh and Ujjal
Singh. However the Sikh demand went unheeded. The Communal Award was
announced in 1932. The Provincial Autonomy established on its basis in 1937
caused ‘terrible hardships’ to the Sikhs. Their religious rights were sought
to be thwarted and their ‘national’ language, Punjabi, was sought to be
suppressed.