Fundamentalism and the Sikh Religious Tradition by T.N. Madan

The Sikhs are known for their love and struggle for freedom. This new policy,
the Sikhs feel, is aptly described by Machiavelli's observations, "Those states which have
been acquired or accustomed to live at liberty under their own laws, there are three ways
of holding them. The first is to despoil them; the second is to go and live there in person;
the third is to allow them to live under their own laws, taking tribute of them, and
creating within the country a government composed of a few who will keep it friendly to
you. Because this government, being created by the Prince, knows
that it cannot exist without his friendship and protection, will do all it can to keep them."
Hence forward it would seem that the Central Government has been following
the three
pronged policy of despoiling Punjab, ruling it by stooge governments, and imposing the
President's rule if and when, by the democratic process, a non-Congress government
came into power in the state. The subsequent history of the Punjab has been just a
struggle between the Sikhs, historically known for their love of liberty, and the Centre
pursuing the above policy. Both Mrs. Indira Gandhi and Shri Nanda were concerned and
worried about the proposal for a Punjabi Suba having been accepted by the Congress.
While actually reorganising the old state, the Home Minister passed an Act
which virtually scuttled the very idea of a Punjabi speaking state as recommended by the
Congress. It made the Constitutional situation worse for the Sikhs." The Punjabi speaking
areas and Hindi speaking areas in the old Punjab, had stood clearly demarcated and
accepted by all parties and public men under the official formulae called the Sachar
Formula of 1949, and the Regional Parliamentary Formula. But, these accepted
demarcations were unilaterally annulled and a Commission for making a new
demarcation was appointed, giving it the direction to follow the 1961 Census, which had
been virtually rejected by the Government, because under communal propaganda Hindus
had wrongly reported their mother tongue as Hindi instead of Punjabi.
But the greatest snag of the Reorganisation Act was that Punjab was virtually
dwarfed in its political status and competence, and a substate was created instead of a
Province having the same constitutional rights as the other states of India. For, no area
can be called a political unit or a state, if it is incompetent to develop and exploit its water
and hydel power resources which form the very base of all agricultural and industrial
growth. Water and hydel power are exclusively state subjects under the Indian
Constitution. But, in the Punjab Reorganisation Act, 1966, whereas the entire river waters
of Yamuna belonging to the old Punjab were allotted to Haryana, on the basis of its being
in the Ganga Basin, the development, control, maintenance and the distribution of the
waters and hydel power of purely Punjab rivers, were unconstitutionally kept in Central
hands. Even under Articles 162 and 246 of the Indian Constitution it was beyond the
legislative and executive jurisdiction of Parliament to legislate about or administer the
waters and hydel power of state rivers.
The incongruity and the injustice involved being obvious, the agitation against
the unconstitutionality of the Reorganisation Act started. Later, the Centre issued an
executive order, directing that recruitment to the Defence services, the largest
organisation giving Government employment, should be on the basis of the population of
each state. Until about the Fifties merit was the criterion for recruitment to Defence
Services, and Sikhs formed 17 to 20% of the Indian Defence Forces. This new policy,