The march of political events led the Shiromani Akali Dal, the chief organisation that steers the Sikh nation’s ship of political life to adopt a resolution in 1946 embodying the demand of the Sikh State. To moralize public opinion at large on the issue, the Dal treating its own resolution as a sort of referendum invited the opinion form each and every institution and organisation of the community. The office of the Dal as well as the Sikh Press has been deluged with copies of resolutions endorsing in to the demand for the Sikh State. The demand reflects the inmost deep yearning of the nationality.
Historically this is not the first time that the nation has asked for a State. The demand was first sponsored by Guru Gobind Singh when he baptized the Sikhs and turned them into “Singhs.” In fact the whole process of slow growth of full national cociousness was gone through in a shortened in by the spiritual contact with the great spiritual Alcheimst. That slow transformation was replaced by a miraculously sudden Metamorphosis, at such an amazing acceleration that seconds Represented centuries. The Master uttered the magic formula, “Henceforth you are anew man, forger your past race, caste and creed 3; forget your Past self, you are reborn a member of a new nation.” Borrowing biological nomenclature there was sudden creation as contrasted with evolution in the spiritual or national creation, A New’ species of nationality came into being.
Our ancestry seconded the Proposal nor with words but with their very flesh and blood. The nationhood did not take long in ripening into statehood. The State, the nation’s home was built on the carcase of the Moghal empire, The home was ultimately lost to a usurper, superior forcing invader but not lying down and without a struggle which elicited admiration even from the victor enemy. The state vanished but the nation survived. It Remained in political hibernation under the adverse circumstances created by foreign subjection,
Everywhere in human history we find nations persistingly demanding a home for them and if denied or deprived, fighting for it tooth and nail. The greatest distress of the Jews as Mr. Silverman puts it is in their sense of homelessness. The slogon of divorce of politics from religion may have some appeal to the Hindu to whom religion is a matter of faith and not a pattern of, social conduct Certainly is difficult to describe it is not religion wi,at Hinduism is. it is a name given to an adventure of culture, ceremonies, superstitions with a matryx of religious feeling. The common Hindu has virtually bade goodbye to religion. It is something To a Sikh religion or the Pandit to conjure with. To Sikh religion matters the most. He intensely to love it. This he obviously cannot under the new political dispensation when he has a free home to himself and lives host for whose as a nest mercy of his idiosyncratic host for whose temper he possesses the least social affinity. He has nothing in common with Hindu or the Muslim except that they all belong to the species of homo sapiens.
Democracy requires for its successful working a homogeneous society, b sharply not likely to be dis reputedly felt divisions of at language, religion and culture. Even the father of democracy in Greece could not accommodate the slaves and excluded them.
Right of freedom of conscience for a com-munity may embellish a constitution and yet remain an unreality unless she is politically free. All freedom ultimately depends on political freedom. Rights secured otherwise, say through pacts are myths to console oneself with. Pacts have no higher value than a scrap of paper ; their life and honor are in direct pro-portion to the relative strength of the coven-anting parties. Religion for instance enjoins the Sikh to eat jhatka meat. The practice prima facie involves no social injury to the Muslims or for that matter to anyone. We may have a pact with a Muslim statesman in powers whose un-Islamic urbanity of mind may con-cede to us the freedom of eating as we desire. Well and good if the matter rest there. But it does not. What about the ordinary Muslim—the Muslim in the Mohall’s, the Muslim in the village who knows to his pride that his com-munity is in power, Islam is ascendant, the green flag is fluttering. And all this to countenance such un-Islamic practices! Shall the might of law working through Muslim instruments protect or even pretend to protect the afore-said freedom? Will the state indulge in the luxury of arming every Sikh with one police man (who shall be a Muslim whose baton will hesitate a hundred times before coming into play in case of conflict between a Sikh and Muslim) to prevent the highly probable encroachment of the freedom of conscience ? The Sikh mind is clear as to the answer to the question. Instances could be multiplied.
How can the Sikhs with a living religious faith, a vivid and vivacious nationality and the memory of their independent kingdom still fresh be made to accept ad infinitum the position of being under the Muslim rule. In speculation as to possible treatment we shall reclaim at the hands of Muslim or Hindu has no bearing on the point. A nation must have a home which she can call her own and where she is the master of her destiny unless she chooses to sign a warrant for her slow extinction. If choice is forced on the Sikhs between slow extermination and a speedy death-struggle against sister communities, I have no doubt they will not hesitate in making the choice in favor of the latter. Let nobody read any threat into these lines. A manly nation does not promote but at the same time does not shirk a fight especially when her very existence is designed to be wiped out. Even a worm turns.
