The Sikhs of the Punjab: The New Cambridge History of India: By J.S. Grewal, Orient Longman in association with Cambridge University Press, Rs. 275. Considering the plethore of evidence heaped by the rival claimants in respect of Ramajanambhoomi-Babri Masjid complex, one’s faith in history is shaken. It is indeed difficult task of a historian. It is more difficult when it is Indian history for we have never been a history conscious people. Our artists and sculptors created works like we have at Ajantha and Ellora in anonymity and then left them to be buried under the dust-heap of centuries.
It is still more difficult when we come to the Sikh history, despite the fact that the Sikh religion is as recent as a little over 500 years. This is what Dr. Ganda Singh, one of India’s most eminent historians and one-time President of the Indian History Congress, has to say on the subject:
“The admixture of fiction with history has destroyed the purity and truth of the latter, doing great injustice and incalculable harm to the saints and heroes of their studies. This is particularly the case with the Guru period where, in many cases, students, and scholars of history find it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to discriminate between history and fiction”.
It was, therefore, no easy task undertaken by Dr. J.S. Grewal, author of The Sikhs of the Punjab as a constituent of the prestigious New Cambridge History of India. That he has creditably succeeded in it, he owes to his life-long research and devotion to the subject.
The New Cambridge History of India does not follow the hither to accepted format of treating history in the chronological order. It has books on individual subjects which complement each other in the shelf under four broad heads; 1. The Mughals and their contemporaries, 2. Indian States and the transition to colonialism, 3. The Indian empire and the beginning of modern society and 4. The evaluation of contemporary South Asia.
Census Mischief: It is accepted in all quarters that the present trouble in the Punjab has its genesis in 1951 Census operations when some misguided elements in the Punjab started propagating that the mother tongue of the Hindus in the State was Hindi. They spoke Punjabi at home and in the street, made love and hurled abuse in Punjabi, but when it came to declaring their language, they claimed it to be Hindi on political consideration. Not only this, some diehards endeavored to maintain that they did speak Punjabi, but it was a dialect and not a language. It was adding insult to injury.
They denigrated a highly developed language as a dialect in which Baba Farid sang his scintillating hymns in the twelfth century followed by Guru Nanak, Guru Arjan, Bhai Gurudass, Shah Hussain, Waris, Hashim and a host of other immortals. It is sacrilegious, to say the least. It put off the Sikhs who had only the other day cast in their lot with the secular India, badly. More, because they found that the Centre was also inclined to give quarter to this perfidy. The fact is that Punjabi is as old – if not older than Hindi as it is spoken today. Dr. Grewal confirms it.
These dialects had begun to emerge clearly between the fall of the kingdom of Harsha in the seventh century and the rise of the Sultanate of Delhi in the thirteenth. The great poet Amir Khusrau referred to Lahauri as the spoken language of the people of the Lahore region, later to be called Punjabi. At this time Shaikh Fariduddin Chishti of Pakpattan was using another major dialect of Punjabi, namely Multani, as the medium of his literary expression. Those who wished to address themselves to the mass of the people naturally preferred to use their language. The boards and the minstrels (dhadhis) entertained the common people with tales of love and war in their own dialects, developing in the process a rich tradition of oral literature in Punjabi!.
Khalistan ghost: Dr. Grewal dismisses the assertion that the Sikhs asked for a separate State during the negotiations for transfer of power. The slogan of Khalistan did not emanate from any responsible Sikh quarter. What the Sikhs wanted to ensure was that they should not be dominated by any single community:-
“Nevertheless, the resolution of the Muslim League, popularity referred to as ‘Pakistan Resolution’ was denounced at the All-India Akali Conference. Dr. V.S. Bhatti of Ludhiana published a pamphlet demanding ‘Khalistan’ as a buffer State between India and ‘Pakistan’. That the idea of Khalistan was meant merely to oppose the idea of Pakistan is evident from the frequent use of the phrase ‘if Pakistan is to be conceded.’
‘Master Tara Singh wrote to Sir Stafford Cripps that, since the Sikhs could not dominate in any large area because of their more or less thin distribution over the province, it was unthinkable to demand domination. However, a province could certainly be carved out’ in which the Sikhs are dominated by no single community”.
Hindu Perfidy: And lastly, this is what the author has to say about the new Punjab State created in 1966 which is the source of all trouble today.
The new Punjab State created new problems because of the way in which it was formed. Sant Fateh Singh expressed his dissatisfaction several months before the new State was inaugurated. Genuinely Punjabi speaking areas were being left out of the new State and given to Haryana and Himachal Pradesh, Chandigarh was unjustly being turned into a Union Territory; power and irrigation projects were being taken over by the Union Government’.
A timely publication which the rulers in Delhi would do well to read, more the misguided elements in the Punjab. The solution of the Punjab problem is not in Khalistan, but as revealed by the author: it lies in a larger State with truly Punjabi-speaking people included in it, irrespective of the Sikh population. That it should have a respectable measure of autonomy is a problem it shares with the rest of the States.
