Issue 42 Vol II, June 30, 2007

H I S T O R Y

Akalis and Khalistan-2

IN the north west of India from the 16th century onwards Sikhism has played a central role in shaping society’s religious, social and cultural ethos. It has impacted politics too. Noted historian Professor J.S. Grewal whose research and writings have shaped generations of scholars traces some of the aspects of Sikhism and its influence in a five part article.

Like Bhai Kahn Singh, the Akalis subscribed to the idea of communitarian nationalism. They were prepared to work in tandem with the Indian National Congress as an independent entity. With the transition from communitarian nationalism to secular Indian Nationalism in the 1920s and the 1930s, tension began to appear between the Congress and the Akalis on various issues from time to time: as in the deliberations of the Moti Lal Nehru Committee, the award given by Ramsay Macdonald, and the issue of support to the British government in the Second World War. Much more serious than all these issues was that of Pakistan.  The historical situation of the 1940s obliged the Akalis to think of the Sikh future in face of the growing possibility of Pakistan being created with the consent of the Indian National Congress. In this context, we hear of ‘Khalistan’ for the first time in 1940.

The term Khalistan was used by a medical doctor, V.S. Bhatti, as the title of a pamphlet, published soon after the Lahore Resolution of the All India Muslim League in 1940, popularly known as the ‘Pakistan Resolution’. Bhatti’s Khalistan was meant to be a counterblast to the idea of Pakistan assumed to be embodied in the Lahore Resolution.  Covering much of the area between the Chenab and the Jamuna, the Khalistan of Bhatti was meant to serve as a buffer state between India and Pakistan.  With the Maharaja of Patiala as its head, Khalistan was to be a ‘theocratic’ state, consisting of several federating units.

A corridor was to link it with the Arabian Sea. Master Tara Singh, who was President of the Shiromani Akali Dal at this time, denounced the pamphlet for making the confusion created by the Muslim League more confounding. Two conferences were organized by Baba Gurdit Singh of Komagata Maru to popularize the idea of Khalistan. Maulana Abul Kalam Azad expressed his disapproval of Khalistan by stating that some Akalis were using the Congress platform to propagate the idea of Sikh Raj for scuttling the idea of Pakistan.

The term Khalistan was never appropriated by the Akalis. However, they came up with counterproposals in their opposition to the idea of Pakistan in the 1940s. With the prospect of freedom coming closer, their concern for the future became greater. In March-April 1942 Stafford Cripps conceded in principle that it was not obligatory for a province to join the Indian federation. This concession appeared to carry the implication that the Punjab could become an autonomous political unit outside the Indian state. The Akali leaders did not like to be subordinated permanently to Muslim majority. The Sikh All-Parties Committee submitted to Cripps the proposal of a province with different boundaries and different proportions of the three major communities of the Punjab. The name given to the province of their conception was ‘Azad Punjab’. This gave the impression as if it was meant to be an independent state. Keen to sell the idea, the Akali leaders explained that this province was meant to be a part of the Indian federation. The term azad was meant to suggest that each community of this province would be free of the fear of domination by another community. The Muslims and Hindus of this province would account for the bulk of its population, with 40 per cent each. The Sikhs would form the remaining 20 per cent. Rooted in a genuine fear that the creation of Pakistan would place the Sikhs under the political domination of a hostile community for ever, the Azad Punjab scheme was essentially a defensive strategy adopted in response to the recognition of the idea of Pakistan by the British Government through the Cripps proposals and by the Congress through its resolution of 2 April 1942. In their opposition to the idea of Pakistan, the Sikh leaders did not hesitate to share platforms with the leaders of the Hindu Mahasabha who stood for India as a single political unit.  Unlike Khalistan, the Azad Punjab was to be a part of India; it was also to have a democratic constitution.  All that the Sikhs could hope to gain was possibly an effective collaborative role in the affairs of Azad Punjab.

The Azad Punjab remained on the political agenda of the Akali leaders for about two years. After the ‘C.R. Formula’ and the Gandhi-Jinnah talks on its basis, the Azad Punjab scheme was theoretically modified in two ways. Its name was dropped to bring in the idea of a Sikh state and this state was meant to be sovereign. However, in terms of the religious composition of the people in this state there was hardly any change. Furthermore, its creation was conditional upon the creation of Pakistan.  During the second half of 1944 the idea of this conditional sovereign Sikh state was advocated not only by the Akalis but also by many other Sikh leaders. This viewpoint was spelt out in a memorandum submitted to the Sapru Reconciliation Committee early in 1945 by Sikh leaders who represented nearly the entire community. The memorandum underlined the fact that, accounting for four million persons in British India, the Sikhs were numerically next only to Hindus and Muslims. But their political, economic and historical importance was much greater than their numbers. Their contribution to the defence and economy of the country was unique. The Punjab was their ‘holy’ land as well as their homeland. Nonetheless, the constitutional reforms of 1935 had reduced them to ‘a state of political subjugation’. The Hindus as well as Muslims had disowned their mother tongue in favour of Hindi and Urdu. Discrimination was exercised against the Sikhs even in matters of religion. The Sikhs were opposed to ‘any partition of India on a communal basis’. However, if the Pakistan scheme was accepted they would ‘insist on the creation of separate Sikh State’. The primary demand of the memorandum was a strong, united India and weightage for the Sikhs in a reorganized Punjab.

The Sikh leaders in general and the Akali leaders in particular tried to promote their idea of a Sikh state in 1945.  At the time of the Simla Conference in June-July, Master Tara Singh met Lord Wavell and emphasized that the Sikhs were strongly opposed to the creation of Pakistan.  At the same time he expressed the view that if Pakistan was to be created Jinnah must agree to the creation of a separate state for the Sikhs. The Akalis fought the elections of 1945-6 in cooperation with but independently of the Congress. Opposition to Pakistan, and not a Sikh state, was the foremost item on their agenda. The landslide in favour of the Muslim League more than neutralized their own unprecedented success in the elections. From a mere possibility, Pakistan advanced now to the stage of probability. Two days before the arrival of the Cabinet Mission in March 1946, the Shiromani Akali Dal passed a resolution in favour of ‘the creation of a Sikh State’.  When Master Tara Singh met the Cabinet Mission he underlined the fact that the Sikhs were opposed to any division of India, but if a division was decided upon, a separate state should be created for the Sikhs with the right to federate with Hindustan or Pakistan.  Giani Kartar Singh was more categorical and asked for a separate Sikh state irrespective of whether or not Pakistan was created. However, the pleas and arguments of the Sikh leaders cut no ice with the Cabinet Mission.  Its recommendations went not only in favour of the idea of Pakistan but also against any reorganization of the Punjab. The idea of a Sikh state was thus completely set aside. In theory, the Akalis had the option to seek concessions from Jinnah as the condition of their consent to opt for Pakistan. But they favoured the idea of getting the Punjab partitioned with the support of the Congress. During the last year of colonial rule, the Akalis worked in close cooperation with the Congress, and no Sikh leader talked of a Sikh state.

Understandably, the most elaborate argument in support of a sovereign Sikh state was published before the recommendations of the Cabinet Mission were made public. In April 1946, Gurbachan Singh of Sikh National College, Lahore, and Lal Singh Gyani of Sikh Missionary College, Amritsar, published The Idea of the Sikh State on the premise 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 mean ‘slavery’ for the Sikhs who too constituted a ‘nation’. The Sikhs had the right to ‘self-determination’, admitted to be the ‘right of nations all over the world’. As stated in the then recent resolution of the Shiromani Akali Dal, 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’.  This proposed state was to be ‘democratic in constitution’; it was to have ‘a socialistic economic structure’; it was to give ‘full protection’ to the minorities.

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 Mahatma 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 demands went unheeded, and the Communal Award was given. The provincial autonomy established on its basis caused terrible hardships to the Sikhs. Their religious rights were sought to be thwarted and their ‘national’ language, Punjabi, was sought to be suppressed. In 1940 came the Pakistan Resolution of the All India Muslim League. The Indian National Congress sought to appease the Muslims at the cost of the Sikhs. This disillusioned the Sikhs. In this situation they put forth the ‘Azad Punjab Scheme’. Its purpose was to ensure that the Sikhs held ‘the balance of power’ in the new province. They were canvassing support for this idea when ‘Gandhi-Raja 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’.

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 in such a state is bound to be socialistic, in accordance with the traditions of the Sikh society, and the inner urge of the hardy, self-respecting Sikh peasantry.

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. They established a theocratic political organization first, and then a monarchical system. They 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 parallel Government’ in the form of the SGPC 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 had come to be treated as ‘communities’, with the result that these ‘nations’ were sought to be subordinated to the Indian Nation. The Sikhs had come out of this illusion ‘fostered by the lust for domination by Hindu majority’. Having formed a true conception of their status, they 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 their point 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’. More specifically, this ‘Sikh Zone’ covered the Lahore and Jullundur Divisions, parts of the Ambala and Multan Divisions, the Sikh princely 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 80 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 of the Sikh state of their conception. Nevertheless, they refer to ‘minorities’ within the Sikh state to whom a free, prosperous, happy and contented life is promised.  But if the Sikhs were to be politically dominant in the Sikh state, it could not have a democratic constitution because the Sikhs could not form a majority in the area of the Sikh state. Or, was it simply assumed that there would be no absolute ‘majority’ in the Sikh state?  If so, the Sikh state differed from the Azad Punjab only in being sovereign. In no sense then could it be called ‘a Sikh state’.

We can see that the pamphlet on Khalistan had nothing to do with the Akalis. Its idea appealed to some Sikhs who were actually opposed to them. The Azad Punjab scheme involved reorganization to ensure that no religious community was in absolute majority in the reorganized politico-administrative unit of the Indian State. The relationship of this unit with the Indian State was not spelt out, but it may not be unsafe to assume that it was something like ‘provincial autonomy’. The Sikh state conditionally demanded by the Akalis was different from the Azad Punjab essentially in being sovereign, rather than autonomous. This was true of their later demand for a sovereign state irrespective of whether or not Pakistan was created.  With the Sikhs being no more than 20 per cent within the proposed state, this sovereign state could not really become a ‘Sikh’ state. The proposal was neither clear nor realistic. There was no possibility of it being taken up seriously by the colonial administrators and politician even if some of them were sympathetic to the Sikhs.

In any case, after the elections of 1946 and the Cabinet Mission, the Akalis themselves were far more serious about the partition of the province in the hope of a better future for the Sikhs in the Indian Union. They had three basic concerns: adequate share in political power, promotion of Punjabi language in Gurmukhi script, and protection of their religious identity.

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