Punjab Suba

When after the independence of India, eight princely States of Punjab constituted themselves into Patiala & East Punjab States Union, in short PEPSU, in May 1948, it became a Sikh majority State. However, instead of inviting the Akali Dal, which represented the Sikhs, to form the Ministry the Governor nominated a Congressman as the Chief Minister of the State. But in the elections of February 1952, the Akali Dal, contesting on the plank of reorganisation of Punjab which then incorporated Haryana and parts of Himachal Pradesh as a linguistically harmonious State, won majority in PEPSU Assembly. Yet the Congress Party formed a government led by Raghuvir Singh by contriving defections from the Akali ranks: a government that was defeated on the first day the elected Assembly met on 6 April 1952. Gian Singh Rarewal of the Akali Dal formed an alternative government. But the Election Tribunal countermanded his election to the Assembly on technical grounds and the State was brought under President's rule.

The Akali Dal launched an agitation for reorganisation of the Province on the basis of linguistic homogeneity into separate Punjabi and Hindi speaking Haryana. Before Indian independence the Congress had supported the demand. The States Reorganization Commission appointed by the Prime Minister in December 1953, however, while recommending reorganization of States for the rest of India on the basis of linguistic homogeneity rejected the demand for the formation of a separate Punjabi speaking State.

Hindus of Punjab were called upon by their leaders to disown their mother tongue, Punjabi, and to register their language to be Hindi. When the government made a small concession to the Sikh leaders by introducing the so-called Regional Formula which granted that official language at the district level was to be the language spoken in the district, the Hindu elements of Punjab who wanted Hindi alone to be recognized as the official language of the State, started a violent agitation against it.

Pandit Nehru himself took a tough line against the Sikh agitation for a Punjabi State and declared that he would not concede the demand even if, as a consequence, he had to face a civil war. The leaders of the agitation were imprisoned for long periods. Several of them undertook long fasts. Master Tara Singh, 76 year old Sikh leader, fasted for 48 days without being able to move the government. When he broke the fast, the Sikhs rejected him as their leader. When a war between India and Pakistan seemed imminent in 1965, Sant Fateh Singh, the President of the Akali Dal refusing to suspend the agitation declared that "country is dear but Punjabi Suba is dearer". The new Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri came to an understanding with the Akali leaders that their demand would be granted if they let India first take care of the challenge from across the border.

A new State of Punjab with an area of 50255 sq. kilometers came into existence under the Punjab Reorganization Act No.31 of 1966 on September 18, 1966. In the first two consecutive elections to the State Assembly held after Punjab's reorganization, the Akali Dal romped home sufficient majority to form its government. These governments were, however, not allowed to function by the Congress Party which organized defections to pull them down. With the failure of these experiments in the State government, it dawned on the rank and the file of the Akali Dal that governments formed by them in the State under the existing circumstances were doomed to expend themselves in the exertions to survive against the subversive manipulations of the Centre. They also realized that with the creation of the Punjabi Suba large tracts of Punjabi speaking areas had been lost to Haryana and Himachal Pradesh which the Akali Dal in spite of being in the government was unable to recover. The issue aroused in Sikhs deep emotions over the steady loss of their territorial identity beginning from the time of India's independence.

The oldest human settlements located in the floodplains of the river Indus, which mark the beginnings of civilization in the subcontinent, as well as the archaeological remains of the later Indus Valley cities of Harappa and Mohanjodaro which stand to show a developed civilization in Punjab even before the advent of the Aryans, were lost to Pakistan in 1947. The sites at which the forces of Alexander of Macedonia had been contested by ancient Punjabi armies; Lahore, near which their first Guru was born and which had been the capital of Punjab for nearly one thousand years and in particular the seat of Ranjit Singh's powerful empire - all of this land was severed from Punjab when it was partitioned. The Capital of post-partition Indian Punjab was moved from Lahore to Simla, the summer capital of British India, while Jawaharlal Nehru himself supervised the construction of Chandigarh, which he got designed by Le Corbusier and other avant-garde architects, to compensate Punjab for its loss of Lahore. Chandigarh became the capital of Punjab. But in 1966 it was declared a Union Territory while Simla was given away to Himachal Pradesh. The Boundary Commission which had demarcated the areas to become the unilingual States of Punjab and Haryana had used the census of 1961 as the basis for its award. The census was admittedly defective and it expressed communal mischief of Hindus who, as already mentioned, had their mother tongue registered as Hindi although in fact they spoke only Punjabi. It was on the basis of this census of 1961 that the Commission had recommended the transfer of Chandigarh to Haryana. One member of the Commission, S. K. Dutta, gave his dissenting note saying that Chandigarh should not be included in Haryana, but be given to Punjab. The government, however, decided to keep Chandigarh as the joint capital of both the states.

The Akali Dal pledged that the party would strive to secure Chandigarh for Punjab. Darshan Singh Pheruman undertook a fast to demand transfer of Chandigarh to Punjab from 15 August 1969 and died seventy four days later. Sant Fateh Singh himself went on a hunger strike beginning from 26 January 1970, India's Republic Day. Three days later Mrs. Gandhi gave an award announcing the transfer of Chandigarh to Punjab and the formation of an expert committee to decide which other Punjabi speaking areas in Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Rajasthan should be merged back into the State. The actual transfer of Chandigarh, according to the award, was to take place in or before January 1975. Twenty years have passed since. Chandigarh remains a Union Territory.