Issue 28 Vol II, November 30, 2006

H I S T O R Y

The Sikhs and partition of the Punjab-6
Professor J.S. Grewal

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 leaders of the Indian National Congress cherished the idea of India as a single Nation State. Towards this end, they were prepared to accommodate the aspirations and fears of the All India Muslim League, but they were not prepared to go far enough. Jinnah, the sole spokesman of the League, never seriously tried even to know the fears and aspirations of the Sikhs of the Punjab. His condescending and indifferent approach towards the problem precluded the possibility of any rapprochement and political understanding between the Muslim League and the Akalis.

The political imagination of all the leaders and their attitudes were informed by ideological differences and their perceptions of socio-cultural realities, both past and present. Given the historical situation of the 1940s, with the idea of Pakistan and its eventual acceptance by the Indian National Congress, it is difficult to imagine how Partition of the Punjab could be avoided. It can be seen as a partial accommodation of the idea of ‘a Sikh Homeland’.

Notes

1. For a comprehensive and detailed statement on the politics of the Akalis in the 1940s, Indu Banga, ‘Crisis of Sikh Politics, 1940-47’, Sikh History and Religion in the Twentieth Century, ed., Joseph T.O Connell and others, Toronto: University of Toronto, Centre for South Asian Studies, 1988, pp. 233-55.

2. The words ‘with such territorial readjustment as may be necessary’ in the Lahore Resolution visualized some kind of territorial reorganoisation in the Punjab Province. The Ambala Division had an overwhelming non-Muslim population.

3. There was basic difference between the two religious minorities of the Punjab: whereas the Hindus belonged to the majority community in the subcontinent, the Sikhs were virtually confined to the Punjab. This was the meaning of their assertion that the Punjab was their ‘homeland’. This convergence of religious and regional identity distinguished them from both Hindus and Muslims.

4. Sukhmani Riar, ‘Khalistan: The Origins of the Demand and Its Pursuit Prior to Independence, 1940-45’,  Globalisation and Region: Explorations in Punjabi Identity’, ed., Pritam Singh and Shinder Singh Thandi, Coventry: Association for Punjab Studies (U.K), 1996, pp.  233-44.

5. The Indian National Congress at its annual session at Lahore in  1929 gave the explicit assurance to the minorities that no constitution would be acceptable to the Congress if it did not give ‘full satisfaction’ to them.  This was meant primarily to reassure the Sikhs.  Both Master Tara Singh and Baba Kharak Singh attached great importance to this declaration of intentions.

6. It is interesting to note that the idea of independence for a single province was taken more seriously in Bengal than in the Punjab.  Sucheta Mahajan, ‘Congress and Partition of Provinces’, The Partition in Retrospect, ed., Amrik Singh, New Delhi: Anamika Publishers and Distributors/National Institute of Punjab Studies, 2000, pp. 222-45. The author argues that partition of the provinces was not really the Congress ‘demand’, but by taking it up the Congress made itself vulnerable.

7. The term ‘Azad Punjab’ was used for the first time in a resolution of the All India Akali Conference on 24 July 1942. For an elaborate statement on the scheme and its rationale, Sadhu Singh Hamdard, Azad Punjab (Urdu), Amritsar: Ajit Book Agency, 1943 (2nd.ed.)

8. While describing the option of non-accession by a province to the Indian Union as a severe blow to the conception of Indian unity, the resolution of the Congress Working Committee declared that the Committee could not think ‘in terms of compelling the people of any territorial unit to remain in an Indian Union against their declared will’. For the attitude of the Congress towards partition, Bimal Prasad, ‘Jawaharlal Nehru and Partition’, The Partition in Retrospect, pp.27-59.

9. The number of seats won by the Congress can be appreciated in terms of spectre of Pakistan  obliging the Hindus of all political shades to support the Congress which included the leaders of the erstwhile ‘Hindu’ parties.  For this development, K.L. Tuteja, ‘ Hindu Consciousness, the Congress and Partition’, the Partition in Retrospect, pp. 3-26. The author does not say so but his discussion of the theme does suggest that Hindu support for the Congress in the Punjab was partly due to the increasing possibility of the creation of Pakistan.

10. Gurbachan Singh and Lal Singh Giani, The Idea of Sikh State, Lahore: 1946. Another important intellectual to support the idea of a Sikh state as well as Pakistan was, G. Adhikari, ‘On the Question of Sikh Homeland’, Marxism Today, May-July 1986 (rpt.), originally published in Peoples Age, 4:25, December 1945.

11. The announcement of 16 May gave the ‘substance of Pakistan’ to the League, it was inferred, and liquidated the position of the Sikhs in their homeland, with the prospect of a Muslim dominated state in a loose federation without any safeguards for the Sikhs.

12. Larry Collins and Dominique Lapiere, Mountbatten and the Partition of India, New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1982, p. 124.

13. Ibid., pp. 125-26.

14. Kirpal Singh has argued that the original award was changed in favour of India: ‘Partition of Punjab and the Sikhs’, The Partition in Retrospect, pp. 151-56.

BACK