Couple of other smaller Sikh states, a new “Punjabi-speaking” Indian Punjab has been demarcated. In the new unit Sikhs for once are in a 60, percent majority.
However, following the partition of India in 1947, the Delhi government schemed an upset of the Sikh majority pattern in Patiala. Large numbers of Hindu emigrants from Bahawalpur, now part of Pakistan, were settled in the Sikh state of Patiala where today they are concentrated in colonies. And the newly formed “Hindi” States of Haryana and Himachel that now gird the “Punjabi-speaking” Punjab, on its east and north, respectively, each have an appreciable population of Sikhs, especially in the Haryana where Sikhs are also land holders. The area now called Haryana State in fact all belonged to the British Punjab. It was taken out of the Punjab in 1966. The religious and cultural discrimination against Sikhs in the two neighboring states, since 1966, surrounding the mini-Punjab, is a phenomenon that was highlighted by barbarous desecration of the Sikh holy book and Sikh shrines. This refers to the recent (June 1973) mass civil disobedience demonstrations at Karnal, in Haryana, when over fifteen hundred Sikhs were arrested and jailed.
In September, 1973, when Indira Gandhi went to Amritsar, the Sikh capital of Punjab, she was met by over one thousand un-employed demonstrators who hurled rocks and stones at the Prime Minister in heightened protests. Five thousand Sikhs were taken into custody. Despite police and military precautions, an unfriendly crowd was broken up by police squads in Ludhiana (Punjab), also.
The forced isolation of Sikhs in the Indian Punjab, girded by Hinduism, when the counter-balance of Islam has been driven across the border into Pakistan, is a sinister and unprecedented political change in the national life of Sikhs.
Of unquestionable significance, at the same time, is the fact that a considerable number of Sikh religious and historical centers, and a cultural investment of Sikhs, is left with their neighbor to the west, the Pakistani Punjab. The birth-place of their founder, Guru Nanak, is at Nankana Sahib, Pakistan, a well-known Sikh sacred center. With the border between the Indian and Pakistani Punjab’s tightly guarded by Indian army, Sikhs are, thanks to the Indian contempt of Pakistan, foreigners to their own sacred shrines and ancestral spots across the border.
In November, 1972, when a small band of Sikhs, headed by S. Harguranad Singh, ex M.L.A., who was spearheading the Khalistan movement in the Punjab, tried to cross into Pakistan at the Wagah border for the observance of Guru Nanak’s birthday at the Nanaka Sahib Shrine, they were taken into custody by Indian government, not by the Pakistan authorities. Months later they were discharged.
India now sees to it that Sikhs do not gain any access to Pakistan. There are hardly any Sikhs in Pakistan, but there are over seventy different Sikh sacred Gurdwaras and a great many historical and spiritual edifices there dear to the Sikh memory. As far as Indian government is concerned, any association between Sikh and Pakistanis is suspect and intolerable.
A United Kingdom Sikh, with British passport, Giani Bakhshish Singh, visiting Punjab in 1972, was arrested by Indira Gandhi’s government and was kept in political detention in the Bhatinda jail for over a year. Upon his release he returned to Birmingham, U.K., where he was well received by local civic dignitaries and the local British members of Parliament.
Freedom of speech and personal liberty, amongst other civic liberties, are at the lowest level in the allegedly democratic India of Indira Gandhi today. But when she comes abroad she can rise to address a parliamentary assembly, such as the Canadian House of Commons, and pretend the existence in India of those freedoms of which Canada is a leading advocate. General de Gaul, visiting in Montreal, can shout and raise his arms to “Vive Quebec” and “Libre Quebec’ and we Canadians are not too upset by the act. But if you are visiting in India, be careful what you utter, especially if you are a Sikh, because your articulation undermines the throne of Delhi and your presence in India, and particularly after a visit to Pakistan, constitutes a clear threat to Indian national security.
In the sovereign Sikh state of Khalistan Sikhs will be free to practice and preach their religious, political and cultural heritage – a part of which is enshrined in Pakistan. Thus, for obvious reasons Sikhs have to cast off the fetters under which India now keeps them.
The aggression of Hindu India against the smaller Sikh nation, trapped within its power, is portrayed by other events also. While the Muslims of Pakistani Punjab are proud to own and extol Punjabi as their mother tongue, the Hindus of Indian Punjab, in a brazen about face, disclaim their mother tongue, Punjabi, and instead misrepresent that they are Hindi speaking people. The Hindus fear that by their being counted as Punjabi-speaking citizens, larger areas might go into a Punjabi province wherein Sikhs would have majority rule.
__ It may sound ridiculous, but it is a fact, that both in Haryana Himachel provinces, adjoining the Indian Punjab, Punjabi is not recognized even as the second official language. In Haryana the second official language is “Sanskri a classical written language, like Latin, that is not spoken at all. And in Himachel the second language officially is Urdu or Tamil-Nadu, which is spoken somewhere in remote India.
It would appear that India has been aware for some time that Punjab might break away from it someday (i). For all the industrial development that India can boast of since Independence, parts of India other than the Punjab invariably have been chosen for the location of new industry. The national government could not risk investing one cent for industrial development in the Punjab. Other Indian border states have received industrial investment, but not Punjab. It was more expedient to keep the Punjab undeveloped and depressed. The best use, for Delhi, was to use Punjab as a colony for raw materials. Even the world famous Bhakra Dam, built on the Sutlej River in Hoshiarpur district of Punjab, was, by nothing more than a rope trick, taken out of the Punjab and joined to the territory of newly formed Himachel state of India. The electricity produced by Bhakra is distributed to provinces of India other than the Punjab. It is cheaper in those parts of India than in the Punjab where it is generated. When the Punjab farmer is in the midst of his harvesting or irrigating season, power is suddenly cut off, because the needs of Mrs. Gandhi’s India, outside the Punjab, come first.
As India once was a colony of Imperialist Britain, so is the Punjab a colony today of the new Imperialism of Hindus at Delhi. The policy and effort has been to denude Punjab, politically and economically, because of the presence of foreign element of Sikhs who will claim and hold this territory as their own, eventually. Because of the fertility of Punjab and the resources of its Sikhs, Punjab is still the most prosperous and agriculturally rich state, though being continually drained by Delhi. It costs the Punjab farmer more to produce the wheat which the government takes away from him at lower than cost prices. The land holdings in the Punjab, long the backbone of the Sikh people, have been broken up by new laws of Delhi under which Sikhs cannot hold more than ten acres or less per head. The excess land holdings are taken away from Sikhs and distributed to the Punjab low-castes or “Untouchables” who in turn readily return the Hindu favor by proclaiming that they are not Punjabi-speaking but are instead “Hindi- speaking” people of the Punjab. A more apt illustration of killing two birds with one stone could hardly be found. For obvious reasons the apprehensions of Delhi as to the Political future of Punjab are well
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(i) Note: On September 25th. 1973, at New Delhi, the Resolution passed by the opening Session of the All India Congress Committee, warned party-men against the political alienation and separatist pulls in ‘some parts’ of the country.
