We resume our talk with the Musalman, What is sauce for the Muslim Goose can’t but be sauce for the Sikh Gander. The Muslim claims to be a separate nation and reposes no trust in the solemn assurances and promises of the Hindu on the ground that keeping in view the ratio between the relative strength of the two communities there is no prospect of those promises being honored. But how in the same breath he preaches the Sikhs, a Community of 60 lacs, to put faith in the promises of Muslim community, 9 crores strong, Passes one’s comprehension, Mr. Jinnah has been told that though the Sikhs are not worship pees of land or territory land. To them it is a country of special sanctity, there being no less than 700 sacred Sikh shrines spersed here and there, Many cities and towns are the offsprings of the colonizing efforts of their Gurus or ancestors. Historically to think of the Punjab is to think of the Sikhs In solemn truth the Punjab is the creation of the Sikh colonist, the Sikh warrior and the Sikh cultivator. Mr. Jinnah can’t be so ignorant of history as to think otherwise. But the demand of the Sikhs takes away a morsel, by no means mean, of his political menu that he had prepared for the Muslims and he feels naturally perturbed. When the demand of the Azad Punjab was put to him he complained that his Pakistan was being maimed. Yet he forgot that whereas conceding the Sikh demand means maiming his Pakistan, its foregoing means total political extermination for the Sikh. Its acceptance means give and take, live and let live ; refusal obliges the com- munity to fight for its very life.
Neither political theory nor practical politics has yet prescribed any minimum unit of area or population as essential to constitute a state. The experiment of building small nation states on the principle of national self-determination is not new in the political world. The Republic of Czechoslovakia came into existence in 1918. Denmark with a population of 37 lacs was not only an independent state but enjoyed the imperial luxury of having a colony as well (Greenland). Dominican Republic enjoys a population not large than 19 lacs, Finland had a population of 40 lacs when her independence was recognized in 1917. The Sons of Free Honduras do not member more than 11,05.504. American philanthropy made a gift of independent existence to Liberia with a population of 15 lacs only. The independent state of Luxemburg has an area of 999 square miles and a population of 296,913. The Treaty of Versailles created the city of Danzig as a free state under the population of the League of Nations. Constitutional pandits need not frown if a nation of sixty million ask for an independent homeland. It is not the number of digits but the intensity of the feeling and the cultural homogeneity of the men behind these figures that matters in deciding whether they shall have a free homeland or not; political consciousness belongs not to numerals but to men, Sixty lac is not a poor number.
It may be objected that the Sikhs don’t happen to be in majority anywhere in the Punjab except perhaps in the district of Amrit- sar. Perfectly right. That is the very cause for our putting forward the demand for a separate state. It is the cause and not the reason. A nation of 60 lacs should always be condemned to subjection to another nation is gross injustice. Had we been not in minority there could have been no occasion for us to demand a separate state. The very problem of minority gets resolved by conceding the demand for a separate state, Being a minority we don’t ask for the rights of a majority. What we ask for is separate existence where we may not complain of being ruled by any other majority nation, nor any majority should com- plain of the veto power being in the possession of a minority. It would have been preposterous if the Sikh, being in a minority, had asked for the rights of a majority. We don’t wish to rule over others, nor do we desire being ourselves subjected to any body’s rule. In fact, this discussion about majority-minority nexus is irrelevant to the Sikh demand for a separate state.
There can be different basis for deciding upon the actual area to be bounded by the Sikh State. One can be the desirable density of population. Agriculture is the mainstay of a vast majority of the Sikhs and agriculture can neither tolerate nor require a higher density of population than borne or needed by trade and industry. Punjab is the granary of India or to use the modern nomenclature a surplus province as regards the production of food grains. Not that its soil effuses food grains. This surplus is the offspring of the wedlock between the virgin soil and the efforts of the finest cultivators known to Indian husbandry that the Sikhs are. So the territory should be adequate for the Sikh cultivator to exercise his agrarion talent and skill acquired through generations.
Another basis can be the value of the existing holdings in the Sikh hands, In the British Punjab, the Sikhs pay in the neighborhood of 26.6 J of the total land revenue. Keeping in view the total area of the British Punjab to be 49,000 square miles, the territorial share of the Sikh State can be rightly put as 26,000 square miles, To this we should make a reason- able allowance for expansion. The Sikhs have registered the highest increase in population as is evident from the study of the Census Report of 1931 and 1941. Let us put the total area to be 30,000 square miles. .
The boundary line of Necessity will be a meandering line so as to exclude areas overwhelmingly Muslim and include predominantly Sikh areas and other places of historical or religious importance to the Sikhs such as sacred places and shrines. There is nothing sacrosanct about: rivers and mountains. Men press them into service in their onward march towards material progress. They have no rights. Rights belong only to men and nations, not to dead material nature. Maps are drawn, obliterated and redrawn by men; they do not control the destiny of nations. They are the visual expression of waves of material forces; they have to be adjusted according to the material requiremenrs and not vice versa.
But I am not giving a Blue Print of the demand. That caste is left to natural political leaders aided by practical experts. I have only made a reference to some of the details of the demand in passing. There can be no finality or degeneration about these details. They shall properly form the subject of thoughtful deliberation of wiser heads of the community. My only concern here is to present in bold relief the principle of the demand for a separate state for the Sikhs.
The demand rests on an implied resumption of exchange of population. The states are to provide facilities for such exchange. A state Commission or a Board shall have to be constituted to evaluate and purchase the property of emigrant population on reasonable terms, reserving the right of refusal for the property so purchased to the immigrants. The Muslim will be given facilities to resettle in the Muslim India while the Hindus may go over to the Hindu India. Some Hindus or Muslims, out of sheer conservatism, would not like to migrate. They do so, of course, at their own risk. Of course the Sikh state shall provide them due protection as the Sikhs outside their own state will be guaranteed protection of their tights by the states in which they happen to reside. In the matter of their respective materials, the states, needless to say, shall reciprocate.
The realm of inter-state relations is a vast ground for speculative thinking. Those who apprehend the spectacle of warring camps are either false prophets or covert fascists working with the armoury of One Country, One Nation, One State, One Party and One Leader. When we part by negotiation, we lay the foundation of peace and the hope for building material understanding and relations. In many matters of common concern we shall become allies to smile and swim together. There can be peace among equals, not among masters and slaves—a relation fraught with strife. If the American States had not recognized and promoted equality of political status inter se, the United States of America would have been to this day an arena of strife and clashes; the Swiss federation would not have come into being. The avenue to peace is the increasing faith in human rights, rights of nations and not rights of laws and countries.
