CHAPTER TWO
BETRAYAL OF COMMUNITY
The life of a Sikh is a long drawn battle for freedom, justice
and a continuing struggle for asserting one's right as a distinct
personality. Many schools of thought unsuccessfully attempted
to undermine its separate identity by terming it a part of Hindu
religion, but since the period of India's freedom movement, the
Sikhs have proved that they belong to a distinguished class, much
above the business community called Hindu. More than 60 % of men
in Indian National Army created by the hardliner freedom fighter,
Subhash Chandra Bose were Sikhs. In a nutshell, Sikhs' contribution
towards India's freedom movement was noteworthy. During British
rule more than 80 %. Sikhs suffered maximum executions, life imprisonment,
Jallianwala Bagh massacres in 1919,and indiscriminate killings
during Kuka movement, so on and so forth. Leaders like Pt.Jawahar
Lal Nehru, Mahatama Gandhi, Sardar Patel, tried befool the community
and got maximum sacrifices for pressurizing the British Empire
to quit. But still, these leaders used to say that Freedom does
not come with violence. Mahatama Gandhi even went on record by
calling it as most "unfortunate" when Ram Mohammad Singh
Azad alias Udham Singh assassinated General Micheal O' Dwyer in
London. In his promise to the Sikh community before India's independence,
Mahatama Gandhi had said-
"I ask you to accept my word and the Resolution of the Congress
that it will not betray a single individual, much less a community.
Let God be the witness of the bond that binds me and the Congress
to you. I venture to suggest that non-violent creed of the Congress
is the surest guarantee of good faith and our Sikh friends have
no reason to fear that it would betray them. For, the moment it
does so, the Congress would not only thereby seal its own doom
but that of the country too. Moreover, the Sikhs are brave people.
They know how to safeguard their rights by exercise of arms, if
it should ever come to that."
During the India's freedom movement, there were only three major
communities striving for separate identity, Hindus, Muslims and
Sikhs. Driven by a common potent urge to overthrow the foreign
yoke, the three communities were placed on a common platform.
But the Muslims apprehension failed to keep them together as Jinnah,
the shrewd Muslim leader could rightly foresee that the Hindu
community will not honor its commitment after India became Independent
and would enforce its will in the future. He therefore, decided
on behalf of his community to seek partition. The Sikhs too had
similar misgivings and fears concerning their future in free India,
but their cool hearted and innocent leaders failed to seek their
own separate homeland and trusted the promises made by Congress
leaders that after Independence, the Sikhs' interests would be
adequately protected through a satisfactory autonomous status
and constitutional safeguards. But all these promises proved to
be an utopian idea of the shrewd Congress rulers. Although the
Sikhs were given due importance and recognition in the Montague-Chelmsford
Report when it wrote:
" The Sikhs in Punjab are a distinct and important people;
they supply a gallant and valuable element to the Indian Army;
but they are everywhere in a minority and experiences has shown
that they go virtually unrepresented. To the Sikhs, therefore,
and to them alone, we propose to extend the system already adopted
in the case of Muslims."
But the Congress rulers and Hindu community started showering
its venomous policy towards the Sikhs when a Committee formed
by the Congress to frame the Constitution of India in 1928 upheld
the principle of communal reservation for the Muslims while denying
the same to the Sikhs and other minorities. But on persistent
protest of the Sikh leaders, in 1929 a resolution was passed in
the annual session of Congress at Lahore that "no constitutional
arrangement would be finalised without the consent of the Sikhs."
The famous Lahore resolution says, "No future constitution
would be acceptable to the Congress that did not give full satisfaction
to the Sikhs."
In 1946, the All India Congress working committee met at Calcutta
and Pt.Jawahar Lal Nehru reiterated the solemn undertaking of
giving an autonomous State within India to the Sikhs, in the following
flowery words:
"The brave Sikhs of the Punjab are entitled to special consideration.
I see nothing wrong in an area and a set-up in the North wherein
the Sikhs can also experience the glow of freedom."
When the decision to divide India into two was being taken, the
Sikhs had opposed it tooth and nail for the reason that they very
well knew that they would be the worst sufferers in the catastrophe
that was bound to follow the division. Inspite of their fears
and vehement opposition, India was divided. While India was celebrating
its independence on 15th August, 1947, Punjab witnessed the worst
period of tears and bloodshed in the wake of partition. Besides
other communities, thousands of Sikhs were brutally massacred
in the communal holocaust. More than five Lac Sikhs were forced
to abandon their homes and hearths and became refugees. Five rich
rivers that gave Punjab its name were split, leaving a truncated
homeland for the Sikhs. In addition, their most sacred shrines,
Nankana Sahib and several hundred others, were left in Pakistan,
which became a foreign country for them. Soon, a feeling of distrust
and discrimination started brewing in the Sikh Community and they
felt that they have been cheated in the Hindu dominated country.
It was then, the founding father of the Indian Constitution, Dr.
Bhim Rao Ambedkar said in the Constituent Assembly on November,
25, 1947 :
"Countrymen, the minorities have placed their trust in you
and you should not commit the folly of betraying your trustees,
otherwise, the consequences shall be extremely terrible since
the minorities are an explosive power which, if it explodes, shall
blow away the entire structure of the whole nation. The history
of Europe presents ample and horrifying testimony of this."
The main cause of anguish and resentment among the Sikhs with
the Indian government is that inspite of repeated assurances and
undertaking that Sikhs would be given a separate state with its
own administration, within India, no such area has been provided
till date. The net result is that today, the Sikhs have no homeland
to be proud of, no religious freedom to cherish and no political
independence to celebrate. They have been reduced to a minority
in their own state and their security forces watch them with suspicion
of being secessionist or anti-national. It was in this background
that the working committee of the Shiromani Akali Dal passed a
resolution rejecting the draft of the Constitution:
"Sikhs resolve and proclaim their determination to resist,
through all legitimate means, all such attempts to devalue and
liquidate the Sikh people in a free India, and consequently, demand
that the following steps should be taken forthwith by the rulers
of India to assure and enable the Sikhs to live as respectable
and equal citizens of the Union of India, namely first, the Sikh
areas deliberately and intentionally cut off and not included
in the new Punjab to be set up, namely, the areas of Gurdaspur
District including Dalhousie, Ambala district including Chandigarh,
Pinjore, Kalka and Ambala Sadar, the entire Una tehsil of Hoshiarpur
district, the areas of Nalagarh called Desh, the tehsil of Sirsa,
the sub-tehsils of Tohana and Guhla and Rattia Block of district
Hissar, Shahbad block of district Karnal and the contiguous portion
of the Ganganagar district of Rajasthan must now be immediately
included in the new proposed Punjab so as to bring all contiguous
Sikh areas into an administrative unit, to be the Sikh homeland,
wherein the Sikh interests are of special importance, within the
Union of India, and Second, such a new Punjab should be granted
an autonomous constitutional status on the analogy of the status
of Jammu & Kashmir as was envisaged in the Constitution Act
of India in the year 1950."
In 1966, the Punjab State was divided into Haryana and Himachal
Pradesh. Most of its resources and areas of high fertility were
given away. The present Punjab is only a one third of what was
actually called Punjab before Independence. Some parts of it like
Lahore had gone into Pakistan and remaining into Haryana and Himachal
Pradesh. Major part of its water resources is shared by Haryana
and Rajasthan. The State which was known for its richness has
today become so abysmally low that its farmers are forced to commit
suicides for not able to live with dignity and self-respect, courtesy
the betrayal of the Central Government which has always discriminated
against the people of Punjab.
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