The Punjab Story
Page 17
It is also understood that while Konkani is a beautiful language, it has no great market value as compared to Marathi; much the same can be said of Punjabi or for that matter Oriya or Assamiya; they are beautiful languages full of meaning and nuances to those who speak them but on an all-India level, they cut little ice. Those who want to stir out of their linguistic nests learn quickly enough that while it is highly patriotic to swear by one’s mother language, it is more practical to learn a dominant language. Punjabi may be spoken by as many as 35 per cent of the people in Haryana and yet not recognized as a second language, but there surely is a method in that madness. Punjabi has no all-India future; Hindi has. So, even though Punjabi is the first language in Punjab, it has perforce to make Hindi the second language, and while this may be attributed to large-heartedness of the Sikhs, one may suspect some pragmatism in the generosity as well. In 1973 India made 147 films in Hindi, 5 films in Punjabi, 2 in Oriya and 8 in Assamese and none in Konkani. In that same year there were 255 dailies, and 1,595 weeklies published in Hindi while there were only 18 dailies and 104 weeklies in Punjabi. Hindi has a bigger clout. Hindi, as Sikhs should know, is officially discouraged in Tamil Nadu whose first language, Tamil, is reputed to be older than Sanskrit. And yet Hindi is being taught in many schools if only because the enterprising Tamilian wants to be able to make a living elsewhere in India. If the Sikh is a little less jingoistic about Punjabi, he will be more at peace with himself and his Hindu brothers. Language is important, but not that important to wreck inter-communal peace.
There are four strands to Punjab crisis fabric that need to be understood. One is the religious strand; the second is the language strand; the third is the terrorist strand and the fourth, and probably the most vicious, is the political strand. The language strand is easily disposed of. Religious tensions are of a recent vintage. Whether Sikh leadership wishes to assert a separate Sikh identity or not, there has been a long history of close Hindu-Sikh relationship. Guru Teg Bahadur’s unparalleled sacrifice of his head to protect the sacred thread and the forehead mark of the Hindus is a matter of record. So is the fact that Maharaja Ranjit Singh banned cow slaughter not only in Punjab but even ordered its ban in Afghanistan and secured the return of the doors of the temple at Somnath looted eight centuries earlier by Ghazni Mohammad. The universally applicable scriptures of the Sikhs incorporate, as is well-known, many hymns from ‘Hinduism’ and the names recognized by Hindus, such as Ram, Hari, Govind, Gopal, Siva, Brahma and Indra are repeated in the Adi Granth time and again. There is one school of thought which says that there is no such thing as Hindu-Sikh clash and point out that despite all the provocations in recent times there has not been one significant communal riot in Punjab and that in village after village, the Hindu minority has been protected by the Sikh majority.
There is another school of thought which argues that there are tensions between the Sikhs and the Hindus, but that this cannot be attributed to Hindus as such, the reasons being attributable to the Arya Samajists and as witness thereof are lines from Satyartha Prakash written by Swami Dayananda Saraswati, that are derogatory to the Sikh gurus. At the same time it is a well-known fact that those who worship at the shrines of the gurus include large numbers of Hindus.
If there are sharp and cognizable differences between the Sikhs and the Hindus (or to be more specific, Arya Samajists) who created them? The Sikhs? The Hindus? The British? For surely, these are not the handiwork of Mrs Gandhi, Pakistan or the CIA? And equally surely, Hindus living away from Punjab could have had no hand in creation of the schisms?
In Punjab, one can never be sure who really set in motion the trend toward Sikh separatism. The Arya Samajists may lay the blame at Sikh doors and the Sikhs may point the finger at the Arya Samajists, and the argument can go on endlessly, but it does seem that at some stage, a sizeable section of Sikhs had come to feel that a largely autonomous state under Sikh domination would be their advantage. If they gave any thought to how their Hindu brothers would feel, it does not come through.
Talk of autonomy ceased when the Akalis came to power with the aid of the BJP. But every time the BJP rescued Akalis, there would be a swing of Hindu votes to Congress-I, and it would be the BJP that lost. But the last rule of Congress-I under Darbara Singh proved ephemeral. Some say he was spending most of his time fending off central interference, from Zail Singh, Buta Singh and others. But Congress-I rule also saw heightened terrorism. The conventional argument is that there was a lot of counter-terrorism practised under the Darbara regime and that this alienated a large number of Sikhs who thereafter went to the Bhindranwale camp. It will never be easy to find out the rights and wrongs of the situation.
It is dangerous, in a highly volatile state, to practise the game of Divide and Rule as did Mrs Indira Gandhi. Punjab has certain characteristics unique to it. It is a border state. It is adjacent to Jammu and Kashmir, which is another border state and with whose leaders Mrs Gandhi has been in a state of permanent conflict. It is a farily well-knit state with a majority of the people bound together by the ties of religion that have no parallel anywhere else in the world. There is certainly no other state in India where a people can be rallied round one temple, one source of inspiration and one concept: in this case, the uniqueness of the Sikh people. The internal disputes and dissensions among the Sikh people are best left for them to resolve without external interference. Any central interference will leave the interferer – in this instance Mrs Gandhi – open to the charge that she is working against the interests of the entire Sikh people. One political commentator and analyst has already described central intervention in Punjab as ‘a war against the Akali party.’ The worst thing that can be done to Punjab is to split the Sikhs or to pitch them against the Hindus. Whatever their problems, whether intra-Sikh, or Sikh-Hindu, are best left for the Sikhs and the Hindus to resolve among themselves. To sow conflict in Punjab in the hope of maintaining Congress-I supremacy in the state, as Rajni Kothari has accused the party of doing, is to invite trouble. This is not to argue, as Mr Kothari has done, that the genesis of the trouble in Punjab is Mrs Gandhi’s overweening desire to maintain Congress-I ‘the only moral principle in politics.’ This is to turn a blind eye to many factors that have contributed to the crisis that emerged in Punjab. If one must look to the root cause of trouble one must rather go to the setting up of linguistic states which has aroused deep passions. Shakespeare makes one of his characters, Glendower say (King Henry IV) with conviction: ‘I can call spirits from the vast deep’ to which Hotspur replied: ‘Why, so can I, or so can any man; but will they come when you do call for them?’ In India, with the establishment of linguistic states, these spirits are surfacing on their own. And they spell danger to the nation.
A warning against such an eventuality was sounded as recently as 17 August 1963 by C. Rajagopalachari (Rajaji). He then wrote: ‘The multilingual provinces of the old regime were developing synthesis each within its own wide boundaries of more than one language community tending towards an all-India synthesis. The unfortunate linguistic reorganization of states on a single-language basis stopped this process of synthesis. The states have hardened into rigidly isolated units developing a language nationalism with a proprietary ego and an aggressive attitude towards one another. All India unity is badly affected by this. The binding factor is the central government, namely, the image of the illustrious emancipators from foreign rule which is thining and is bound to vanish and leave India in a state of disintegration, state nationalism replacing all-India nationalism. Increased power for the centre is not a remedy, as some people believe. It will not help to build but only serve to provoke rebellion. This will be so because the centre will always be identified with the stronger state or group. This is a gloomy picture though distant’ (emphasis added).
Rajaji’s prophecy has come to pass now in Punjab. His assessment was correct. Mrs Gandhi has been functioning on the theory, amounting to a deep-seated belief, that only a powerful ce
ntre can serve as a binding force. The force that in the early years of post-independence India kept the country together was not so much central authority, or even the charisma of Jawaharlal Nehru, but ‘the image of the illustrious emancipators from foreign rule’. With the thining out of that image, and with the wrong step that the nation took in establishing linguistic states, it was inevitable that the ‘increased power’ sought by the centre should only arouse ‘rebellion’. In that sense the answer to our problems, whether in Punjab or elsewhere, is the dissolution of the linguistic states and the setting up of a unitary republic.
When Rajaji made his remarks, his motives were suspect. He was condemned for wanting to retain English as the inter-state language. Rajaji did hold that view strongly. He said: ‘All our languages are great and good and sacred. (But) do not seek to elevate one of them over others. Let the official service continue to be done in English as heretofore. This is the simple key to the problem that has raised its head. It is my earnest advice as an old and experienced citizen of India who is not less patriotic than anyone else in this great country of ours, and who yields to none in love and respect for Indian institutions, Indian manners and customs and Indian languages.’
The occasion was the demand for making Hindi ‘the national language’ of India. In Tamil Nadu, Rajaji’s home state, the demand was opposed with a vehemence that should have been foreseen, but which the Hindi-belt majority in parliament, in its blindness, refused to see. Language is a powerful force. It should not have been summoned from the deep. In any event, it should not have been associated with political power. Its worst manifestation has been seen in Punjab, where it has created an explosive mix of language, religion and politics. No deadlier combination exists. The three have to be separated, but the process must start elsewhere in the country. We must either get back to the old multilingual provinces or, if that is not feasible, to a unitary form of government where India is divided into 450 districts with no linguistic tag attached to them.
Were India a unitary state, divided not into linguistic states, but into several districts, some of the demands made by the Akali Dal just would not have arisen, and the Anandpur Sahib Resolution would have been a piece of paper. When Rajaji spoke of ‘proprietary ego’ he pinpointed the problem accurately. The Akalis speak of rivers in Punjab as if they are their exclusive property whose waters can be shared by others only through their courtesy. Maharashtrians and Gujaratis, Kannadigas and Tamilians not to speak of people from other states talk of the Narmada or the Kaveri as if they are theirs by natural right. Maharashtrians, similarly, demanded that the city of Bombay is theirs, forgetting that it has been the handiwork of generations of people who spoke a language other than Marathi. In a unitary state no problem of river waters can arise since water will be used not by states but by people who live by the rivers. Cities like Delhi, Calcutta, Madras, Bombay would be treated as units in their own right and not as capitals of any particular state. In fact, when the old Bombay province was to be trifurcated, there was a positive and entirely sensible proposal to make Bombay a centrally-administered unit. But such was linguistic jingoism that threats came to be issued that if Bombay was taken away from Maharashtra, it would be starved of water. In the end, the centre was compelled to succumb to the demands of the jingoists.
During the linguistic agitation in 1953, over 50,000 Sikhs had courted arrest. In the 1983 agitation, reputedly over 100,000 volunteers similarly offered themselves for arrest, in a sheer exercise in futility. Chauvinism of the worst kind had run riot. The mountains and rivers, the vales and forests, the seas and beaches of this ancient land belong to all people. They are not – and should not be – the sole property of any group, whether religious or linguistic.
It is because this sound principle had been thrown overboard by all concerned that there has been so much bad blood between one state and another. So-called leaders in every state have now come to have vested interests in prolonging and maintaining linguism in determining political units. Is there any wonder, then, that Sikhs, too, want to have their Punjab suba? And who can blame them for complaining that they were the last to get their own Punjabi-speaking state, long after other linguistic units had been established? And once you start accumulating grievances, they have a way of getting out of hand. Grievance piles up on grievance until one convinces onself that the world is against one. In Punjab, the Akalis seem to have convinced themselves that every hand is turned against them, that there is a diabolical conspiracy to do the Sikhs out of their heritage and to turn them into second-class citizens. That will partly explain the Anandpur Sahib Resolution, the frustrations expressed by many Sikh leaders and the ease with which Sikhs could be made to think that they have to make it on their own.
Then comes self-pity, a feeling that one’s contributions to the nation have gone unrecognized, that one is victim of circumstances beyond one’s control and that one’s destiny is in one’s own hand. Sant Longowal, for instance, told a visiting delegation that out of 2,125 martyrs, as many as 1,550 (or 75 per cent) were Sikhs, that out of 2,646 deported to Andaman (Kalapani), 2,147 (80 per cent) were Sikhs and that out of 127 Indians who were sent to the gallows, 92 (or 80 per cent) were Sikhs. The Sant also pointed out that in Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s Indian National Army of 20,000, almost 12,000 were Sikhs. Thus, complained the Sant, not only did India’s 2 per cent Sikhs make by far the highest contribution to the country’s freedom, but they also maintained the same tempo even after India became free. More than one third of the country’s population, he added, lived on the grain produced and supplied from Punjab which was a deficit state with its barren lands at the time of Partition.
There is no doubt that the better irrigated lands of Punjab went to Pakistan. Equally, there is no doubt that the Green Revolution in India was mostly the handiwork of the Punjabi Jat farmer, hardy, innovative and enterprising. Mr C. Subramaniam has gone on record as saying that it was the Punjab farmer with his willingness to experiment who made the Green Revolution possible, though the Tamil Nadu farmer, it has to be added, was soon to follow suit. The Sant’s argument has been that the central government’s investment in the Green Revolution has been less than one per cent of the national budget though, if one were to look into statistics more carefully, one would learn that central investment in the Green Revolution was not much more elsewhere, either.
The point can be made, of course, that the Punjabi farmer has not been giving his grain free and that by now he must have reaped several times the investment that he had made and that if the Punjabi farmer or small-scale industrialist has been thriving it is because of the great market he enjoys and the rest of India provides. Many states in India even provide labour to Punjab, though Punjab, in turn, can claim that it is putting money into the pockets of labourers from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan who would otherwise have remained unemployed and to that extent poorer. What needs to be stressed here, of course, is that all states are highly inter-dependent and it is that which makes India so fascinating a land to live in.
Indeed, it is not only that non-Punjabi labour goes every year to Punjab to work on the farms but that Punjabis themselves have fanned out all over India to make an honourable living. According to the 1981 census there are 101,762 Sikhs in Maharashtra, 98,973 in Madhya Pradesh, 105,873 in Jammu and Kashmir, 61,520 in Bihar, 44,914 in Himachal Pradesh, 35,084 in West Bengal, 12,591 in Andhra Pradesh, 11,920 in Assam, 18,233 in Gujarat, 10,284 in Orissa, 6,830 in Karnataka, 4,355 in Tamil Nadu and 292,123 in Delhi. There are more Sikhs in Delhi than in Amritsar.
But it would be unwise and factually erroneous to think that Punjab, the granary of India, has brought plenty and prosperity to the state. That is a wrong assumption. It is true that the farmers in Punjab are owners-cultivators, but 48.44 per cent of the farming households have small holdings of less than five acres each and together own only 13.13 per cent of the land, while 41.56 per cent own 49.79 per cent of the area. A major section of the land
– 37.08 per cent – is held by the remaining 10 per cent. Each household in this category owns 20 acres or more. As Jagtar Singh has pointed out in Express Magazine (22 July 1984), the majority of small-holders – 45 per cent of the population of the state, according to the latest government surveys – lives below the poverty line. That is a frightful thought.