Sikh views on the Cabinet Mission Plan and Demand for Azad Punjab

Sikh views on the Cabinet Mission Plan and Demand for Azad Punjab

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The Cabinet Mission came to India on March 23, 1946 to discuss with the Indian leaders the Constitution and political modalities. It did not bring a pre-conceived scheme. The Cabinet Mission invited Indian suggestions hoping to evolve from them a plan agreeable to the representatives of different political opinions. The Cabinet Mission spent the month of April, 1946 discussing and eliciting views from the leaders of the various political parties, communities and groups. It announced a plan on June 16, 1946 for the formation of the Interim Government of India. The Viceroy of India invited Sardar Baldev Singh to join it as a Sikh representative. The Panthic Pratinidhi Board directed Sardar Baldev Singh not to join the Interim government and rejected the Cabinet Mission Plan. Sardar Baldev Singh wrote a letter to the British Prime Minister for his personal intervention to undo the wrong done to the Sikh community in the Punjab. The Cabinet Mission admitted the injustice of predominantly non-Muslim areas in Pakistan. The Cabinet Mission recognized the intensity of the Sikh fears against Muslim majority domination, yet the group system proposed by it will in the end amount to a perpetual Muslim communal rule. Sardar Baldev Singh wrote that there was no provision in the Cabinet Mission Plan for the Sikhs.

Master Tara Singh wrote to the Cabinet Mission in a memorandum that the Sikh community would be divided if Pakistan came into being. If Pakistan was to be formed, the Sikhs would insist on a separate Sikh state with the right to unite with either India or Pakistan. The idea of the separate Sikh state was adopted by the Akali Dal in March 1946. The Resolution accepted by the Akali Dal mentions that, “Whereas the Sikhs being attached to the Punjab by intimate bonds of holy shrines, property, language, traditions and history claim it as their homeland and holy land and which the British took as a trust from the last Sikh ruler during his minority and whereas the entity of the Sikhs is being threatened on account of the persistent demand for Pakistan by the Muslims on the one hand and of danger of absorption by the Hindus on the other and Executive Committee of the Shiromani Akali Dal demands for the preservation and protection of the religions, cultural and economic rights of the Sikh nation, the creation of a Sikh state.”

In the Cabinet Mission Plan on May 11, 1946, a three-tier confederation type of constitutional system was suggested. The Cabinet Mission took no notice of Sikhistan, Azad Punjab, or Khalistan and treated the idea as well as the Sikhs as something that had been put up by the Indian National Congress to thwart Muslim aspirations. The Elections of 1946 left Khizr Hayat Khan Tiwana in a difficult position as most of the Muslim Unionists joined the Muslim League reducing the Unionists to rump of 9. Khizr Hayat Khan Tiwana tried to lead a coalition with 51 Congress and 23Sikh members against the opposition of the Muslim League. His rule was brief and plagued by problems from the very beginning. Communal violence started in all parts of the Punjab from Amritsar and Multan to Ludhiana and Rohtak. The Rohtak violence had links with those in the western U.P. so it was viewed very seriously. To deal with the situation, the Unionist Government promulgated the Punjab Public Safety Ordinance in November 1946.

At this time, there was the atmosphere of civil war in the Punjab. The Hindu, Muslim and the Sikh communities had developed their private armies - R.S.S., National Guard and Akali Sena respectively. The Government revived the Criminal Law Amendment of 1908 in January 1947 and banned the Muslim League National Guard, the Hindu R.S.S. But after some persuasion from Attlee, the Sikhs joined the Congress in the interim government. The Muslim League calls for ‘Direct Action’ on August 16, 1946, and the savage riots which followed that call in Calcutta, Dacca, Noakhali and Bihar once again prompted Sikhs have understanding with the Congress. The Congress was also coming round to the view that partition would be good for the protection of minority interests and took a resolution. The Akali leader Master Tara Singh wrote in 1945 that there is not the least doubt that the Sikh religion can live only as long as the Panth exists as an organized entity. The Akali Dal formulated a counter scheme of territorial adjustment which foresaw the creation of a new territorial unit of the Azad Punjab, through a re-demarcation of the boundaries of Punjab. As per the scheme, the areas with the Muslims in majority would be separated from the Punjab. A new province would be formulated where no religious community would be in the majority. In June 1943 the Akali Dal issued a statement outlining this proposal in which it declared that ‘in the Azad Punjab the boundaries shall be fixed after taking into consideration the population, property, land revenue and historical traditions of each of the communities’.

The Akali Dal issued a pamphlet mentioning its proposal. The pamphlet mentioned about the Azad Punjab Scheme that a province would be created named Azad Punjab in which to maintain the political balance between the Hindu and the Muslim communities the population would be as follows, the Hindus 40 percent, the Muslims 40 percent and the Sikhs 20 percent. In this way the Sikhs can take sides and can get maximum political benefits. The Sikh population can be raised to 24 percent after merging princely states to the new province came into being. The Akali Dal argued that as Sikh population growth had been quite rapid during the previous years, in time the Sikh population would raise to 30 percent of Azad Punjab, which would be even better. Master Tara Singh wanted to launch a major agitation against the Congress ruled government at the centre level for not fulfilling the promises made to the Akali leaders for transfer of power.

Failure of the two experiments of the Akali Congress coalition in Punjab made the Akali leaders believe that the only alternative before them was to ask for reorganization of the state ensure that it becomes a full Sikh majority state. The Akali leaders supported the programmes of the Indian National Congress, during subsequent movements over the Civil Disobedience Movement and the Quit India Movement. They opposed the Congress party when it did not come to defend the interests of the Sikh community. Master Tara Singh quit his membership of the Indian National Congress (INC) when the latter decided to boycott the British war efforts during the Second World War. If the Sikhs were occupying important positions in various services in free India it was mainly due to the vision and farsight of Akali leaders like Master Tara Singh.

“The Azad Punjab Scheme” of the Akali Dal was not considered by Indian political leaders. A Sikh conference took place in 1944 and it suggested establishment of a committee to look into the possibility of the creation of an independent Sikh state. The Akali leader Master Tara Singh declared that the Sikhs were too a nation and that they would not be made slaves of Pakistan or Hindustan. In this scenario in the Punjab, the Cabinet Mission was trying to bring the Muslim League, the Congress, the Sikhs, and other minorities in an interim government for the preparation of a Constituent Assembly. From the very beginning their efforts met with resistance as they had clubbed together Punjab with North West Frontier Province and Baluchistan regardless of the existence of a strong minority like the Sikhs in the Punjab. The Punjab question got linked up with the all-India question and Muhammad Ali Jinnah preferred to opt out of the Congress Assembly over Congress insistence on the sanctity of the rights of the Sikhs in the Punjab.