Issue 43 Vol II, July 15, 2007

H I S T O R Y

Akalis and Khalistan-3

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.

The partition brought about an important demographic change in the East Punjab.  The Hindus formed more than 60 per cent of the total population of this state. Their leaders were anxious to retain this majority status.  The Sikhs formed about 35 per cent of the total population, a much higher percentage than what they had in the British Punjab. Furthermore, they were concentrated in six districts in which they were actually more 50 per cent: Amritsar, Gurdaspur, Jalandhar, Hoshiarpur, Ludhiana and Ferozepur. Then there were the princely states in which the Sikhs had a majority on the margin. This demographic change eventually came to have an important bearing on their politics. Used to weightage in the British Punjab, the Akali leaders thought of weightage first in free India as well.  However, the idea of weightage to religious minorities was categorically discarded by the Constituent Assembly. The Akalis demanded proportionate representation on the basis of joint electorates, with the right to contest general unreserved seats.  This too was rejected by the Constituent Assembly. The Akali members of the Assembly were so resentful that they refused to sign the Constitution adopted on 26 January 1950.

For some share in political power, the Akali members of the Punjab Legislative Assembly joined the Congress party in March 1948. Three months later Giani Kartar Singh was included in the cabinet in place of the Congress Sikh member Ishar Singh Majhail.  Within a year, Gopi Chand Bhargava was replaced by Bhim Sen Sachar as the Chief Minister of the Punjab. In consultation with Giani Kartar Singh, Sachar evolved a language formula in 1949 which is known as the Sachar formula.  A Punjabi zone was created under this scheme by adding the Ropar and Kharar tahsils of the Ambala district to the six Sikh majority districts. Punjabi was to be the medium of education at the primary level in all the schools of this zone. Hindi was to be introduced in the last year of primary education. In the Hindi zone, the position of Punjabi was to be reversed. The Akalis had some reservations about details but they welcomed the formula as a reasonable solution of the language problem. Unfortunately, this scheme was not acceptable to the Arya Samaj leaders of the Punjabi zone: they refused to implement it. In fact the reaction among the ‘Hindu’ leaders was so strong that Sachar lost his Chief Ministership. Bhargava was back in office by October 1949. The Akali members became ineffective in the new ministry.  Before long, the Working Committee of the Akali Dal decided to revoke the merger of the Akalis with the Congress on the grounds that the Congress leaders had belied all their hopes of constructive sympathy and support.

The idea of reorganization of states on the basis of language had been an important item on the agenda of the Congress since 1920. After 1947, however, the Congress leaders were no longer enthusiastic about it. In 1948 the Dar Commission recommended that no linguistic state be created without the consent of a substantial minority included in its area. Its report was accepted by a committee consisting of Nehru, Patel and Sitarammaya who made a recommendation of their own that, in north India, no provincial boundaries should be changed irrespective of the merit of any such proposal. The question of language appeared to carry political implications as well. In 1950 Hukam Singh tried to clarify that the demand for a Punjabi-speaking state was democratic and secular.  The Working Committee of the Akali Dal passed a resolution in favour of a state on the basis of Punjabi language and culture. Some of the Hindu leaders of the Punjab reacted to the demand by telling their followers to return Hindi as their mother tongue for the Census of 1951.  They had canvassed for Hindi before 1947 also, but now their idea was to thwart the formation of a Punjabi speaking state by demonstrating that there was a substantial Hindi-speaking minority in the proposed Punjabi-speaking state. In 1952 the Akalis fought the elections on the issue of the Punjabi-speaking state. But they were defeated.

Before the year ended, Potti Sriramula died during a fast for the creation of Andhra Pradesh. The Prime Minister announced the separation of Andhra from Madras as a Telugu-speaking state. The movement for linguistic states gained momentum. Before the end of 1953 it was announced that states Reorganization Commission would be formed. The Akali leaders prepared their case on the basis of pre-1947 data.  According to them there was an area of 90,000 sq km in which nearly 12 million persons spoke Punjabi. The Sikh population in this area was much less than a half of the total.  Nevertheless, the proposal was countered by the protagonists of Maha Punjab who advocated the merger of Himachal Pradesh and a few districts of Uttar Pradesh as well as the Patiala and East Punjab States Union (PEPSU) with the East Punjab. The Commission came to the conclusion that the majority of the people were opposed to the creation of a Punjabi-speaking state, and recommended merger of Himachal Pradesh and PEPSU with the East Punjab. The Akalis rejected the Commission’s report on the day following its release on 9 October 1955.

Now a formula was evolved that met the essential demands of the Akalis without the creation of a Punjabi-speaking state. This came to be known as the Regional Formula. PEPSU alone was to be merged with the East Punjab, and the whole area was to be divided into two ‘regions’.  One of these was to be the Punjabi region in which the medium of school education was to be Punjabi. The other region was to give the same status to Hindi.  Both the regions were to have regional committees for legislation on fourteen important subjects.  The Regional Formula came closest to accommodating the political and cultural interests of the Akalis. They accepted the scheme. The Working Committee of the Akali Dal decided to have no political programme of its own and to concentrate on the religious, educational, cultural, social and economic interests of the Sikh Panth.

The reorganized Punjab state was inaugurated on 1 November 1956 when Partap Singh Kairon was the Chief Minister. The Akali legislators joined the Congress party. The Hindi Raksha Samiti agitated against the scheme and Kairon remained reluctant to allow the regional committees to legislate. In fact he tried to keep the former Akali leaders out of the Legislative Assembly and to dislodge the Akalis from the SGPC. Given Kairon’s attitude and outlook, the Regional Formula had little chance of success. Within a few years, the Akalis felt obliged to revive the movement for a Punjabi-speaking state.

The agitation launched by Master Tara Singh in 1960 proved to be a failure.  In 1962 his place was taken by Sant Fateh Singh who presented the demand as clearly a linguistic demand. Both the leaders demonstrated their patriotism during India’s war with China.  During the war with Pakistan in 1965 Sant Fateh Singh was all out to support the government. Nehru had died in 1964 and Kairon had been assassinated early in 1965. There were new actors on the scene. After the ceasefire in September 1965 the Union Home Minister announced that the issue of the Punjabi-speaking state would be examined all afresh. Lal Bahadur Shastri appointed a Parliamentary Committee under the Chairmanship of Hukam Singh, who was now the Speaker of the Lok Sabha. To advise the Parliamentary Committee, a Cabinet Sub-Committee was also constituted. It consisted of Indira Gandhi, Y.B. Chavan and Mahavir Tyagi. Indira Gandhi became the Prime Minister in January 1966 after the death of Lal Bahadur Shastri. The Punjabi-speaking state was inaugurated on 1 November 1966.

Contrary to the general impression, the new state was not created in accordance with the recommendations of the Parliamentary Committee constituted by Lal Bahadur Shastri.  Indira Gandhi was unhappy with this committee, especially because of the views of its Chairman. She makes it abundantly clear in her My Truth why she was not in favour of creating a Punjabi-speaking state: she did not wish to deviate from a well considered policy of the Congress, and she did not wish to let down the ‘Hindu supporters’ of the Congress in the Punjab. Both these concerns arose from electoral considerations. She did not wait for the recommendations of the Parliamentary Committee. A resolution of the Congress in March 1966 accepted the principle of reorganization of the Punjab. The commission known as the Shah Commission was appointed. The terms of reference given to the Commission stipulated that the Census of 1961 was to be used for data on language, with the tahsil as the basic unit. Consequently, many Punjabi-speaking villages and Chandigarh were left out of the Punjab. Furthermore, the Union Government took over the power and irrigation projects and became the arbiter of river waters in case the two new states failed to come to an agreement. Sant Fateh Singh protested against all these decisions even before the new state was inaugurated. In December 1966 he went on fast on the issue of Chandigarh, but the issue remained unresolved.

The idea of autonomy had begun to be aired before the reorganization of the Punjab in 1966. In May 1965 ‘Justice’ Gurnam Singh, leader of the opposition in the Punjab Assembly, moved a resolution at a conference in Ludhiana in favour of a self-determined status for Sikhs within the Indian Union. It was interpreted by the language press in the Punjab as a demand for a sovereign Sikh state. In July 1965 Master Tara Singh, who was no longer influential, gave an elaborate argument in support of the idea of ‘Sikh Homeland’ as an autonomous state within the Indian Union. Opposing the Punjab Reorganization Bill in the Parliament, Kapur Singh referred to Nehru’s statement of July 1946: ‘I see no wrong in an area and a setup in the North wherein the Sikhs can also experience a glow of freedom’. Kapur Singh was in favour of a Sikh Homeland with a special internal constitution and a special relationship with the Centre irrespective of the percentage of Sikhs in this Homeland.

The experience of the Akalis as the ruling party in the new Punjab between March 1967 and June 1971 convinced them that they could not exercise power adequately, or for long, under the constitution which placed the states at a great political and economic disadvantage in relation to the ruling party at the Centre.  Within three years the Punjab was twice placed under the President’s rule, a euphemism for a virtual rule of the ruling party. The Akalis lost the elections in 1972. A year later came the Anandpur Sahib Resolution. Its basic emphasis was on a genuinely federal system with only defence, foreign affairs, communications, and currency as the prerogatives of the Centre. Couched partly in the language of the advocates of a Sikh Homeland, it was interpreted by the opponents of the Akalis as ‘secessionist’. The Akalis returned to power in 1977 and in a crowded conference held at Ludhiana in 1978, they reiterated their stand without any ambiguity in favour of a federal system.

Meanwhile the issues of Chandigarh and the river waters had got complicated. Sant Fateh Singh announced his decision to go on fast on 26 January 1970 and to immolate himself on 1 February if Chandigarh was not given to the Punjab. Indira Gandhi awarded Chandigarh to the Punjab. The award was meant to be implemented five years later, in 1975. At the same time she awarded Fazilka tahsil to Haryana with a corridor on the Punjab border with Rajasthan to link the awarded territory with the state of Haryana.

During the Emergency of 1975, the Akalis put up the strongest opposition to Indira Gandhi. She gave her award on the river waters in 1976.  The non-riparian Rajasthan was given 8.00 maf of water. Of the remaining 7.20 maf, she gave 0.20 to Delhi and divided the rest in two equal shares for Haryana and the Punjab.  Thus, the Punjab was to get 3.5 maf of water, which was less than what the state was actually using. The Akalis took up this matter with Morarji Desai as the Prime Minister. He could tell the Rajasthan leaders that their state was not a part of the Indus basin but he was not prepared to change the award.  He had no objection, however, to the Punjab going to the Supreme Court for adjudication. The matter was lying with the Supreme Court when the Akalis lost the elections in 1980.

In July 1981 Sant Harchand Singh Longowal presided over a World Sikh Conference which directed the Akali Dal to plan dharmyudh for pursuing the Anandpur Sahib Resolution. An agitation was launched in September and memoranda of demands were sent to Indira Gandhi. She met the Akali leaders on 16 October 1981 primarily to identify issues which could then be taken up by the Foreign Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao. A meeting with him later appeared to the Akali leaders to be ‘a waste of time’. They met the Prime Minister again on 26 November.  Indira Gandhi was not in favour of revising her earlier decision on  the river waters but she gave assurances of much larger supplies of water and energy to the Punjab in the future on the basis of more scientific exploitation of resources. Within five weeks, she added 0.72 maf of water to the Punjab’s share from an estimated surplus of 1.32 maf. At the same time, she gave 0.60 maf out of this surplus to Rajasthan, making it clear to the Akalis that their talk of Rajasthan not being a riparian state had no relevance. All the three Chief Ministers concerned accepted this decision. The Chief Minister of the Punjab was obliged to withdraw its case from the Supreme Court.  It was decided to complete the Sutlej-Yamuna Link (SYL) canal for Haryana in two years.  On their third and last meeting with the Prime Minister on 5 April 1982 the Akali leaders got the impression that she had already made up her mind  to let the issues wait.

It soon became clear, however, that Indira Gandhi was keen to see   the SYL canal constructed. The Akalis launched the nahar roko (stop the canal) morcha. It failed to evoke much response. Another call failed to mobilize the peasantry. On 4 August 1982, the Akalis decided at last to launch a dharmyudh morcha to get all their demands accepted. Before long, Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindrawale joined the dharmyudh morcha. It became increasingly difficult for the government to find room for the agitating volunteers in the existing jails. Indira Gandhi decided to release the Akali volunteers on the Diwali day in October. Swaran Singh hammered out a mutually acceptable formula on the important issues of Chandigarh, river waters, and the Centre-State relations.  A cabinet sub-committee consisting of Pranab Mukherjee, R. Venkataraman, P.V. Narsimha Rao and P.C. Sethi accepted the formula and Swaran Singh told the Akali leaders that the government had approved of it.  But the statement placed before the Parliament turned out to be materially different from what had been agreed upon. The Akalis decided to hold a demonstration in Delhi at the time of the Asiad. Amarinder Singh negotiated another mutually acceptable agreement. But this was sabotaged by Bhajan Lal, the Chief Minister of Haryana, with the assurance that he would not let the Akalis pass through his state. No Sikh was allowed to pass through Haryana without being humiliated.

Sant Longowal asked the Akali legislators to resign their seats with effect from 21 February 1983. He also gave a call to ex-servicemen for a meeting at Amritsar.  Nearly 5,000 responded. In April 1983 the Akalis organized their rasta roko (block the roads) campaign. Twenty six persons were killed in the violence that erupted in spite of their peaceful intention.  In June, they organized their rail roko (stop the trains) campaign and the government decided not to run any trains.  Yet there was some violence. The kam roko (stop work) campaign of August 1983 proved to be a great success. And so was the bandh they organized in February 1984 to demonstrate their strength and their trust in non-violent agitation. Within a week, a meeting of five Akali leaders, five cabinet ministers, five secretaries and fifteen leaders of the opposition parties was held at Delhi. The meeting came close to a successful settlement but anti-Sikh violence was orchestrated in Haryana, and the Akali leaders returned to the Punjab.  Before the end of the month, the Akalis burnt at Delhi and Chandigarh the pages of the Constitution containing Article 25 (2)(b).  They were arrested, but the government also announced its willingness to amend the Article.  Early in March, Indira Gandhi appointed the Sarkaria Commission to go into Centre-State relations but the Akalis did not withdraw the morcha because her decision was unilateral.13  By this time, Indira Gandhi had decided to prepare secretly for an army action.

From the foregoing pages it is clear that the Akalis never demanded a sovereign state for the Sikhs after 1946. The demand for Sikh Homeland, standing in a special relationship with the Centre and having a special internal constitution, was put forward by individuals or small splinter groups of the Akalis.

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The Moorish Mosque
Ishtiaq Ahmed

There is a marble plaque built into the wall of the main mosque in the centre of Kaputhala town which reads as follows:

"The Moorish Mosque was constructed on the order of his Highness Maharaja Jagajit Singh Bahadur. The building operations were in progress between October 1926 and  March 1930. The total cost amounted to 4 lakh (400,000) rupees. The inauguration ceremony took place on the 14th March 1930 in the presence of His Highness the Maharaja who was accompanied by His Highness the Nawab Sadiq Mohd. Khan Bahadur, Ruler of Bahawalpur State. The congregation numbered over a lakh.

The existence of this mosque will bear an enduring testimony to His Highness' broadminded tolerance and solicitude for the welfare of his subjects."

Maharaja Jagajit Singh was indeed an extraordinarily enlightened and progressive ruler of a small princely state near Jullundhar in the undivided Punjab. The reason he chose a Moroccan style mosque was that he used to visit that North African Arab country regularly. The design of the Moorish Mosque was prepared by a Frenchman, M. Manteaux, who patterned it after the Qutbya Mosque in Marrakesh. It has a large compound paved with the purest marble. The artists of the Mayo School of Art, Lahore, decorated the inner dome.

On January 3, 2005 just before sunset I and my assistant Vicky arrived in Kapurthala. It was a journey back in time; a rendezvous with the dead and gone. The 1941 census gives the total population of the state as 378,389. Hindus, including the scheduled castes, were returned as 61,546; Muslims 213,557; and Sikhs 88,350. There were small numbers of Christians and other communities as well.

No local Muslims remained in the state after the partition. How and why that all changed is a puzzle I am still struggling to solve as I now approach the final chapters of my forthcoming book on the partition of the Punjab. The first and foremost reason for coming to Kapurthala was to interview Sardar Ranjit Singh Bhasin, a refugee from the village Thamali (Dhamali) of Rawalpindi district. He was one of those lucky 10-15 survivors while some 400 of his community lost their lives --including many women and children -- between March 7-13 1947 when their village was raided by Muslim marauders. Before visiting him I had been to Thamali and recorded eyewitness accounts of Muslims who still live in that village.

The second reason I came to Kapurthala was a promise I made to Maulana Mujathid Al-Hussaini whom I and Ahmad Salim interviewed on December 18, 2004 in his home in Faisalabad. When he learnt that I was going to visit Kapurthala he urged me to take pictures of the Moorish Mosque and two famous Sikh shrines, Gurdwara Hatth Sahib and Gurdwara Ber Sahib in the nearby town of Sultanpur Lodhi. Maulana Al-Hussaini hailed from Sultanpur Lodhi.

He strongly believed that had Maharaja Jagajit Singh been in Kapurthala the attacks on the Muslims would not have taken place. He was in Morocco or Europe in August 1947. His son, Tikka Sahib, however, was under the influence of the Akalis. He let loose a reign of terror on Muslims after August 17.

I have two other stories from Kapurthala and Sultanpur Lodhi to tell. During the same trip I and Vicky visited Hoshiarpur. We called upon the Congress Party office where we were invited home by the General Secretary District Congress Committee, Mr Rajnish Tandon. His wife told us the following story:

"I am originally from Kapurthala. One day a letter and a money order arrived from Pakistan for my father. It was from an old Muslim friend of his. They were like brothers once upon a time. When partition took place his friend had to leave for Pakistan. He had borrowed some money from my father, which he could not return before he left. In the letter he informed my father that he was lying on his deathbed and would be gone any moment.

He had to face very hard times in Pakistan and could not save money to pay back his debt, but was now returning it. He hoped my father would forgive him for taking so long. My father began to cry and wrote back to him that the loan was not important at all and he did not even remember it. He was very pleased to hear from him after all those years, but his heart was weeping that he could not be by his bedside at that crucial moment."

The fourth story was told to me by Sheikh Muhammad Farooq on December 13, 2004 at Rajgarh, Lahore. He narrated the following incident:

"My mother and sisters and I lived in Sultanpur Lodhi. My father had died, so there was no grown up man in our family. When the rioting started a Sikh friend of my father, Santa Singh, came to our help. He carried me on his shoulders while my mother and sisters walked behind him on the way to a refugee camp. Suddenly we were surrounded by a Sikh mob.

Those armed men wanted to kill me and my mother and take away my sisters. Santa Singh challenged them and said: "First you kill me and then can you touch this woman and children. They are like my family. Is this what the gurus taught you?" An old Sikh who was listening to him came forward and stood next to Santa Singh.

He said, "Let this Sikh keep his word. Do not molest this Muslim family". The mob dispersed upon hearing that."

Men like Maharaja Jagajit Singh and Santa Singh, one a royal and the other a common man, are in short supply in East Punjab. Now the controversial spiritual head of Dera Sacha Sauda and fanatics among the orthodox Sikhs call the shots and set the social agenda, which lacks complete commitment to the emancipation of the poor and needy.

Some time back the Indian Zee News showed a doctor refusing point-blank to hand over a newborn baby boy to his father, a Mazhabi Sikh (from so-called untouchable stock), because the latter could not pay the expenses for his delivery in his private clinic. The mother had died during the delivery. The poor family must have been forced to go to a private clinic because building and expanding government hospitals in proportion to the population growth have been grossly neglected ever since India switched over to neo-liberal economic growth.

The doctor wanted his money. He said the law was on his side!

[The author is a visiting senior research fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies (ISAS), National University of Singapore on leave from the University of Stockholm, Sweden as professor of political science. Email: isasia@nus.edu.sg Courtesy NEWS International, Pakistan]

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