By Amrajit Singh Buttar

The Montagu, Chelmsford Act of 1918 was enforced in India that year and a further review of political reform was promised by the British government after 10 years. Accordingly in 1928, the then British government sent an All white commission headed by the great legal luminary Sir John Simon to review and report to his Majesty’s Government on the subject of further grant of political reform to the Indians.

Sixty years earlier, the great sir and savant, Professor Puran Singh Chemical Advisor to the finest Research Institute, Dehra Dun who had worked with the late Lala Hardyal in the cause of India’s Independence wrote a letter to Sir John Simon which in the current political situation of India (when Moslems are being butchered in Bhiwandi, Ahmedahad, Meerut, J and K and other places to number‘ous to mention and Sikhs are being massacred at Amritsar, Delhi, Bokaro, Cawnpur and Panipat and other places and Dalits killed in the states of UP and Bihar by high caste Hindus and the minorities treated badly everywhere), may he read with interest by the readers of the World Sikh News which shows what great farsightedness the learned Professor had in visualizing the events of today in their proper perspective.

Wrote Professor Puran Singh, “In conclusion, I would request you not to be so small as to be partial in any way to any community and not to be so large as to give over India into the hands of one powerful community and thus democratic Institutions. By cutting up the country into Muslim provinces and Hindu provinces, you would be only introducing a slow eating consumption of civil anarchy which could kill the weaker communities, Where the Hindus prevail, Muslims shall suffer and where the Muslims prevail, the Hindus shall suffer. And as I have already said virile communities like that of the Sikhs may risk fighting to death to ask for a purely Sikh province.

The moment is great and the English people have to show a political imagination which they have not shown so far.

I pray the Highest in you may help you to rise to your full moral stature and you may be able to surprise the Indians with your New Constitution. Give a franchise on the new India nation making basis and let the limits of the franchise be such as no one community may swamp the majority of votes. It is simply unwise to build the New Constitution on the population basis. It is the worth that counts. A race horse is worth a million donkeys. And in determining these limits, your genius has to come into full play. Wipe out by your Constitution the Hindu and the Muslim as such and bring in conditions in which the “Indian” may become possible, who may truly represent the dumb driven masses of India.

The Nehru Committee has drafted a Compromise Constitution on the crater of an active volcano.

I therefore, appeal to you to recommend a Non communal Constitution. Secure the economic Independence for us as it is being achieved, say in Australia. Reduce the bewildering varieties of Government services and the Neroic cost of administration. Let the tiller of the soil be relieved of excessive taxation by reducing the overhead charges to a minimum. Only then will the economic condition of the tillers of the soil go up and a real middle class of the wealth creative laborers come into being.

Yours Sincerely,

PURAN SINGH

2Ast October, 1928

P.O. Chak No. 73/19

(Via Nankana Sahib, N.W. Ry., Punjab)

How prophetic the words are with respect to the present political situation in India regarding the treatment of the minorities at the hands of the majority community!

Note: Copies of the letter are available with S. Amarjit Singh Buttar,

Article extracted from this publication >> October 21, 1988