- The betrayal of Sikh people by the dominant Hindu community of India begins as early as year 1929. In the winter of that year, 1929, at Lahore, Punjab, and the All Indian National Congress party held its conference at which time the late Mr. Gandhi, Pandit Nehru and his father, Moti Lal Nehru, all went and waited on the Sikh leader, Baba Kharak Singh, at the latter’s residence in Lahore. Baba Kharak Singh had the previous day headed a Sikh procession five hundred thousand strong that was described by the Times, of London, as:
“.,.a most impressive spectacle of human congregation that put the Congress show into shame and shade.”
These Hindu leaders then submitted a solemn assurance to the Sikh leader that after Indian achieved political freedom no constitution would be adopted by the majority Hindu community unless it was freely acceptable to Sikhs. This promise was thereupon incorporated into a formal policy resolution of the All India Congress Committee.
“.. Our Sikh friends have no reason to fear that it (Congress) will betray them…. Moreover the Sikhs are a brave people. They will know how to safeguard their rights by the exercise of arms if it should ever come to that…. Well, the Congress in its Lahore session passed resolution that it would not endorse any settlement with regard to the minority question that failed to satisfy any of the minorities concerned. What further assurance can the Congress give you to set you at ease… IF THE CONGRESS SHOULD PLAY FALSE AFTERWARDS YOU CAN WELL SETTLE SCORES WITH IT, FOR YOU HOLD THE SWORD. I ask you to accept my word and the resolution of Congress that it will not betray a single individual much less a community…. No nation determined to immolate itself at the altar of freedom can be guilty of breach of faith. WHAT MORE CAN I SAY THAN THIS THAT LET GOD BE WITNESS OF THE BOND THAT BINDS ME AND THE CONGRESS WITH YOU?”
(These are the exact words of Mahatma Gandhi addressed to a large Sikh congregation assembled in the Sis-Ganj Gurdwara, in the Chandni Chowk, DELHI, ON THE 6TH. DAY OF MARCH, 1931. The same speech was published in a publication pioneered by Mahatma Gandhi called ‘Young India’ in its issue dated 19th. March, 1931)
- Thereafter, the 1929 Policy Resolution of Mrs. Indira Gandhi’s ruling party was repeatedly re-iterated, officially and semi-officially, up to August, 1947, When India was partitioned. The Congress Party’s solemn pledges were not officially repudiated until the year 1950, when the present Constitution of India was legislated, without official Sikh participation in its enactment.
This facile double-dealing and breach of trust on the part of the Hindu politicians, ruling India since 1947, resulted in the following events adversely affecting the Sikh position:
- The 1929 solemn assurance and official resolution given to Sikhs by the father and grandfather of the present Prime Minister naturally influenced and changed the course of Sikh politics. Sikh religious instruction extols the keeping of faith as the highest of human virtues. Accordingly, in 1932, at the time of the Second Round Table Conference, the British Government in London, through the Sikh representative, Sardar Bahadur Shiv Dev Singh, made an informal proposal to Sikhs that if they were to disassociate finally from the Indian Congress movement they would be given a decisive political status in the Punjab, such as would lead to their emerging as a third independent element in India, following upon the transfer of power by the British.
But this British offer, in consequence of the assurances given by the Hindus, was promptly rejected by Master Tara Singh, the Sikh leader at that time.
- In July, 1946, Pt. Jwahar Lal Nehru, the father of the present Indian Prime Minister, Mrs. Indira Gandhi, stated at Calcutta during a meeting of the All India Congress Working Committee:
“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.”
- Coming down to the British Cabinet Mission to Delhi, winter of 1946, under the same good faith’ syndrome created by the Hindu leaders of the Indian Congress Party (representing the majority, Hindu, community of India) the Sikh spokesman, late S. Baldev Singh, in consultation with the Congress Party leaders, summarily rejected a far- reaching offer by which the British Parliament, in their solicitude for the Sikh people, was prepared to draft the Independence of India Act so that in respect to the Sikh Homeland, wherever these areas might eventually go in Pakistan or India, no constitution shall be framed such as did not have the concurrence of the Sikhs.
- In April, 1947, under the same influence from India, yet another chance for a Sikh sovereign state was spurned by Sikhs at the time when the late Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the father of Pakistan, offered them the areas lying to the west of Panipat town and east of the left bank of River Ravi where Lahore is located.
- In December, 1946, the late Pt. Nehru himself again stressed, in the constituent Assembly, safeguards for minorities, stating:
“It was a declaration, a pledge and an undertaking before
the world, a contract with millions of Indians, and therefore
in the nature of an oath, which we must keep.””
- And yet it was the same Pt. Nehru, who, when reminded in 1954, by the Sikh leader, Master Tara Singh, of the solemn undertaking previously given, coolly replied:
“The circumstances have now changed.”
- Again, in May 1947, the Sikhs were politically tripped by the leaders of the majority community of India when the British Cabinet invited the Sikh spokesman, late S. Baldev Singh, to stay behind in London for arrangements to be made:
“so as to enable the Sikhs to have political feet of their
own on which they may walk into the current of world history.”
S.Baldev Singh bravely declined the British invitation. The next day he made a press announcement to this effect in London. Accompanied by Mr. Nehru and other Hindu leaders he flew back to Delhi. He had scuttled once more any chances that the Sikhs had.
10. All the Hindu Members of the old Punjab Legislative Assembly, while passing a resolution unanimously in July 1947 favoring the partition of the country, stated in that very resolution:
“in the divided Indian Punjab, special Constitutional
measures are imperative to meet just aspirations and
rights of Sikhs.”
Where are those “special constitutional measures” in 1981? What is being done about “the just aspirations and rights of Sikhs?” 1. And about the Punjab Hindu Legislators, who were the zealous makers of that 1947 unanimous resolution,-aren’t they the same Hindus now, who, since 1961, disclaim the Punjabi language itself as their native
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- Sikhs, however, are far better equipped to govern a sovereign state today than they might have been in 1947.
