38 THE CARAVANmodel minority · reportageMany of Punjab’s present-day scars trace back
to Partition. In 1947, the unified, Muslim-majority
Punjab province of British India was split in half,
with the western part joining the newly created
state of Pakistan and the eastern part joining an
independent India. The new border separated the
birthplace and burial site of Sikhism’s founder,
Guru Nanak, from the religion’s holiest site, the
Golden Temple, in the Indian city of Amritsar. The
vast majority of Sikhs living in Pakistani Punjab
migrated to Indian Punjab, and most Muslims in
Indian Punjab embarked on the opposite journey.
Both migrations were accompanied by a spiral of
communal bloodletting that left millions dead. It
was these events that left Indian Punjab with a
Sikh majority.
The idea of an autonomous Sikh state took shape
as part of fierce battles over linguistic identity
that swept across India in the 1950s. Faced with
the task of nation-building and demarcating state
boundaries, the Indian government announced
a reorganisation of states according to language
demographics. But Punjabi was not considered for
a state of its own. In response, the Akali Dal, a re-
gional political party, launched the Punjabi Suba.
A key demand of this two-decade movement was
that regions of Punjab with Punjabi-speaking and
other language majorities be divided into separate
states.
By and large, the Punjabi Suba was centred
around creating a majority Punjabi-speaking state,not a Sikh state. But the Akali Dal, in its manifesto,
wrote, “The Shiromani Akali Dal has reason to
believe that a Punjabi-speaking province may give
the Sikhs the needful security.” Punjabi Hin-
dus interpreted this as a bid for a Sikh-majority
state. In response, many Hindus rejected Punjabi
as their mother tongue in a census, and Hindu
groups aggressively promoted Hindi as their ver-
nacular language. The divide was reflected in local
media and politics, as various sides tried to exploit
it to their advantage.
By 1966, Punjab was split into Haryana, Hi-
machal Pradesh and the Punjab we know today,
with a majority-Sikh population. Punjabi was
recognised, finally, as the official language of
Punjab. But it was not until the Akalis adopted
the Anandpur Sahib Resolution in 1973—six years
after modern Punjab came into existence—that
the idea of an autonomous Sikh state received any
formal articulation. Although there are at least
three versions of the resolution, with rival factions
adopting different interpretations of it, one signed
in 1982 emphasised, among other things, the
constitution of a “single administrative unit where
the interests of Sikh and Sikhism are specially
protected.”
The Akali Dal president Harchand Singh Lon-
gowal stated, “Let us make it clear once and for all
that the Sikhs have no designs to get away from
India in any manner.” But the central government
remained wary. In its “White paper on the Punjabbelow: Jarnail Singh
Bhindranwale’s
hardline stance on
what constituted
Sikh identity
emboldened Sikh
separatists in the
1980s.opposite page:
The Indian military
stormed Sikhism’s
holiest site, the
Golden Temple,
to flush out
Bhindranwale and
his supporters on 5
June 1984.indian express archive