History of the Sikh Understanding of the Constitution of 1950

      1). Ever since the promulgation of the present Constitution of India, the Sikh view of it has been that it is an inadequate document which negates the aspirations of those who had truly fought for the independence of India from foreign yoke. It is also destructive in the seminal principles, which were to be the basis of the constitutional act according to the constitutional development of a century and the serious concerns and the declared solemn intentions of all the parties to the freedom of India. In assertion of this the Sikh representatives had plainly rejected the constitution and had refused to sign the original constitutional document1. Their views about the new constitution were clear even from the time of the appearance of the draft constitution2. Views of the Sikhs were not heeded to because of the wrong conception of secularism and the erroneous appreciation of the concept of majority rule3. After having seen its working for the last half a century, the Sikhs are more than ever dissatisfied. Of late, since June 1984, they have come to understand that their very existence as a political, religious and cultural entity is jeopardised under the present constitutional arrangement which has produced a thoroughly communalised polity at all levels in India. This polity, drawing strength from the 80% permanent cultural majority, is becoming increasingly characterised by deep-rooted hatred of the Sikhs going to the extent of seeking the total annihilation of the Sikh people and the Sikh religion. This hatred of the permanent majority has its roots in the total distrust of all the minorities including the Sikhs.

Basis of the Belief

      2.1). According to the serious proposals for the reorganisation of the states on linguistic basis, mainly by the Indian National Congress ever since the second decade of the 20^th century, all other states comprising the Indian Union have been reorganised, quite promptly and without much difficulty. For the reorganisation of the Sikh majority province of the Punjab, the Sikhs have had to suffer greatly4. Even after having made the greatest sacrifices to get the national policy implemented in relation to the Punjab, the Sikhs were able to secure only a declaration to that effect in 1966. For the next thirty years they had to suffer much bloodshed and undergo untold misery to get the principle implemented. Even today, the Punjab State is incomplete with many adjoining Punjabi speaking areas excluded from it. It is without a capital or a High Court of its own. Likewise, contrary to all practice followed in all the prominent federations of the world and all other States, of the Indian Union, the State of the Punjab is denied control over its river waters and its hydroelectric power. It is entitled to such control according to the riparian law enshrined in the Constitution of India5.

      2.2). It now appears, that after 1984, the control of Law and Order, which is a State subject, has been wrested from the Punjab informally6. The position of the State is that of a sub-State; its natural resources worth hundreds of thousands of crores, are being looted by the neighbouring Hindu majority States against all legal and constitutional provisions.

      2.3). Several measures have been taken by the governments formed by communal political parties to enslave the Sikh people permanently. Governments formed by political parties of all shades and hues have adopted such measures. This has resulted in the deliberate killing of the Sikhs on a large scale7. The communal prejudice against the Sikhs is so colossal and hatred of them so widespread, that more than 2, 25, 000, Sikhs have been violently killed by state-inspired or abetted violence since 1947. An illustration to bring out the enormity of the crime is possible. The Sikhs have faced several hostile empires in the other four hundred and fifty years of their life as a people. They have actively (and successfully) resisted the Mughal, Afghan, Persian and the British imperialism for more than three hundred years of their existence. In all three centuries their casualties, including open wars were only a fraction of the violent deaths suffered by them in the last fifty-three years of the present dispensation.

      2.4). On this account alone the Sikhs feel that the present constitution has failed to protect their lives, their property and the natural resources of the Punjab which is their homeland and their holy-land. The Sikhs also have reasons to believe that their most cherished cultural ideals and their source, the wholly benign Sikh religion, are in immediate danger of total annihilation at the hands of the brute and hostile permanent cultural majority. With every passing day the tyranny of the majority has increased by leaps and bounds. The present constitution has failed in achieving any of the vital functions a constitution is created for achieving in any civilised polity.

      2.5). During this period, that is, from 1947 to the present day, several hundred Gurdwaras have been attacked by violent mobs at the slightest pretext8. It has invariably been observed that the law enforcing agencies do not help the Sikhs in such a situation and they are invariably left to defend themselves. More often than not, they have been prevented by the police from defending themselves9. The Sikh scripture, their Living Eternal Guru has been desecrated a thousand times in free India and every time the desecrators have escaped punishment or prosecution. Darbar Sahib, the Mecca of the Sikhs has been pierced like a sieve with bullets of the state forces, the Akal Takhat has been completely razed to the ground. According to the estimate of Sant Harchand Singh Longowal at least 10,000 Sikh children, women, temple servants, pious personalities and pilgrims were killed in Darbar Sahib alone in June 1984. The figure can be imagined when we know that at least 79 Gurdwaras were similarly attacked in 1984 alone. Many of the killed by the armed forces included those, whose hands had been tied at their back before the killing.

      2.6). An official organ of the Indian Army, Baatcheet, informed the soldiers that those who were formally baptised as Sikhs, were a dangerous people wedded to terrorism10. The implication is clear and was acted upon by the security forces for the next one decade. Theoretically, the edict is still in force and is intermittently applied to situations at the will and pleasure of the law enforcing authorities.

      2.7). On June 7, 1984, when all was quiet after the storm, the priceless Sikh Reference Library, containing hundreds of manuscripts bearing the signatures of the Gurus, was burnt. The attack is clearly on the Sikh culture. The present BJP led government is engaged in foisting a spurious scripture depicting Hindu Pauranic tales, namely the so called dasamgranth, on the Sikh people. On the pretext of celebrating the third centenary of the founding of the Order of the Khalsa, the RSS has been given a grant of 16 crores by the present government exclusively to popularise the dasamgranth among the Sikhs11. In all a hundred crores have been set aside to confuse the Sikhs on the question of their spiritual and political identity. Determined attempts, materially supported by the government are being made to mislead the Sikhs and to preach Hinduism to them in many subtle and not so subtle ways. Sikhs are being forcefully told that they are Hindus only and the separate identity of the Sikh faith is firmly denied. With the blessing of the officialdom, Media frowns upon even the most innocent expressions of separate Sikh identity. Clearly, at stake is the very existence of the Sikh faith and the Sikh nation. 

      Role of the Judiciary

      3.1). No constitution can achieve its declared aims or cherished ideals if it has no crisis management machinery or control mechanism to exercise checks and balances in respect of  those who would impose the culture of the majority on others through the use of the infinite power of the modern state. These are notoriously missing from the Indian constitution as was noticed at the very inception of the constitution. Ramsay MacDonald, while speaking of the present constitution, observed, that it does not contain “checks and balances” which are necessary to “protect minorities from unrestricted and tyrannical use of the democratic principle, expressing itself solely through majority power” 12. At best a very defective arrangement for discovering the people’s will has been forged by the constitution of 1950. There was no dearth of timely cautions in this regard but they had no effect on the constitution makers or on those who have been implementing it for the last fifty years. The warning given by another British Premier, Winston Churchill in the House of Commons on December 12, 1946, a day before the introduction of the basic Objectives Resolution in the Indian Constituent Assembly, has turned out to be, perhaps more prophetic than it could then be imagined. “I am sure that any attempt by the Congress Party at establishing a Hindu Raj on the basis of majorities measured by standards of Western civilisation or what is left of it, and proceeding by forms and formulas of government with which we are familiar over here, will at a very early stage be fatal to any conception of the unity of India.”

      3.2). In the absence of a formal arrangement, an independent judiciary has acted as a natural regulatory mechanism in many a constitutional set up. This could have happened in India. The judiciary could  have played that important role. However it, like all other important organs of the state, has been prevented from playing that role by the same communal considerations which have distorted the functioning of all other organs of the state. The factual position is that instead of being a deterrent to constitutional violations, it has sanctioned some of the most brutal violations of the constitution. As a matter of fact it has, right from the very beginning, assumed that the Sikh people and their state, the Punjab are both outside the pale of constitutional law. On observing its functioning in relation to the Sikhs and the Punjab, the Shiromani Akali Dal had adopted the following resolution: “After having carefully viewed the findings, the reports and judgements of judicial and quasi-judicial Tribunals and Forums that have dealt with the maters and cases involving important Sikh interests, comes to the conclusion, that the entire judicial machinery and the judicial process of the Independent India, under influences of certain political Hindus, is prejudiced and has been perverted against the Sikh people in India in relation to their just and legal rights”13.

      3.3). In elaboration of the above a few prominent examples of the denial of justice which have had a deep impact on the Sikh mind, may be recalled. In an identical case of two ICS officers, the Hindu officer Raghupati Kapur was reinstated and the Sikh officer Sirdar Kapur Singh was not. Thus laying the foundations of the proposition that in India after 1947, there are two sets of laws: one for the Sikhs and another for the Hindus14. This assessment of the prevalent situation, has been confirmed a number of times thereafter. One of the most glaring example of the same is what the veteran Minoo Masani has called a “judicial murder” of Kehar Singh in the notorious Indira Gandhi murder case. An eminent jurist H. M. Seervai has done a detailed assessment of the case15. It is well known that a totally innocent Kehar Singh was hanged for conspiring to kill Indira Gandhi. Even a layman can readily understand two aspects of the case. One is that Beant Singh who killed Indira Gandhi, was always armed and his victim was always by his side, he would only be exposing himself to betrayal by conspiring with anyone. Second is that the main accused Balbir Singh was acquitted in the same case as there was not, in the words of the Supreme Court of India, “a scrap of evidence” against him. In Palvinder Kaur versus the State of the Punjab law had been laid down that the same evidence could not be used against the co-accused. It was used against Kehar Singh. The Supreme Court had to violate half a dozen other such settled laws to hang the totally innocent Singh though in respect of other cases, the same laws continue to operate even today.

      3.4). In the bloodiest period in all Sikh history, Sikhs suspected of harbouring pro-Sikh sentiment were sought out by the police, made to disappear and were finally eliminated in contrived police encounters and their bodies were cremated as `unidentified’ or simply dumped into rivers or canals. This has happened in no other civilised country. The figures ran into thousands. The matter was brought to the notice of the Supreme Court of India which, rightly declared the abominable police action to be “worse than genocide16” and ordered a fact finding enquiry into the whole affair by the National Human Rights Commission through the agency of the Central Bureau of Investigation. Slowly the entire thing was whittled down by torturous judicial processes until all concerned washed their hands of the matter. Today that very firm order of the Supreme Court stands fully nullified.

      3.5). Some public spirited people, tried to retain the matter in public attention by appointing a fact finding People’s Commission consisting of three retired High Court Judges, the Punjab and Haryana High Court stepped in to stifle the exercise. In the matter of brutal killing of thousands of innocent Sikhs, no justice could be delivered to the aggrieved families or the Sikh society in spite of the matter being in the knowledge of the highest judiciary in the land. The message to the Sikh people is loud and clear: `the country belongs to someone else and your lives are at the mercy of that society!.’ It is also apparent that the judiciary is amenable to political influence. `Let the heavens fall but justice must be done’ is not the motto of the Indian judiciary.

      3.6). It is apparent form the above that the Sikh people and the state which has a Sikh majority, are outside the pale of constitutional application. The life and property of the Sikhs is not safe under it and the natural resources of their homeland cannot be protected by it. Cases illustrative of the foregoing abound and can be almost infinitely cited. If by chance a Sikh judge decides to be true to his conscience and decides to do his duty according to law, the account given in Appendix B will show what can happen to him.17

 Sikh Perceptions and Apprehensions

      4). Under these circumstances the Sikhs are entitled to consider modes of escape from the death-dealing situation. They firmly believe that they are as much slaves as they were before 1947. In many ways they are much more slaves than they have ever been in the five hundred years of their existence. There is evidence to show that their state, the Punjab is more of a colony than it was even under the British. It is comparatively worst exploited today. It is widely believed that mainly two factors are responsible for their present plight. The unfathomable and limitless hatred of the Sikhs is rooted deep in the psyche of the permanent cultural majority. And secondly they are governed by an absolutely inhuman, lifeless, cruel unfeeling constitution under which everything is possible. The Sikhs do not want any longer to put up with this absolute and endless tyranny of the permanent majority. Historically they are co-sharers in the sovereignty of India and are a completely autonomous people. Sikhmedhyaga must stop. A constitution that confers a `sacrificial animal status’ on them must be dumped into the Indian Ocean. Another attempt needs to be made to draft a constitution which will afford equal protection of universally applicable laws to people of all faiths and to all varieties of states comprising the Union of India.

The remedy

      5). This is possible only if the Constitution of 1950 is thoroughly revised. It must be brought back on the same rails as it had been steadily progressing from the promulgation of the Indian Council Act of 1862. This trend had steadily continued up to August 15, 1947 and had resulted in Part XIV of the Draft Constitution of India. Secondly the revised constitution must conform to the promises freely and solemnly made, generally to the minorities in the policy statements of the Indian National Congress and particularly made to the Sikhs from 1929 to August 8, 1947. The philosophy represented by both these streams of thought merge into the impulses that produce the most modern, just and humane political system as originally intended. It is essentially in the context of India being a multiracial, multicultural and multinational polity. The well-documented process may be explored further for the purpose of this presentation.   

Constitution suitable for Indian conditions

      6.1). The development of the modern constitution for India started with the taking over of the responsibility for the governance of India by the British Crown.  The Queen’s Declaration of November 1858 set the ball rolling. The next step was the Indian Councils Act of 1861. This document sought to reorganise the provinces composing British India on the basis of regional cohesiveness and linguistic homogeneity. Provinces were conceived as autonomous units of the British India. Indian Councils Act of 1909 (The Morley-Minto Reforms) is the next stage of development. It recognised the eternal communal problem plaguing India from times immemorial, and for the first time provided separate electorate on communal basis. By the Congress-League Scheme of 1916, both Muslims and Hindus agreed to the reforms proposal and laid the foundations for what continues to be violently and falsely attacked as the `British policy of divide and rule’. The Sikhs, who believed as a matter of faith that polity must always be secular, protested against it although they were given two seats in the Council. This attitude they sustained as a political policy right up to 1946 until those who today claim to be the sole owners of the country agreed to the partition as a result of a deep rooted belief. The most significant next step was the British Government’s announcement of August 20, 1917. It promised “the policy of his Majesty’s government, with which the Government of India are in complete accord, is that of the increasing association of Indians in every branch of the administration and the gradual development of self-governing institutions with a view to the progressive realisation of responsible government in India as an integral part of the British Empire--.18”

      6.2). The Government of India Act 1919, which introduced India to the famous but short-lived dyarchy was a part fulfilment of the above mentioned promises. For the first time subjects belonging to the Central and the provincial sphere were clearly delineated. The well-known reaction of both the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League was to boycott the arrangement. It was because the Congress felt, hold your breath, that the scheme retained too much power with the centre. The much-maligned Simon Commission gave very wholesome recommendations in May 1930. These centred around provincial autonomy with the executive fully responsible to the provincial legislature and reconstitution of the central legislature on federal basis. End of the dyarchy which had not worked well, was proposed. Professor Keith is right in remarking, that, had the report been accepted by the Indian public opinion, “the British Government would hardly have failed to work on it and the responsible government in the provinces would have been achieved much earlier than it could be under any later scheme19—”. At the Central level it indicated development towards the Dominion Status demanded by the Congress at its annual Session in December 1928. A definite indication that the British were seriously contemplating Dominion Status for India on the pattern of Australia and Canada was given by the declaration of the new Ramsay MacDonald Labour government made through the Veceroy Lord Irwin on October 31, 1929. In spite of it all the First Roundtable Conference was rendered a nullity by the non-participation of the Congress which at that time was conducting the Civil Disobedience Movement. By the Gandhi-Irwin Pact of March 5, 1931, Gandhi withdrew the Civil Disobedience and agreed to participate in the Second Roundtable Conference convened for the purpose of drafting a constitution for India. The basic principles on which the constitution was to be drafted were defined as federation, safeguards and reservations for minorities20. It finally failed to take off because of lack of agreement on protection to minorities, particularly the Scheduled Castes, whom Gandhi insisted upon retaining within the Hindu fold, for better or for worse.

      6.3).  Parallel effort to work out a constitution was going on within India21. More cogent expression of Hindu India’s dreams in this regard came at the Madras Session of the Congress. Its president M. A. Ansari, while launching the Nehru Committee entrusted with preparing an ideal constitution for India made a significant declaration. It was: “whatever may be the final form of the constitution, one thing may be said with some degree of certainty that it will have to be on federal lines providing for a United States of India with existing Indian states as autonomous units of the federation taking their proper share in the defence of the country, in the regulation of the nation’s foreign affairs and other joint and common interests”. The Nehru Committee Report was made public on August 10, 1928. It provided for provincial autonomy coupled with linguistic re-organisation of the provincial units on the basis of linguistic contiguity. The Sikhs received a raw deal but an attempt was made to make up with them by the Lahore Resolution of December 31, 1928. “As the Sikhs in particular and the Muslims and other minorities in general, have expressed dissatisfaction about the solution of communal question proposed in the Nehru Report, the Congress assures the Sikhs, Muslims and other minorities that no solution thereof in any future Constitution will be acceptable to the Congress that does not give full satisfaction to the parties concerned22”.

      6.4). To the suspecting minorities and other nations, the Congress continued to dish out liberal assurances to the effect that complete freedom for them was on its agenda. Gandhi and the Indian National Congress were always particularly reminding the Sikhs that safeguards for them were uppermost in their minds23. At the minorities Committee meeting held on November 13, 1931, Gandhi gave one of his numerous assurances. “I would like to repeat”, he said, “what I have said before that while it will always accept any solution that may be acceptable to the Hindus, Mussalmans and the Sikhs, the Congress will be no party to special reservations to or special electorates for any other minorities24”. He was much more explicit on the subject of the Sikhs, a little later. While speaking to a congregation at Gurdwara Sis Ganj of Delhi, he solemnly declared, “I ask you to accept my word and the resolution of the Congress that it will not betray a single individual, much less a Community. If it ever thinks of doing so, it would only hasten its own doom. I pray you to unbosom yourself of all your doubts and apprehensions. Let God be the witness to the bond that binds me and the Congress to you I venture to suggest that the non-violence creed of the Congress is the surest guarantee of good faith and our Sikh friends have no reasons to fear that it would betray them. For, the moment it does so, the Congress would thereby not only seal its own doom but, that of the Country too. Moreover the Sikhs are brave people. They know how to safeguard their rights by the exercise of arms, if it should ever come to that”. (Young India, March 19, 1931)

      6.5). The ship of the second Roundtable Conference floundered on the question of rights of the minorities, particularly the Scheduled Castes. The failure prompted the British to make a unilateral effort at resolving the communal tangle in India. This was attempted by the Communal Award of August 17, 1932. By it the right to have separate electorate earlier given to other nations was accepted for the Scheduled Castes also. Gandhi and the Congress had reservations to the Depressed Classes being treated as anything other than a part of Hinduism. Gandhi resorted to one of his numerous fasts unto death and finally cajoled, bludgeoned and blackmailed Ambedkar into voluntarily giving up the separate status of these classes by concluding the infamous Poona Pact with him. More significant is the fact that he or the Congress had no objection to particularly the Sikhs and the Muslims being treated as separate entities.

      6.6). The third Roundtable Conference in 1932 yielded but a White Paper upon which was based the Government of India Act 1935. It was the next significant landmark in the constitutional development of India. It contemplated a federation of British Indian provinces and the Indian States. Powers reserved for the Federal Government were outlined as those pertaining to defence, ecclesiastical affairs, external affairs and tribal area administration. Elections were held on the basis of this Act in early 1937. The Congress pleaded for fuller autonomy to the provinces and agreed to form governments in the six states only after an additional measure of autonomy was assured to them25. Thereafter it continued in power in the provinces and ruled for about thirty months from1937 to 1939, until the declaration of the Second World War. 

      6.7). In March 1942, the Stafford Cripps Mission came to India. In a serious bid to untie the constitutional knot, it proposed complete autonomy to provinces. It also mooted the concept of non-acceding states. It provided for a Constituent Assembly to be chosen basically on the basis of proportional representation, offered  `protection to racial and religious minorities’ and separate electorate on communal lines. The Congress response to the substantive proposal was, as usual, very positive. To begin with its Working Committee resolved on April 2, 1942, that “the Committee cannot think in terms of compelling the people of any territorial unit to remain in an Indian Union against their declared and established will. Each territorial unit should have the fullest possible autonomy within the Union, consistent with a strong national state”. The proposal fell through essentially because, the Congress leaders perceived that the British were losing the war and may not be there to fulfil promises after the cessation of hostilities. Gandhi characterised it as a `post-dated cheque on a crumbling bank’. From the point of view of this paper, it may be noted that the essential features of the proposal were generally found acceptable.

The Slip Between the Cup and the Lip

      7.1). In due course it was proved that the bank was not crumbling and after having won the war, the British made another bid to evolve a constitution for the country. Lord Wavell tried his hand at the Simla Conference (June 25 to July 14, 1945) at which mainly Master Tara Singh represented the Sikhs. The last proposal for a constitution for united India was also presented during Wavell’s Viceroyalty. It was the Cabinet Mission Proposal of May 16, 1946. Its relevant provisions envisaged electorates in three categories, Muslim, Sikh and General. It provided for protection to minorities, and provincial autonomy. Central powers were to be limited to four subjects and the residuary powers were to vest in the confederating states. Joint constituent assembly for British India as well as the States was proposed. Interim government of Indians was provided for and came into being on September 2, 1946. Elections to the Central Legislature and the Constituent Assembly were held in July 1946 on the basis of the Mission’s proposal. The Constitutional Assembly started functioning on December 9, 1946. Cabinet Mission proposals were the first and the last solution for a constitution of India on which there was a considerable amount of agreement between the Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus. The Sikhs initially refused to join the Constituent Assembly, the Congress Party took two effective measures to persuade them to do so. Firstly it adopted a solemn resolution at its Calcutta Session, citing its Lahore Resolution of 1929. Jawaharlal Nehru’s famous `glow of freedom’ statement was made in this connection. The Congress Working Committee adopted a resolution to reassure the Sikhs. It was under these circumstances that the Panthic Pratinidhi Board representing the Sikhs met and decided on August 14, 1946, to join the Constituent Assembly26.

      7.2). The promise held out in the above resolution was fortified by the Objectives Resolution of the Constituent Assembly moved by Jawaharlal Nehru on December 13, 1946. “Adequate safeguards would be provided for the minorities in India. It was a declaration, and an understanding before the world, a contract with millions of Indians and therefore in the nature of an oath, which we must keep”. It further stated, that the provinces, “shall possess and retain the status of autonomous units, together with residuary powers –”. He went on to affirm this to be “a solemn pledge to our people which they would redeem in the Constitution they would frame27”. To recapitulate the prevailing mood in the Assembly Nehru may be quoted further. “And may I, Sir, also with all respect, suggest to you and to the House that, when the time comes for the passing of this Resolution, let it be not done in the formal way by the raising of hands, but much more solemnly, by all of us standing up and thus taking this pledge anew28.” Eventually on August 8, 1947, the Advisory Committee on Minorities recommended certain statutory political safeguards. These were adopted by the Assembly and were later embodied in Part XIV of the Draft Constitution. These included reservation of seats in the State and Central Legislatures, reservation to services and posts. Appointment of special officers to look after the minorities was provided for. How the Sikhs were eventually left high and dry is another story, which can also be told here29.

      7.3). The first most significant fact about the British Cabinet Mission Proposal is that it was the direct outcome of the four decade old search for acceptable political arrangement suited to the peculiar political conditions prevalent in India. This was the outcome of an effort made by all concerned. The second was that at one time or the other, it was accepted by all the parties to the freedom of India. Its importance and validity lies in the active and conscious contribution made to its development by all the parties intimately connected with the freedom of the country until they remained true to its essential political genius. The key to failure of the Constitution of 1950 has its roots in non-adherence to this proposal. It is the Sikh opinion that any satisfactory solution of the still elusive Indian constitutional solution, will have to take off from this background. It is therefore that the Sikh proposal for review of the constitution, namely, the Anandpur Sahib Resolution30, is based on the spirit of this document.

The Anandpur Sahib Resolution

      8.1). Likewise, the most important fact about the Anandpur Sahib Resolution also is that at one time or the other it has been accepted by the Sikhs of all shades of political opinion as a proper solution of the Hindu problem over the Punjab. So it is in reality a consolidated Sikh opinion. Secondly, its echo is now discernible in the political programmes of regional parties all over India. Territorially it seeks to reorganise the states of the Indian Union on the basis of the languages spoken by the people. It advocates that all contiguous areas in which a particular language is spoken by the majority of residents, should be brought together in one administrative unit. In fact all five recommendations of the Dar Commission appointed by the Constituent Assembly to lay down criteria for the reorganisation of the states of the Indian Union would be in order and compatible with the prescription of the Anandpur Sahib Resolution.

      8.2). Such units must be created administratively autonomous and given all powers now mentioned in the State and the concurrent Lists along with the residuary powers. All other powers in the Union List but the four controls relating to defence, communication, currency and foreign relations should be transferred to the States to make them truly autonomous. In this respect the Anandpur Sahib Resolution is a working proposal. The details of the viable arrangement can be worked out with the States. Even the four powers seem too many in view of the growth of departments covered by these blanket headings.

      8.3). The States so organised and so endowed should be given the natural consequent power of framing their own respective constitutions. This principle has already been accepted in the Indian Constitution of 1950 in respect of the State of Jammu and Kashmir. The erosion of this entirely wholesome provision has lead to so much bloodshed in that State and the great upheaval throughout the country. A consequence of this arrangement would be to equally empower all States with equal representation in the upper house of the Union Parliament.

      9). The justification for the total review of the constitution from the Sikh point of view has already been suggested. How important it is to the exploited basic units of the Union can be stated simply by recalling here the statement prepared by the Indian National Congress for January 26, 1930, the occasion of launching a struggle to achieve Dominion Status for India31. Issues are substantially the same. They are as relevant to the Sikhs and the Punjab as they then were to the Congress and India.

APPENDIX A

Betrayal of the Sikhs

6^th September, 1965

MR. CHAIRMAN: Motion moved:

                "That the Bill to provide for the reorganisation of the existing State of Punjab and for matters connected therewith, be taken into consideration."

SHRI KAPUR SINGH: Madam Chairman, I have gone through this draft Bill most carefully and I have heard the Hon'ble Home Minister with the diligence and respect which his speeches and utterances always deserve. Madam Chairman, as it is, I have no option but to oppose this Bill. Like the curate's egg, though it might be good in parts, it is a rotten egg. It might be edible, but only as a measure of courtesy, as it is devoid of nutritional qualities and since its putrefaction is far gone, it is really unfit for human consumption.

SHRI TYAGI:                It depends upon the power of digestion.

SHRI KAPUR SINGH:   I am convinced that it is deleterious for the Sikhs however their stomachs might be supposed to be, as Hon'ble Mr. Tyagi hints. I oppose this Bill, on behalf of my constituents and reject it on behalf of my parent party, Shiromani Akali Dal. I do so for three reasons, firstly, it is conceived in sin, secondly, it has been delivered by an incompetent and untrained midwife and thirdly, it is opposed to the best interests of the nation, as it will almost certainly lead to a weakening of national integration and loss of faith in the integrity of those who exercise political power in the country.

SHRI TYAGI:                It is not an illicit child.

SHRI KAPUR SINGH:   It is not an illicit child but it is conceived in sin. It may have the vigour of hybrid offspring but unfortunately, it is an offspring of a miscegenous union, and, therefore, I oppose it. I say, it is conceived in sin, because it constitutes the latest act of betrayal of solemn promises-series of solemn promises-given to the Sikh people by the accredited leaders of the majority community, by the revered leaders of the Congress national movement, and by the unchallenged spokesman of the ruling party.

                It will do this House good-it will do the public a lot of good-it will do the people of India, a great deal of good-and it will do the International Community a world of good to listen to a brief narration of this story of betrayal of a people, who though small in numbers have not been adjudged as of no consequence in terms of dynamism of History, people, though  modern and forward-looking, are staunch guardians of the basic insights into Reality of the ancient Hindu race, and a people who though they may be matched in qualities of courage, self-sacrifice and patriotism, have not been surpassed by any community in India or any group of people outside.

                Here is the brief story of a callous betrayal of such a people-the Sikhs of India by those whose flesh of flesh and bones of bones the Sikhs are, and whose ancestors-common ancestors of the betrayed and the betrayers, both-had upheld the highest and the noblest notions and standards of ethical conduct in respect of the subject of keeping faith with fellow men and redeeming promises solemnly made.

                I quote from Mahabharat, Adiparvam, sub-chapter, 74 and verse, 25:

-Yo anayathas antama manam anayatha pratipadayete, kintena kritam na papam caurainaatamapaharina-

It means:

"He who has one thing in mind but represents another thing to others, what sin he is not capable of committing? For, he is a thief and robber of his own self".

I ask the Hon'ble, members to take their minds back to the year 1929, when the All India National Congress met at the banks of the River Ravi-Airavati of our ancestors-and fixed Complete Independence as its goal. On that bitterly cold night of destiny, I was present as one of the student volunteers in the service of the Nation. On the previous day, the Sikhs had taken out a five hundred thousand strong procession with Baba Kharak Singh leading it on elephant back, from under the walls of the fort of Lahore, which was described in THE TIMES, of London, as:

"a most impressive spectacle of human congregation that put the Congress show to shame and shade".

It was on this occasion that Mahatma Gandhi, Pandit Moti Lal Nehru, and Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, went to meet Baba Kharak Singh, at his place on the Chauburji Road, and gave the Sikhs a solemn assurance that after India achieves political freedom no Constitution shall be framed by the majority community unless it is freely acceptable to the Sikhs. This promise was then reduced into a formal Policy Resolution of the All India Congress Committee.

Afterwards, this Policy Resolution was repeatedly reiterated, officially and demi-officially, throughout the period upto August, 1947, and it was not officially repudiated till 1950 when the present Constitution was framed. The trusting Sikhs, who in their Daily Prayer, extoll keeping faith as the noblest of human virtues, placing complete reliance in this solemn undertaking given to them by the majority community, resisted and refused all offers and proposals made to them by the British and the other people-the Muslims-whom we now prefer to call, the Muslim League-proposing to accord the Sikhs a sovereign or autonomous status in the areas constituting their ancestral homeland between the River Ghaggar and the River Chenab.

This is the first link of the story which I am going to narrate here so as to provide background to the conclusion as to why this Bill should be rejected.

The second link is that in the year 1932, at the time of the Second Round Table Conference, the British Government, through Sardar Bahadur Shivdev Singh, then a member of the Indian Secretary of State's Council, made an informal proposal to the Sikhs that if they dissociate finally with the Congress movement, they would be given such a decisive political weightage in the Punjab, as would lead to their emerging as a third independent element in India after the British trabsfer power to the inhabitants of this subcontinent.

The much maligned, the naïve, Master Tara Singh, to my personal knowledge, promptly rejected this tempting offer. I was then a student at the University of Cambridge and was closely associated with these developments.

The third link is this: In the month of July, 1946, the All India Congress Working Committee met at Calcutta, which reaffirmed the assurances already given to the Sikhs, and in his press conference held on the 6^th July, there, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru spelt out the concrete content of this solemn undertaking in the following flowery words:

"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".

In these words, an autonomous State to the Sikhs, within India, was promised.

Fourthly, in the early winter of 1946, the Cabinet Mission, while at Delhi, communicated to the Sikhs through the late Sardar Baldev Singh that if the Sikhs are determined not to part company with Hindu India, the British Parliament, in their solicitude for the Sikh people, was prepared to so frame the Independence Act of India, so that in respect of the Sikh homeland, wherever these areas might eventually go, in Pakistan or India, no Constitution shall be framed such as does not have the concurrence of the Sikhs. But Sardar Baldev Singh, in consultation with the Congress leaders, summarily rejected this offer which went even beyond the assurances given by the majority community, in 1929 and in 1946 by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru in Calcutta.

Fifthly, in April 1947, Mr. Jinnah, in consultation with certain most powerful leaders of the British Cabit in London, offered to the Sikhs, first through Master Tara Singh and then through the Maharaja of Patiala, a sovereign Sikh State comprising areas lying in the west of Panipat and east of the left bank of the Ravi river on the understanding that this State then confederates with Pakistan on very advantageous terms to the Sikhs and Master Tara Singh summarily rejected this attractive offer, the Maharaja of Patiala declined to accept it in consultation with Sardar Patel and Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru.

Sixthly, on the 9^th December, 1946, when the first meeting of the Constituent Assembly was held under the Chairmanship of Babu Rajendra Prasad, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru moved the first and the fundamental Resolution in which it was said:

"Adequate safeguards would be provided for minorities ….. 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."

What happens in case of political perjury is not a point I propose to discuss today, for, when neither the feelings of shame, the reproaches of conscience, nor the dread of punishment from any bar is there, the sufferers can only pray to God, which the Sikhs are doing today. But since it is the perquisite of power to invent its own past, I am putting the record straight for the public opinion and the posterity by recapitulating this sorry tale of betrayal of the Sikhs, a trusting people.

Seventhly, in the month of May, 1947, precisely on the 17^th May, Lord Mountbatten, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, Nawab Liaqat Ali Khan and Sardar Baldev Singh, flew to London on the invitation of the British Cabinet, in search of final solution of the Indian communal problem. When the Congress and the Muslim League failed to strike any mutual understanding and Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru decided to return to India, the British Cabinet leaders conveyed to Sardar Baldev Singh that, if he stays behind, arrangements might 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".                 Sardar Baldev Singh promptly divulged the contents of this confidential offer to Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and in compliance with the latter's wishes, declined to stay back and flew back to India after giving the following message to the Press:

"The Sikhs have no demands to make on the British except the demand that they should quit India. Whatever political rights and aspirations the Sikhs have, they shall have them satisfied through the goodwill of the Congress and the majority community".

Eighthly, and lastly, in the month of July, 1947 the Hindu and Sikh members of the Punjab Legislative Assembly met at Delhi to pass a unanimous Resolution favouring partition of the country, in which Resolution occur the following words:

"In the divided Indian Punjab, special constitutional measures are imperative to meet just aspirations and rights of the Sikhs".

It is these very Hindus of Punjab, who, with the ready aid of the Government of India leaders, even when their understanding was not qualified to keep pace with the wishes of their heart, adopted every conceivable posture and shrank from no stratagem to keep Sikhs permanently under their political heel, first, by refusing to form a Punjabi-speaking  State in which the Sikhs might acquire political effectiveness, and second, by falsely declaring that Punjabi was not their mother tongue.

The Bill before the House is a calculatedly forged link in the chain, the story of which I have just narrated. When in 1950, the present Constitution Act of India was enacted, the accredited representatives of the Sikhs-the Shiromani Akali Dal-declared vehemently and unambiguously in the Constituent Assembly that,

"the Sikhs do not accept this Constitution: the Sikhs reject this Constitution Act".

Our spokesman declined to append their signatures to the Constitution Act as a token of this clear and irrevocable rejection.

I will, for want of time, skip over the story of the Sikhs' sufferings during the last 18 years in an Independent India under the political control of political and anglicised  Hindus, and will merely refer to the reply which Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru gave to Master Tara Singh in 1954, when the latter reminded him of the solemn undertaking previously given to the Sikhs on behalf of the majority community. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru coolly replied, "The circumstances have now changed."

If there is one thing that the Sikhs know too well, it is that now the circumstances have changed!

Let us now briefly examine the immediate ancestry of the present Bill. It was on 21^st March, 1966 that the Minister of Home Affairs set up a Commission presided over by a Supreme Court Judge, requiring the Commission, firstly, to examine existing boundaries of Hindi and Punjabi regions of Punjab to set up Punjab and Haryana States; secondly, by applying linguistic principles as they have resulted in the 1961 census figures; and thirdly, to determine boundaries that do not involve breaking up of tehsils. All these three guidelines given to the Commission by the Government of India are found to be, when they are properly examined by people who understand the realities of our politics, heavily loaded against the Punjab State, and have the effect of reducing the Sikhs to even more political ineffectiveness than at present. Nor has the Shah Commission failed to take advantage of the instruments of discrimination thus placed in their hands by the Government of India. They have, firstly, arbitrarily truncated and reduced, as much as they could, the existing Punjabi region, and secondly, applied all principles of demarcation with a left-handed justice-made use of a principle where it could harm the Punjab and not used it where it could harm the resultant interests of Haryana or Himachal Pradesh. For instance, Dalhousie has been taken out of Punjab and given to Himachal because it is hilly, while Morni which is of a higher altitude than Dalhousie has been taken away to be bestowed on Haryana because its residents are Hindus, which is the same thing as saying that they are Hindi-speaking.

Thus, this story goes on and every conceivable stratagem has been adopted through truncating its areas, through divesting it of its utility undertakings in public sector, and through neutralizing its limbs of governmental apparatus and by robbing it of its Capital city, and by forging the so-called common links, to reduce the Punjab State into a glorified Zila Parishad, and to convert it into a Sikh quarantine and to achieve these sordid unedifying objectives, the Judiciary has been made use of.          

Madam Chairman, permit me to say that if there is one political crime greater than any other, the ruling party has committed during the post independence era; it is frequent employment of judiciary for quasi-political purposes, and the result is that the Working Committee of the Shiromani Akali Dal has passed a Resolution on 20^th July, 1966, which reads:

"AFTER HAVING CAREFULLY VIEWED the findings, the reports and judgements of judicial and quasi-judicial Tribunals and Forums that have dealt with matters and cases involving important Sikh interests, COMES TO THE CONCLUSION, that the entire judicial machinery and the judicial process of the Independent India, under influences of certain section of political Hindus, is prejudiced and has been perverted against the Sikh people in India in relation to their just and legal rights".

Madam Chairman, here, it might be honestly asked, and I am sure there must be many honest Members in this House, who might wish to ask the question as to what is this tiresome talk this man is talking about-the Sikhs' interests in a secular democratic India; where is the question of the Sikhs being discriminated against. There are no Sikhs or Hindus in a democratic secular set-up, and the Constitution has already established it in this country. To this, I can give a very simple reply. Constitutional provisions are not the same thing as day-to-day political realities. As for the democracy, its form is one thing and its substance is quite another thing. Those who equate them are treacherous without art and hypocrites without deceiving. The Mundukopanishad, our ancient scripture, tells us that Samsara is the manifestation of four modifications of Self, the Atma, and is called as, caturpad. Likewise, a modern State, that is, the Government, has four estates: the Parliament, the Executive, the Judiciary and the Press. The concrete realities of these four alone can furnish an acid test as to whether the Sikh problem in India is a real or not.

To the Executive and the Judiciary, reference has already been made by me. I now propose to make a reference to Parliament, this august House, which is deserving of our highest respect, as its dignity is the dignity of the people of India and hence inviolable. Nevertheless, the Sikhs are aware that under the existing constitutional arrangements, they cannot send more than a couple of their own representatives to the Parliament and even they may not always be heard freely. How many times has it happened in this House, in the recent past, that particular Members of the minority communities have been made ware, in no uncertain manner that they must not-must never say this thing or that, or else a hearing might be denied to them. How many times the disciplinary wrath of the House has fallen on individuals, without hearing them and without letting them subsequently submit that their punishment was not in order?

And, lastly, the Press. We have a free Press here and a lively and impartial Press-on the whole. But, what is it like when it comes to dealing with Sikhs, that is, politically vocal Sikhs or questions largely concerning the Sikhs? In the days of his clash with Beaverbrook, Baldwin said of the Press:

"power without responsibility, the privileges of harlots throughout the ages".

And, I say no more, I have said enough to explain the background of the Resolution No. 2 of the Working Committee of the Shiromani Akali Dal passed on the 20^th July, 1966, wherein occur the following passages in relation to the scope of this Bill:

"SIKHS RESOLVE AND PROCLAIM their determination to resist, through all legitimate means, all such attempts to devalue and liquidate the Sikh people in a free India, and consequently,

DEMAND that the following steps should be taken forthwith by the rulers of India to assure and enable the Sikhs to live as respectable and equal citizens of the Union of India, namely, FIRST the Sikh areas deliberately and intentionally cut off and not included in the new Punjab to be set up, namely, the area of Gurdaspur District including Dalhousie, Ambala District including Chandigarh, Pinjore, Kalka and Ambala Saddar, the entire Una Tehsil of Hoshiarpur District, the areas of Nalagarh, called Desh, the Tehsil of Sirsa, the sub-Tehsils of Tohana and Guhla, and Rattia Block, of contiguous portion of the Ganganagar District of Rajasthan must now be immediately included in the new proposed Punjab so as to bring all contiguous Sikh areas into an administrative unit, to be the Sikh Homeland, within the Union of India. And SECOND, such a new Punjab should be granted an autonomous constitutional status on the analogy of the status of Jammu and Kashmir as was envisaged in the Constitution Act of India in the year 1950.

I am coming to a close. Madam, on behalf of the Sikh people represented by the Shiromani Akali Dal, I reject the entire schemata of this Bill, and oppose it. I call upon the Government to take necessary legislative measures to solve the problem of Punjab in the light of the Resolution of the Shiromani Akali Dal just referred to.

APPENDIX B

From the

Popular Jurist

Volume I No. 1-JAN-FEB 1984

Anatomy of A case

That writ petitions challenging provisions of an Act of Parliament and other issues of great public importance should not only take about 2 years to be admitted for final hearing but within days of admission the High Court be deprived of deciding the same, sounds somewhat strange. But this is the reality.

A writ petition under Article 226 of the Constitution was filed in January 1982 in the High Court of Punjab and Haryana. The petitioners were organisations like the Kisan Sabha, legislators and other public figures. They were challenging the validity of Section 78 of the Punjab Reorganisation Act as well as Central Government's decision to allocate waters of River Beas (which flows through the State of Punjab) between Punjab, Haryana and Himachal.

At the preliminary hearing, notice to show cause as to the locus standi of the petitioners was issued to Union of India and various States. Four other petitions were also thereafter filed in the same High Court. Nothing was decided at a number of hearings before different Benches. Ultimately, on 1-11-1983, a Bench comprising Chief Justice Sandhawalia and Justice S.S. Sodhi admitted the petitions to be heard on 15.11.1983 by a Full Bench in view of the long delay that had already taken place.

Some States moved like lightning. They asked the Supreme Court to grant Special Leave to Appeal from the Order of the High Court admitting the writ petitions. Request was made on 3 occasions to list the Special Leave Petitions, which were intended to be filed, before 14.11.1983 but the Supreme Court declined the same.

In the meanwhile, a Special Full Bench was constituted by the High Court before which the hearing of the petitions was to commence on 15.11.1983. The Full Bench comprised of Chief Justice Sandhawalia and Justices S.C. Mittal and S.S. Sodhi.

On the morning of 14.11.1983 the Attorney General made an oral request before the Chief Justice of India and on that oral request the proceedings in the High Court were stayed. On 14.11.1983 itself, i.e., the day before the Full Bench was to commence hearing of the petitions, the Central Government transferred Chief Justice Sandhawalia to Patna High Court.

On 18.11.1983, the Supreme Court not only granted Special Leave to appeal from the High Court's Order admitting the petition but in exercise of powers under Article 139A of the Constitution, withdrew all the five petitions pending in the High Court to be heard by the Supreme Court. Under Article 139A the power of the Supreme Court to transfer a case from a High Court to itself is confined to a situation where two similar cases are pending before two or more High Courts or in a High Court and the Supreme Court.

Obviously, this is to prevent any eventuality where conflicting decisions may follow. In this case, however, the petitions were pending only in one High Court and therefore Article 139A was not attracted. Moreover, four of the petitions were transferred without even giving notice to the petitioners contrary to the rules framed by the Supreme Court itself. The Supreme Court Rules require one month's notice to be given to the parties in cases which are sought to be transferred.

The Constitution of India provides for writ petitions as an extraordinary remedy where other efficacious and effective remedy may not be available. These writ petitions deal with the challenge to the allocation of river waters of Punjab to other non-riparian States. The issue underlying these petitions is highly sensitive and the challenge to the Award of the Central Government is on the ground that it is illegal, arbitrary and biased.

Appendix C

In the context of this paper, the mode of deciding the fate of the Sikhs and other minorities is very instructive. It fully justifies the fear entertained by the British and particularly the Muslims, that once the political power fell into the hands of the Hindus, they would transgress all norms, violate all law and sense of justice to establish a Hindu empire in India. It was mainly to avoid this from happening that the constitutional development consciously took the course it did. How gains of serious thought and experience of almost a century were squandered in a few days after the Constituent Assembly attained a sovereign status, is a sordid tale, most of which has almost been erased from public memory. Enough evidence to draw an outline of the happening and to give a picture of the enormity of the perfidy still lingers on and is worth recalling. M. K. Gandhi and his followers were always asking Muslims and the Sikhs to fully trust them because they were honourable people and represented an ancient culture and high moral values. They particularly cited ahimsa. It was regarded as a sure guarantee against betraying even `a single individual’.

The Muslims did not trust them and succeeded in creating two new states for themselves: the Sikhs trusted them and lost everything that they had even under the most despotic, colonial government.

The Constituent Assembly had its first sitting on December 9,1946. It was to frame a constitution for India on the basis of the Cabinet Mission Statement. Federalism, communal representation and protection for minorities were to be its special features.  On December 13, it adopted the Objectives Resolution amidst much fanfare and sentimentalism as would have sufficed to melt stones. By it, it promised to consolidate the political development of a century on the issue of protection to minorities. On January 24, 1947, the CA appointed an Advisory Committee of 50 members with Vallabh Bhai Patel as the chairman. On February 27, 1947 the Advisory Committee appointed five sub-committees to advise the CA through the Advisory Committee. Sub-Committee had 26 members and was to help in drafting fundamental rights and clauses for the protection of minorities. It was further divided into two sub-committees A and B. It was the sub-committee B with Dr. H.C. Mukerjee as chairman which was to provide protection to minorities and suggest minority safeguards. It did the hangman’s job with minority safeguards and consequently, its chairman was appointed Governor of Bengal at the earliest opportunity.

The Advisory Committee on Minorities, in its report dated August , 1947, recommended certain political safeguards which included, reservation of seats in the State and Central Legislatures, reservation in services and posts and the appointment of special officers to look after the minority affairs. These provisions were promptly included in Part XIV of the Draft Constitution. Everything seemed to be proceeding smoothly. The only jarring note was the unwarranted and repeated postponement of the finalisation of the issue on the plea of communal disturbances.

The next six months were crucial. When the process was resumed on February 28, 1948, the world had changed all around. The Muslims had been got rid of for good and thrown into the two wings of Pakistan. Hindus were the undisputed masters of India. In the backdrop of ample Hindu-Muslim bloodletting, ant-Muslim feelings ran sky high all over India. Thanks to the `prayer meetings’ of Gandhi, the sentiment against the Sikhs was at an equally feverish pitch. The Hindus acknowledged no partners in the game of building new India. There were henceforth to be only two categories of people in India: the rulers and the ruled. So the whole question of the Sikhs and other minorities was refereed, ostensibly for speedy disposal, to a specially appointed overseer committee consisting of the highest and the greatest that political Hindu India could boast of. It consisted of Vallabh Bhai Patel, Jawaharlal Nehru, Rajindera Prasad, B. R. Ambedkar and K. M. Munshi. Having thus secured the fate of the Sikhs in their hands, the leaders of Hindu India contemplated the next step. Most of what transpired after this was behind the scenes and the visible was only an illusion, mere maya.

The expanded Advisory Committee met on December 30, 1948. It was memorable for the virulent attack on the nationalist Muslims by Tajamul Husain. In his venture, he was strongly supported by a newly appointed member Begum Aizaz Rasul. Both of them argued in favour of Indian concept of secularism and for abandoning of the communal representation. The scene was set for the harakari. So when the Advisory Committee met again on May 11, 1949, the nationalist Muslims led by the great Maulana Azad had been effectively silenced by events but more than that by the conduct of the pliable Begum. The Maulana must have recalled that once M. A. Jinnah had called him a `show boy of the Congress’ and must have pondered over his status. They remained ruefully silent. Some rich relatives of Begum Rasul had gone over to Pakistan and their property could either be confiscated by the State or its taking over by the Begum could be connived at. In spite of allurements, she developed cold feet. Munshi had to nudge her to play the role of the executioner that was assigned to her. Eventually she got up and abandoned communal representation for the Muslims and proposed that there should be none for other minorities. The deed was done and Mookerjee moved the fatal resolution, thus securing his Governorship of Bengal for himself. It simply read, “that the system of reservation for the minorities, other than the Scheduled Castes in the legislatures be abolished”. So it was. Dr. Ambedkar’s weak protest that “safeguards for the minorities having been accepted by the Constituent assembly, they should not be reconsidered by the Advisory Committee,” came to nothing. New jurisprudence had come into existence.  The motion was adopted by fifty-eight to three. Suddenly the Sikhs, who had stood by Hindu India for five centuries and had lead all attacks on their enemies because of historical affinity. They were no more a formidable people that all history had known them as. Their history making potential was snatched from them and they were reduced to vulnerable individuals condemned to the backyard of time.  They had paid the price of trusting those whom Master Tara Singh, the Sikh leader often termed as the `flesh of their flesh’. The unkindest cut was yet to come.

In May 1949, itself, the report of the Advisory Committee was presented to the Constituent Assembly. V. B. Patel presented it. The Sikhs had refused to commit suicide at his direction and had opted for the execution, the only other choice. So he was very angry with them. Giani Kartar Singh had earlier presented a memorandum asking for communal representation for the Sikhs. Patel likened this to demand for another Pakistan. This term has remained in fashion even today and is universally used to condemn all legitimate Sikh aspirations for autonomy. He pretended that the Sikhs were suffering from inferiority complex which impelled them to make such demands. In his final report, he vexed eloquent, “the Sikhs are suffering from the fault of the Sikh community and nobody else. They are suffering from a complex, which is called fear complex --- so the house will realise and I don’t propose to conceal anything from the house that religion is only a cloak, a cover, for political purposes”.

APPENDIX D

ANANDPUR SAHIB RESOLUTION

WHEREAS the Sikhs of India are a historically recognised political nation ever since the inauguration of the order of the Khalsa in the concluding years of the 17^th century and

WHEREAS, this status of the Sikh Nation has been internationally recognised and accepted by the major powers of Europe and Asia to  wit, France, England, Italy, Russia, China, Tibet, Persia (now Iran), Afghanistan, Nepal, and the Company Bahadur, Fort William, Calcutta, till the middle of the 19^th century, and again, by the outgoing British and the Hindu Congress and the Muslim League of India in the middle of the 20^th century and

WHEREAS, the brute majority in India, in 1950, have imposed a constitutional arrangement in India which denudes the Sikhs of their political identity and cultural particularity, thus liquidating the Sikhs politically and exposing them to spiritual death and cultural decay leading inevitably to their submergence and dissolution into the saltish sea-waters of incohate Hinduism and

WHEREAS, the Sikhs have been thus shackled and enslaved in unethical and cynical repudiation of solemn and binding commitments and public promises earlier made to the Sikhs, while the Sikh representatives in the Indian Constituent Assembly, in 1950 refused to become a consenting party to those crooked arrangements and declined to affirm their signatures to the official copy of the Constituent Act, thus promulgated, the Shiromani Akali Dal in the name, and on behalf of the Sikhs,

PROCLAIMS that the Sikhs are determined, by all legitimate means, to extricate and free themselves from this degrading and death-dealing situation so as to ensure firmly their honourable survival and salvage their inherent dignity in India, and their birth right to influence meaningfully the mainstream of world-history. The Sikhs, therefore,

DEMAND firstly, that an autonomous region in the north of India should be set up forthwith wherein the Sikh interests are constitutionally recognised as of primary and special importance as the fundamental state policy,

SECONDLY, that this autonomous region should include the present Punjab, Karnal and Ambala Districts of Haryana, inclusive of Kangra District of Himachal Pradesh, Chandigarh, Pinjore, Kalka, Dalhousie, Nalagarh Desh, Sirsa, Guhla and Rattia areas and Ganganagar District of Rajasthan, thus bringing main contiguous Sikh population and traditional Sikh habitats within this autonomous Sikh region, as an integral part of the Union of India, and

THIRDLY, this Sikh autonomous region may be declared as entitled to frame its own internal Constitution on the basis of having all powers to and for itself except, Foreign Relations, Defence, Currency and General Communication to remain as subjects within jurisdiction of the Federal Indian Government.

MAY THE RIDER OF THE BLUE HORSE HELP US

APPENDIX E

Congress Declaration

The Congress declaration that was to be read on January 26, 1930, was as follows:

"We believe that it is the inalienable right of the Indian people, as of any other people, to have freedom and to enjoy the fruits of their toil and have necessities of life, so that they may have full opportunities of growth. We believe also that if any government deprives a people of these rights and oppresses them, the people have a further right to alter it or to abolish it. The British Government in India has not only deprived the Indian people of their freedom but has based itself on the exploitation of the masses, and has ruined India economically, politically, culturally and spiritually. We believe, therefore, that India must sever the British connection and attain Purna Swaraj or Complete Independence.

"India has been ruined economically. The revenue derived from our people is out of all proportion to our income. Our average income is seven pice (less than two pence) per day, and of the heavy taxes we pay 20 per cent are raised from the land revenue derived from the peasantry, and 3 per cent from the salt tax, which falls most heavily on the poor.

"Village industries, such as hand-spinning, have been destroyed, leaving the peasantry idle for at least four months in the year, and dulling their intellect for want of handicrafts and nothing has been substituted, as in other countries, for the crafts thus destroyed.

"Customs and currency have been so manipulated as to heap further burdens on the peasantry. British manufactured goods constitute the bulk of our imports. Customs duties betray clear partiality for British manufacturers, and revenue from them is used not to lessen the burden on the masses but for sustaining a highly extravagant administration. Still more arbitrary has been the manipulation of exchange ratio which has resulted in millions being drained away from the country.

"Politically, India's status has never been so reduced as under the British regime. No reforms have given real political power to the people. The tallest of us have to bend before foreign authority. The rights of free expression of opinion and free association have been denied to us, and many of our countrymen are compelled to live in exile abroad and cannot return to their homes. All administrative talent is killed and the masses have to be satisfied with petty village offices and clerkships.

"Culturally, the system of education has torn us from our moorings and our training has made us hug the very chains that bind us.

"Spiritually, compulsory disarmament has made us unmanly and the presence of an alien army of occupation, employed with deadly effect to crush in us the spirit of resistance, has made us think that we cannot look after ourselves or put up a defence against foreign aggression, or even defend our homes and families from the attacks of thieves, robbers and miscreants.

"We hold it to be a crime against man and God to submit any longer to a rule that has caused this four-fold disaster to our country. We recognize, however, that the most effective way of gaining our freedom is not through violence. We will, therefore, prepare ourselves by withdrawing, so far as we can, all voluntary association from the British Government, and will prepare for Civil Disobedience, including non-payment of taxes. We are convinced that if we can but withdraw our voluntary help and stop payment of taxes without doing violence, even under provocation, the end of this inhuman rule is assured. We, therefore, hereby solemnly resolve to carry out the Congress instructions issued from time to time for the purpose of establishing Purna Swaraj".