|
The last to lay arms and foremost to raise them against the
British, the Sikhs of Punjab may not figure prominently in the
galaxy of freedom fighters led by Mahatma Gandhi barring
Shaheed Bhagat Singh, who, too, was consistently disowned by
Bapu, but the contribution of the Sikh people to the freedom
struggle is no mean.
It is believed in all quarters that but for the intrigues in
the post-Ranjit Singh’s Sikh hierarchy and the malicious
strategy of the White man, the Sikhs could not have been
defeated in 1849 the way they were. Despite this undeserved
ignominy, there were ever so many incidents of defiance of the
foreign rule by the Sikh soldiers and political activists.
However, an organised peaceful crusade was launched by Baba
Ram Singh Nandhari (he is addressed as Satguru Ram Singh by
his followers) in 1869. It was essentially a socio-religious
movement which became “a dynamic political force” in due
course. They protested against cow slaughter, advocated widow
re-marriage, would have nothing to do with the British
educational institutions, even the mail and tap water. They
wore spotless khadi and were devoted to meditation with
woollen rosary.
Amritsar being the holy city, cow-slaughter was forbidden in
it. But later not only was it permitted, the ban lifted, an
abattoir was established next to the Golden Temple. This
infuriated the Nandharis who butchered many a butcher in the
town. At this the British without due enquiry had 65 Nandharis
tied with the barrels of cannons and blown to bits. Baba Ram
Singh had no hand in it, but the British availed of this
opportunity and deported him to Rangoon on January 18, 1872.
The technique of non-co-operation adopted by Mahatma Gandhi is
preceded by the Nandhari crusade by boycotting British
institutions and trying to be self-sufficient with the native
ways and means.
Again the Gurdwara Movement of the Sikhs (1921-24) was the
beginning of the national struggle for freedom. This has been
accepted by more than one Indian national political leader.
Pandit Moti Lal Nehru:
I salute the Akalis who have started the struggle for freedom
and are fighting for it.
Pandi Madan Mohan Malaviya:
Guru Ka Bagh Morcha has given birth to the freedom movement
which must lead us to Swaraj.
Lala Lajpat Rai:
Freedom is our birthright. The Akalis are the legitimate sons
of Mother India who are fighting for her.
Dadabhai Naoroji:
The Sikh brothers have shown us the way to freedom; no one can
keep us slaves any more.
Master Tara Singh:
I would not mind if you, instead of standing with the
Congress, boycott it and stand in front of it in the fight for
India’s freedom. But if you boycott the Congress and stand in
the back lane, it will be a shame for our community.
According to the eminent historian, Dr Ganda Singh, 500 Sikhs
were killed in the Gurdwara Movement and 30,000 courted
arrest, the fines paid amounted to Rs 10,00,000.
It was Master Tara Singh’s intervention, when he pulled down
the Muslim League flag atop the Punjab Assembly at Lahore and
tore it which saved half of the Punjab for India; otherwise
the entire Punjab would have gone to Pakistan with River
Yamuna as the dividing line between India and Pakistan.
The total contribution of Sikhs in India’s struggle for
freedom is revealing:
Out of 121 patriots hanged 93 were Sikhs. Of the 2626 awarded
life-imprisonment 2147 were Sikhs. Of the 1300 martyred in
Jallianwala Bagh 799 were Sikhs.
Considering that the Sikhs were hardly 1.5 per cent of the
total population of India at the time, their sacrifices
amounted to 90 per cent. No wonder that Sardar Baldev Singh, a
representative of the Akalis, was invited to greet the country
on the national network along with Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and
Mohammad Ali Jinnah when freedom came. And then started the
slow but sure process of ignoring the Sikh people, forgetting
their valiant contribution in bringing about the freedom. They
are just one of the minority communities today.
♦
THE next landmark in the Sikh struggle for freedom was the
agitation launched against the Punjab Colonisation Act, 1907,
under which the government sought to enhance land revenue and
water charges in the canal irrigated areas. There was
widespread agrarian unrest with bloodshed in all important
towns like Lahore and Rawalpindi. It was during this agitation
that one Banke Dyal wrote the famous song—Pagdi sambhal jatta,
pagdi sambhal oye! (Mind your turban, O tiller of the land,
mind your turban!) It became a popular patriotic song with the
freedom fighters and continues to be sung even today. Sardar
Ajit Singh and Lala Lajpat Rai were prominent among the
leaders of this movement. They were expelled from the country
and imprisoned in Mandalay in Burma. After their release Ajit
Singh went to Canada and joined the Ghadar Party of which he
became and outstanding leader in due course.
The Ghadar Party was started by Sohan Singh Bhakna under the
inspiration of Lala Hardyal. They pledged to end British rule
in India through an armed revolution and set up a Republic of
India guaranteeing liberty and equality to all its citizens.
They set up their headquarters in San Francisco. They had
their own weekly journal called Ghadar. With a view to
retaining the secular character of their organisation, they
made it a point not to discuss religion in their meetings; it
was considered strictly a personal affair. They would also not
observe any restrictions in the matter of diet. Soon they were
to be joined by Kartar Singh ‘Sarabha’, Dr Mathura Singh and
Jawand Singh who were later hanged in India. The party
established its branches in a number of towns in America and
Canada and also in Shanghai, Hong Kong, the Philippines,
Thailand and Panama. They also gave a select band of its
members training in arms.
The activities of the Ghadar Party received a great fillip by
what has come to be known as the Kamagata Maru episode. It
inspired the Ghadarites and steeled their hearts against the
Ferringhi. They were determined to throw away the foreign yoke
and prepared themselves to make any sacrifice for this cause.
The Kamagata Maru was the name of a Japanese ship engaged by
Baba Gurdit Singh for transporting Indian emigrants to Canada.
There being widespread unemployment at home, more and more
enterprising Punjabis sought to go abroad. Canada being a
member of the Commonwealth, Indians were entitled to have free
access to the country. However, at the instance of the British
Government, Canada passed an Act preventing entry of the
Asians. This was primarily directed against the Indians since
they continued to allow Chinese and Japanese to immigrate in
large numbers. The Sikhs would not have it. Accordingly, the
Kamagata Maru with 376 passengers on board arrived at
Vancouver on May 22, 1914. They were not permitted to land on
the Canadian soil. The ship was stranded in the high seas. The
passengers had no medicines. They even fell short of water.
But the Canadian authorities would not relent. There was a
skirmish with the local police when, it is alleged, fire was
exchanged. The Government of Canada was not willing even to
allow them provisions for the return journey. The Kamagata
Maru sailed back after two months. The returning passengers
were provided arms enroute at Yokohama and the leadership of
Baba Sohan Singh Bhakna and Baba Gurdit Singh turned each one
of the passengers into a hard core revolutionary. World War I
having broken out in the meanwhile, the Kamagata Maru had a
hostile reception when it touched Kolkata (Calcutta). There
was a train waiting to carry the passengers to the Punjab.
This was not acceptable to the self-respecting Punjabis, who
wished to stay back at least in Kolkata and earn something, so
that they didn’t have to go back home empty-handed. There was
a confrontation in which eighteen passengers were slaughtered.
However, twentyeight of them, including Baba Gurdit Singh,
managed to escape. Baba Gurdit Singh remained underground for
seven years until he surrendered himself to the police at
Nankana Saheb, the birthplace of Guru Nanak.
The Ghadar Party continued to inject revolutionaries into
Indian politics. It is said, out of 8000 returnees during
1914-18, the Government of India interned 5000 and restricted
the movements of another 2500. The party had its sympathisers
in the defence forces though due to lack of discipline and
leadership it could not take any precipitate action.
Nevertheless, the government was on their track.
The suspects were arrested. Among the 194 men taken into
custody 180 were Punjabis. Most of them were Sikhs. They were
charged with treason. As many as twelve were hanged. Some of
the were imprisoned for life. Others were transported. And the
rest were given various terms of imprisonment.
Considering that the Indian National Congress session at
Madras in 1914 had its main hall decorated with the portrait
of the British King and the Governor of the province was
invited to grace the occasion with his presence, it was no
mean achievement of the Ghadar Party to do all that it did.
Its most significant contribution is that it made the
Britishers realise that they could no longer take India for
granted. They must negotiate with the Indian people and hand
over power to them, maybe gradually.
♦
THE Great October Revolution of 1917 which overthrew the
Czarist regime and brought the people to power in the USSR
also had its salutary effect on the arrogant White rulers on
whose empire, it was said, the sun never set.
The War was over but Punjab was in ferment. The forces being
demobilised had 80,000 Sikh soldiers. Mahatma Gandhi had in
the meanwhile assumed charge of the national leadership. A
great believer in the good faith of the White man, he was
dismayed to find that the British Government had no desire to
part with power. He, therefore, gave a call for satyagraha.
On April 13, 1919, the holy Baisakhi day, consecrated by Guru
Gobind Singh with the baptism of the Sikhs, large crowds
assembled at Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar. They included men,
women and children. Brigadier General Edward Harry Dyer who
had arrived in the town two days earlier with his force came
to the scene, blocked the only exit and started firing on the
unarmed innocent people with machine-guns ‘till his ammunition
was exhausted’. The record says that 309 people were shot dead
on the spot and many times that number were wounded. The Sikhs
were again the largest in number to suffer casualties.
The people of Punjab went wild with anger. They set post
offices and other government buildings on fire, massacred the
White men who came their way, removed fish plates from the
railway lines, cut telephone and telegraph wires. The entire
Punjab was aflame. The government declared martial law and
retaliatory measures were in evidence all over the province.
Punjab became the vortex of the political struggle. The Nobel
Laureate, Rabindranath Tagore, relinquished his knighthood as
a protest against the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. The Indian
National Congress held its annual session at Amritsar in
December the same year. It was attended among others by
Mahatma Gandhi, Motilal Nehru, Madan Mohan Malaviya,
Jawaharlal Nehru, C. F. Andrews, C. R. Das, Dr M. A. Ansari,
the Ali Brothers and Hakim Ajmal Khan. Among the eminent
Punjabi leaders who participated in it were Baba Kharak Singh,
Lala Lajpat Rai and Sardar Sardul Singh ‘Caveeshar’.
The Sikhs now came to look upon Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal
Nehru as their national leaders and started seeking
inspiration from them. They were in the vanguard of the
movement. The Sikh League held a meeting presided over by
Sardar Kharak Singh in 1920. It was attended by Mahatma
Gandhi.
It was about this time that the Sikhs launched what came to be
known as the Akali Movement. Essentially aimed at taking
charge of the Sikh shrines from the mahants—the hereditary
custodians—and bringing about reforms in the rituals and
elaborate ceremonials, the movement went a long way in
politicising the Sikh masses and inculcating in them passion
for independence.
The Gurudwara Reform Movement was a gruelling struggle. The
vested interests would not like to part with the charge of the
Sikh shrines, some of which had considerable landed property
attached to them, apart from the income from the offerings
which was no less substantial. The Sikhs had to launch morcha
(agitation) after morcha. At times the fight was headlong with
the government, while at others the government appeared to
protect the hereditary custodians who were its protégés. In
Delhi the government had demolished a wall of the historical
Gurudwara Rakab Ganj where the Ninth Sikh Guru had been
cremated. The Sikhs went wild. An agitation was launched. A
shahidi jatha comprising Sikhs, Muslims and Hindus, who were
prepared to be martyred, left for Delhi under Sardul Singh ‘Caveeshar’.
The government came to its senses and restored the wall of the
holy shrine.
After the Jallianwala Bagh tragedy, the hereditary custodians
of the Golden Temple invited Sir Michael O’Dwyer and honoured
him with a saropa. How could the community allow the charge of
the Gurudwara to remain in the hands of such inveterate
toadies? Accordingly another agitation was launched to take
over the Golden Temple.
Mahant Narain Das of Nankana Saheb, the birthplace of Guru
Nanak, was a debauch and a drunkard. He was pampered by the
Britishers no less. A jatha of over 130 Sikhs who were
visiting the Gurudwara were attacked with swords and spears by
the goondas of the Mahant and massacred. Their dead bodies
were sprinkled with kerosene and burnt on the premises. The
leader of the jatha, Sardar Lachhman Singh, was tied to the
trunk of a tree and lynched.
The tragic happening sent a wave of horror throughout the
country. Mahatma Gandhi and the Ali Brothers visited Nankana
Saheb. The government was alarmed. The charge of the Gurudwara
was promptly handed over to a committee of the Sikhs.
The government, however, decided to appoint its own custodian
for the Golden Temple. This was not acceptable to the Sikhs
and the agitation continued. The agitators were sentenced to
frightfully long terms of imprisonment. But there was no sign
of the agitation abating anywhere. The Sikhs continued to
protest and court arrests in hundreds and thousands.
At last the government was brought to its knees and the keys
of the Golden temple were handed over to the Sikhs by the
Deputy Commissioner of Amritsar at a huge congregation held in
the town. This was described by Mahatma Gandhi ‘as the first
victory in a decisive battle for independence’.
♦
BUT what brought unique glory to the Sikhs was the Guru Ka
Bagh (The Guru’s Garden) which was no more than a barren tract
with a wild growth of Kikar trees had been handed over to the
Sikhs along with other shrines. However, Mahant Sunder Das
changed his mind and would not allow the Sikhs to enter the
premises. The Sikhs used to fell trees in the arid tract for
fuel for the community kitchen. The Mahant sought police
assistance and the Sikhs entering the so-called Bagh were
arrested for trespass. The first arrest took place on August
8, 1922. This was followed by a chain of Sikh jathas visiting
Guru Ka Bagh one after another and offering satyagraha. The
jathas came from all over the Punjab. There was an endless
stream of them. It was decided to be a non-violent agitation.
The Sikhs would go unarmed; singing hymns, with hands folded
and tried to enter the land which belonged to their Guru. The
police, who were tired of arresting them, adopted new tactics
under a British Superintendent of Police, named S.G.N. Beaty.
They would beat the Sikhs mercilessly, pulling them by their
hair, making indiscriminate lathi charges, breaking their
bones and inflicting grievous wounds on them. With the name of
God on their lips, the satyagrahis would fall down unconscious
but they would neither defend themselves nor retaliate. Many
died, a large number of them had to be hospitalised but there
was no stopping the stream of jathas. Though propagated by
Mahtma Gandhi, the Sikhs have non-violence in their blood. Two
of their Gurus— Guru Arjan and Guru Tegh Bahadur—had given
their lives as non-violent crusaders. The way the Sikhs
conducted this satyagraha, and the barbarities perpetrated on
them, roused the anger of the entire nation. The Punjab was a
flaming cauldron. Every district tried to outdo the other. A
jatha came from far-off Dhan Pothoar with Giani Gurmukh Singh
‘Musafir’ (who became the Chief Minister of Punjab in
independent India) as one of the volunteers. A lot of
literature came to be produced about the unprecedented
persecution and valour of the non-violent satyagrahis.
It surprised Mahatma Gandhi, the apostle of non-violence, the
most. He was amazed to find vindication of his technique of
political warfare coming from the most unexpected quarters,
the brave people of Punjab. Several national leaders, both
Hindus and Muslims, came to Punjab to see with their own eyes
the way the satyagraha was being conducted. Pandit Madan Mohan
Malaviya, a staunch Hindu who was at one time President of the
Indian National Congress, witnessed the manner in which the
disciplined soldiers of the Sikh community suffered
barbarities for the cause dear to their heart and was moved to
say:
I cannot resist asking every Hindu home to have at least one
male child initiated into the fold of the Khalsa. What I see
here before my eyes is nothing short of a miracle in our whole
history.
C.F. Andrews, a Christian missionary and an associate of
Mahatma Gandhi, also visited Punjab during the satyagraha.
This is what he reported:
There were four Akali Sikhs with black turbans facing a band
of about a dozen policemen, including two English officers.
Their hands were placed together in prayer. Then an Englishman
without provocation lunged forward the head of his lathi,
bound with brass, and struck the Sikh at the collarbone with
great force. He fell to the ground, rolled over and slowly got
up once more to face the same punishment till he was laid
prostrate by repeated blows. Others were knocked out more
quickly. It was brutal in the extreme. I saw with my own eyes
one of those policemen kick in the stomach a Sikh who stood
helplessly before him. I wanted to cry and rush forward. But
then I saw a police sepoy stamping with his foot an Akali Sikh
hurled to the ground and lying prostrate … The brutality and
the inhumanity of the whole scene was indescribably increased
by the fact that the men who were hit were praying to God and
had taken a vow (at the Golden Temple) to remain silent and
peaceful in word and deed. I saw no act or look of defiance.
It was a true martyrdom, a true act of faith. It reminded me
of the shadow of the cross.
There were ever so many similar morchas. Guru Ka Bagh was
followed by what has come to be known as the Jaito Morcha.
Jawaharlal Nehru also joined hands with the agitating Sikhs
here and courted arrest along with a number of prominent
national leaders. Nehru made the following observation on the
occasion on September 25, 1923:
I rejoice that I am being tried for a cause which the Sikhs
have made their own. I was in jail when Guru Ka Bagh struggle
was gallantly fought and won by the Sikhs. I marvelled at the
courage and sacrifice of the Akalis and wished that I could be
given an opportunity of showing my deep admiration of them by
some form of service. That opportunity has now been given to
me and I earnestly hope that I shall prove worthy of their
high tradition and fine courage. Sat Sri Akal.
The Sikhs of Punjab never allowed the White rulers any
respite. They kept them engaged with one morcha after another.
And these agitations produced a galaxy of eminent freedom
fighters who earned a great name in the national struggle for
India’s Independence. Some of them are: Baba Kharak Singh,
Master Tara Singh, Sardar Pratap Singh Kairon, Giani Gurmukh
Singh ‘Musafir’, Sohan Singh ‘Josh’, Sardar Sardul Singh ‘Caveeshar’,
Giani Zail Singh, Sardar Hukam Singh, Sardar Gurdial Singh
Dhillon and Darshan Singh Pheruman.
While the Shiromani Gurudwara Prabandhak Committee set up to
take charge and look after the Sikh Gurudwara accepted the
cult of non-violence, at the same time there were certain
elements amongst the Sikhs who organised themselves as
underground terrorists. Among them the Babar Akalis were
perhaps the most virulent. Their members were drawn from the
Ghadar Party and soldiers on leave. They issued a cyclostyled
bulletin called Babbar Akali Doaba. They became a terror for
the administration in Jullundur Doab for a while. They were
led by Havildar Major Kishan Singh Bedang and Master Mota
Singh. But sooner than later they were rounded up, six of them
including Kishan Singh Bedang were condemned to death and the
rest were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment.
The Sikhs make fine soldiers. They are as loyal as they are
valiant. They got themselves enlisted in large numbers both at
the time of World War I and World War II. But after the Wars
were over when they found that the Britishers had no desire to
part with power, they fought them tooth and nail. They were
scandalised to find that the Britishers would deny them the
freedom for which he made them fight in far-off lands. They
fought the war of India’s independence shoulder to shoulder
with the rest of their countrymen, whether they were Hindus or
Muslims, Biharis or Bengalis. n
The author, a distinguished writer, is a former Member of the
Rajya Sabha; he is also the President of the Punjabi Writers
Meet.
|
