Introduction

In March 1946, Sikhs had first set out on the goal of a sovereign State, in a resolution adopted by the Panthik Akali Dal when they perceived threat to their identity and their social vision on account of communal polarization in the Indian subcontinent that eventually led to its partition into a Muslim dominated Pakistan and a Hindu dominated India. Students of contemporary Indian history are aware that the Sikh leaders who had been consulted by the Cabinet Mission before the latter proposed its scheme of Indian independence, known as the Cabinet Mission Plan in May 1946, had forcefully argued for formation of Khalistan within which alone they believed the Sikh interests in the subcontinent could be protected. But the Cabinet Mission tried to dissuade them from the goal to accept its own scheme of federal India by arguing, as in a letter dated 11 June 1946 by the Secretary of State Patrick Lawrence, the leader of the Mission, to Master Tara Singh:

"It is inconceivable that either the Constituent Assembly or any future government of Punjab will overlook the special place of the Sikhs in the province. The Viceroy hopes he may be able to persuade them, if persuasion is needed, that the interests of Sikhs should on no account be overlooked...."

It is common knowledge that the Cabinet Mission Scheme had tried to avert the partition of India. Under the scheme of Indian independence, Punjab, like other provinces of the contemplated federation, was to be autonomous in all areas except Foreign Affairs, Defence and Communications which were reserved as the Central subjects, as a member predominantly Muslim TBU group of States.

Stafford Cripps, a member of the mission, had explained why the Sikh demand for Khalistan could not be granted at that time. In his statement before the British Parliament he had said:

"It was a matter of great distress to us that the Sikhs should feel that they had not received the treatment which they deserved as an important section. The difficulty arises not out of anyone underestimation of the importance of the Sikh community, but from the inescapable geographical facts of the situation. What the Sikhs demand is some special treatment, analogous......to that given to the Muslims. The Sikhs, however, are a much smaller community, 5 million against 90 million, and are not geographically situated so that any area as yet desired by them can be carved out in which they would find themselves in a majority."

Sikhs finally agreed to join the Constituent Assembly under the Cabinet Mission Plan, when Nehru reminding them of the Lahore Resolution of 1929 adopted by the Congress which had said that on achieving independence no Constitution would be framed unless it was acceptable to Sikhs, reiterated the commitment to create an autonomous State, "an area and a setup in the north wherein the Sikhs can also experience the glow of freedom." "The brave Sikhs of Punjab are entitled to special considerations", he had explained.

A Resolution adopted by the Panthic Pratinidhi Board on August 14, 1946 explained why they agreed to join the Constituent Assembly under the Cabinet Mission Plan. It said:

"The main factor is the resolution of the Congress Working Committee in which the Congress has recognised that injustice has been done to the Sikhs by the Cabinet Mission's proposals and has declared that it will give all possible support to the Sikhs in redressing their legitimate grievances and in securing for the Sikhs adequate safeguards for protecting their interests. The Congress Working Committee has further appealed to the Sikhs to reconsider their resolution of boycotting the Constituent Assembly. This Resolution of the Working Committee must be read along with the Lahore Congress Resolution of 1929 - that no solution of the communal problem in any future Constitution would be acceptable to the Congress leaders that did not give full satisfaction to the Sikhs - as well as with the recent speeches and statements of eminent Congress leaders to the effect that the Sikhs must be given similar safeguards as are provided to the two major communities in paras 15 and 19 of the Cabinet Mission's proposals."

Having resolved thus to join the Constituent Assembly in 1946, if the Sikhs, forty years after the adoption of the Indian Constitution by the same body, have reverted to their demand for a sovereign homeland it is because of their experience of betrayal of the promises made to them, and the subversion of the ideals for whose attainment they had fought the British colonial rule in India. We shall first examine how the Constitution as finally adopted by the Constituent Assembly in November 1949 became the body-negation of the principles of democratic organization of the Indian society as they had been evolving through the synchronic process of constitutional developments and the popular struggles since the assumption of the government of India by the British Crown under the Government of India Act of 1858.

The Indian Councils Act of 1862 recognised the provinces as autonomous units of the Indian Empire with powers to conduct their governments and to legislate for themselves without being encumbered by the dictates of the Viceroy's Council. These provinces were to be democratic units of government carved out on the basis of regional cohesiveness and linguistic homogeneity, whose autonomous powers would not continuously be jeopardized by the political opportunism of leaders thriving on communal clamours. When the Indian Councils Act of 1909, also known as the Marlo-Minto Reforms Act, recognized separate electorates on the communal basis, the only community to oppose it categorically was that of the Sikhs. But the Congress Party acquiesced in the communal arrangement through what is known as Congress-Muslim-League Scheme of 1916.

The Government of India Act of 1919 set out in clear terms the subjects which were to belong to the provincial sphere and those to the Central sphere. But both the Congress and the Muslim League boycotted the elections to the provincial and Central Legislatures held in November 1920 under the Act, because they felt that the Central Government had still retained too much of power over the provinces. When the Congress Party appointed a Committee to prepare a blueprint of the future Constitution for India under the chairmanship of Motilal Nehru, the then Congress President M.A. Ansari spelt out the fundamental principles on which the future Constitution was to be founded. Speaking at the annual session of the Congress on 28 December 1927 at Madras, Ansari had said:

"Whatever 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 submitted on 10 August 1928, reiterated the principles of provincial autonomy and reorganisation of the States on the basis of linguistic homogeneity but the report denied reservation of seats in the Legislative Assemblies to Sikhs which it had conceded to Muslims. When Sikh leaders expressed anxiety over their future in India under a nationalist government which provided no statutory protection to them as a minority, the Congress allayed their fears by passing a Resolution in its annual session held at Lahore in 1929 saying that on achieving independence no Constitution would be framed unless it was acceptable to Sikhs. Gandhi repeated the same commitment on the eve of his departure to England to attend the Second Round Table conference in March 1931 to evolve a Constitution for India when a Sikh leader in Delhi, Madhusudan Singh, confronted him with the question about what guarantee he would give to the Sikhs that the Congress would implement the Resolution it had passed at Lahore in 1929. Gandhi answered:

"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. Let God be the witness of the bond that binds me and the Congress with you."

When pressed further Gandhi said that Sikhs would be justified in drawing their swords out of the scabbards as Guru Gobind Singh had asked them to, should it recoil from its commitment.

The Government of India Act of 1935 represented the next important step in the direction of self-government for India. The Act contemplated a Federation of British Indian Provinces and the Indian States. The Federal part of the Act placed the administration of defence, ecclesiastical affairs, external affairs and tribal areas in the hands of the Central Government. The provincial governments were made autonomous for the administration of subjects listed in the provincial section of the Act.

The Congress vehemently opposed the powers of the Governor General to override the Central Legislative as well as the powers granted to the provincial governors to rule directly during emergencies. The Congress first decided to boycott the election in protest but later decided to take part.

During the war years the Cripps Mission arrived in India in March 1942 with a draft declaration on the future government of India. Recognizing the possibility of irreconcilable differences among Indians on the Constitutional future, the Mission proposed the following guarantees to accommodate them. It conceded:

1. "The right of any province of British India that is not prepared to accept the new Constitution to retain its present Constitutional provision and for its subsequent accession if it so desired."

2. "With such non-acceding provinces, should they so desired, His Majesty's government shall be prepared to agree upon a new Constitution giving them the same full status as the Indian Union...."

The Congress Working Committee in a resolution adopted on 2 April 1942 while objecting to the right of non-accession given to provinces, however, made the following significant point: "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, consistently with a strong national State."

Cripps Mission failed.

Elections to Provincial Assemblies were held towards the end of 1945 following termination of the war. Then arrived the Cabinet Mission in March 1946 to discuss with the Indian leaders the Constitution and the political modalities to be evolved for them to realize the goal of self government for Indians. After eliciting views from all the political parties and the groups, the Mission proposed a plan of government which was finally accepted by the Congress, the Muslim League and the Sikhs. There was to be, under the plan, a Union of India embracing both the British and the princely States. The Union was to deal with Foreign Affairs, Defence and Communications and to have the power to raise finances required to administer these subjects. All other subjects and residuary powers were to vest in the provinces which were to constitute themselves into groups with common executives and legislatures, and each group assuming such provincial subjects to administer in common as the provinces joining the group desired. Within this broad framework the Constitution for the Indian Union was to be framed by a body to be constituted by the provincial legislators in the ratio of one member to a million and choosing their representatives for the communities - Hindu, Muslim and Sikh - in the ratio proportionally representative of their population strength. The Constituent Assembly was to have the total strength of 350. The Cabinet Mission Plan also conceded the right to provinces to change their Constitutions after 10 years by the majority vote of their assemblies.

Both the Congress and the Muslim League accepted the Mission Plan. The Sikhs also accepted the Mission Plan and agreed to join the Constituent Assembly, under persuasion by both the Cabinet Mission and the Congress, as has already been explained.

The Cabinet Mission Scheme had been devised to avert the partition of India. However, Nehru and Vallabhai Patel, having first accepted it, sabotaged the scheme after coming around to the view that it was better to give away a part of India to become sovereign Pakistan, and then to rule the rest of the subcontinent with a totalitarian hold instead of presiding over a democratic federation with provinces being virtually autonomous. With this view they, together with Mountbatten, worked out the partition plan. Punjab was truncated. In the communal holocaust that followed the partition of Punjab hundreds of thousands of Sikhs were killed. Millions of them were uprooted.

The Constituent Assembly which had been formed to evolve a Constitution for India under the Cabinet Mission Scheme was, however, not scrapped. The Objective Resolution moved by Jawaharlal Nehru in the Assembly on 13 December 1946 had defined the Independent sovereign Republic of India "as a Union of all the territories that now comprise British India, the territories that now form the Indian States and such other territories as are willing to be constituted into the sovereign India". Apportioning the sovereignty of independent India between the Centre and its territorial units, the Resolution had proclaimed that: "...the said territories... shall possess and retain the status of autonomous units, together with residuary powers."

After the adoption of this Objective Resolution, the Assembly appointed an Advisory Committee of fifty members to evolve the statutory provisions for the protection of fundamental rights of citizens and safeguards for the minorities. The Advisory Committee met from 28 to 31 July 1947 to deliberate on the reports of the sub-committees. The partition of India had by then become certain. The Advisory Committee decided that "in view of the uncertainty of the position of the Sikhs at present pending the award of the Boundary Commission of the Punjab, the whole question of the safeguards for the Sikh community should be held over for the present. "The Constituent Assembly also appointed two more committees - the Union Constitution Committee and the Provincial Constitution Committee - to spell out the principles of the Union and Provincial powers. Jawaharlal Nehru became the Chairman of the Union Committee and Patel of the Provincial Committee. A joint meeting of the Union and the Provincial Committees held on 8 June 1947 took the following decisions to modify the demarcation of spheres between the Centre and the States under the Cabinet Mission Plan:

1. The Cabinet Mission Plan would not be scrapped but modified. The Assembly is free to give such additional powers to the Centre as it may consider desirable...."

2. The Objective Resolution passed by the Constituent Assembly should be amended in view of the altered circumstances.

3. The Assembly should develop three exhaustive legislative lists of federal, provincial and concurrent subjects with the residuary powers vested in the Centre.

To decide on the financial relations between the Centre and the States the President of the Constituent Assembly, Rajendra Prasad, appointed an expert committee on 4 Sept 1947. The recommendations of this Expert Committee drastically reduced the financial powers enjoyed by the provinces so far. The process of pauperization of provinces did not quite end there. By the time the Constitution had been finalized by the Drafting Committee it was clear from the Union and the Provincial lists of subjects in the Seventh Schedule that the Union, in contradiction with the original scheme of the Constitution, had become the power over the provinces.

To the Sikh issue, Vallabhai Patel, the chairman of the Advisory Committee on Fundamental Rights and Minorities, referred, while submitting his final report to the President of the Constituent Assembly in May 1949. He said:

"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 realize and I don't propose to conceal anything from the House, that religion is only a cloak, a cover, for political purposes."

The Congress leaders had earlier made specious promises to the Sikhs because without their co agency Punjab, the grainary and the shield arm of India, would have federated with Pakistan with its borders meeting the outskirts of Delhi. Now that Punjab had been partitioned with the Sikhs throwing in their lot with India, Patel and Nehru could happily turn back on the promises they had made.

They in fact displayed an amazing consistency in forsaking all important commitments and ideals professed by them in the course of their struggle for freedom from the British. Defence became the paramount objective for the leaders of India who, professing their unswerving and absolute commitment to non-violence, had used the issue of non-violent opposition to the Second World War to launch the quit India movement. Gandhi ji, known to the world as the harbinger of non-violent technology, became the father of a nation which has the first eight items of the Union List in its Constitution dealing with Naval, Military and the Air Force, Arms and Explosives, Atomic Energy, Defence Industries and Preventive Detention. The man who used to equate Swaraj to decentralization of political and economic power acquiesced in the partition of India so that its mutilated bulk might survive as a totalitarian unit through the force of a coercive Centre.

But this Constitution as settled by the Drafting Committee and adopted by the Constituent Assembly on 26 November 1949 was not acceptable to its Sikh members. Hukum Singh and Bhupinder Singh, the representatives of the original Akali Dal while refusing to append their signatures to the draft of the Constitution were forced to proclaim:

"The Sikhs do not accept this Constitution. The Sikhs reject this Constitution Act."

This rejection was not actuated by a temporary provocation of feelings but by the fact that the principles which had been agreed upon to form the basis of the Indian Constitution had been systematically and thoroughly undermined in the course of its drafting. For example, in the original scheme of the Constituent Assembly the office of Governor was not vested with indiscriminate powers to interfere in the working of a responsible government. In fact he was not even to be a nominee of the Central Government. The memorandum on the Principles of the Provincial Constitution prepared by the Constitutional Advisor to the Assembly in May 1947, had provided that the Governor would be elected by the Provincial Legislature. The Provincial Constitution Committee had gone a step further in considering direct election of the Governor by the people of the Province or at least through some system of indirect election. A Sub-Committee appointed to consider the issue, consisting of B.G. Kher, K.N. Katju and P. Subbarayan, had recommended that the Governor should be elected by an electoral college formed in Assembly constituencies on the scale of one elector for every 10,000 voters. The recommendation had been incorporated in the Committee's Report. But suddenly the leaders decided to transfer all powers from the provinces to the Centre to supervise and direct their functioning. One Brajeshwar Prasad was instigated by the Centralist hawks to move the amendment proposing that the Governor should be appointed by the President by "warrant under his hand and seal". This amendment was adopted. That is how the institution of Governor came to have the present form.

So long as the Congress Party controlled both the Centre and the States for two decades after the independence, and so long as the Centre-State relations remained essentially an intra-party affair, the significance of this transformation could not be realized. In the mid-sixties the regional parties formed governments in many States and the trouble started. There were two earlier examples of Centrist abuse of the governor's office in June 1951 in Punjab and in July 1959 in Kerala. During the period from 1967 to 1969 seven State governments of the opposition parties were dismissed through the instrumentality of the Governor's office. Between 1970-74 nineteen State governments were subverted. During the period of Emergency from June 75 to March 77, the government in Tamil Nadu under the leadership of Chief Minister Karunanidhi of the DMK was dismissed on 31 January 1976 on the ground that there were allegations of corruption against the government and that it did not implement the Central directive to censure the press and detain all political activists opposed to the dictatorship. When the conglomeration of opposition parties known as the Janata Party, came to power at the Centre in 1977 it did the same thing by dismissing nine Congress ruled States.

Even in the normal times when the elected governments in the States are seemingly permitted to function, the Constitution ensures that they remain no more than puppets of the Central government. The Constitution does not grant to the provinces independent powers in any area of governance. It has bestowed on the Union the residuary powers of legislation over the States under Articles 246 and 254 of the Constitution. Governors have the power to withhold assent to a Bill passed by the State Legislatures and to refer the same to the President who can deny his assent without assigning any reasons under Articles 200 and 201. Reserving of certain subjects to Provincial jurisdiction under the Constitution is no more than a hoax as should be evident from examination of industry as a subject. The entry 24 in the States List declared industry as a State subject. But what followed was typical. Through the Industrial Policy Resolution of 1948, the Centre assumed a monopoly over key industries. Through a revision in the Industrial Policy Resolution in 1956 the Union acquired control over many other key industries including oil, electricity, machine tools, fertilisers, drugs, etc. Through another Act the Industries (Development and Regulation) Act 1951, Parliament transferred 37 items of industry to the control of the Centre. This meant that the Centre alone could grant licenses, regulate production and distribution etc. The Act has been amended ten times since then and today 171 items divided into 38 different categories of industries are reserved for the control of the Union.

Initially this kind of centralization may have been a result of the voracity of political upstarts at the Centre. Then there was Nehru's vision of socialist planning requiring centralization. This vision he had contracted from his utopian assessment of progress in the Soviet Union. As the great architect of India's constitutional democracy, he conceived of an extra-constitutional body like the Planning Commission although the Constitution was already loaded very much in favour of Central control. The Constitution had envisaged a Finance Commission to advise the President on the division of the tax revenues and financial and economic aspects of the Centre-State relations. The functions of the Planning Commission, although it was an extra-constitutional body, were wide ranging from the very beginning.

Assessment of material, capital and human resources, formulation of a plan for their most effective utilisation, determination of priorities and allocations of resources, appraisal of progress etc. The Planning Commission became very powerful as an executive limb of the Union Government exercising total control over the developmental programmes of the State governments. It began to decide what resources are to be transferred to the States. State governments were not even consulted and were allowed no say regarding developmental plans for their regions: these were all thrust on them from the top. But we must ask where in fact do the resources which the Union hoards and doles out to the States as if to beggars come from. When India became free the provincial budgets in most cases were in surplus and the Central budget was in straits. The Centre by arguing that it needed finances to fulfil its responsibilities for defence, foreign relations etc. reserved for itself the power to impose the most remunerative and elastic of taxes. The taxes which had little potential for growth were left to the Provinces. Provincial taxes began to shrink. The States which had the responsibilities for rural development, education, public health, welfare of minorities and the suppressed classes were left with very narrow- based and inelastic tax resources. The Union skimmed off the cream. Of the combined aggregate resources during the period 1951-85, the Union government raised 71.5 per cent and the States only 28.5 per cent of the tax resources. And the bulk of these resources the Centre spent on defence, interest payment and discharging other non-productive liabilities. Expenses under these heads accounted for 64 per cent of its total revenue resources and 47 per cent of its total capital resources during 1980-85. That is how the Union, a completely parasitical body, has been eating up all the resources of the provinces. And yet it pottes big brotherly postures; first robbing the States of their wherewithal then doling out morsels of grace and expecting them to remain grovelling.

It took nearly twenty five years of experience of communal discrimination and highhandedness of the Centre from the day of Indian independence for Sikhs to arrive at the clarity of this position which finds clear articulation in the Anandpur Sahib Resolution of 1973. The position evolved not from theoretical speculations but by the experience of unrelenting threat to their collective identity including their beliefs, their way of life, their language.

Following is a short survey of this period from May 1948 to October 1973 when the Akali Dal adopted the Anandpur Sahib Resolution demanding reorganization of the Centre- States relationship.