Article 25 Is Not The Issue. Akali Search For Political Community: Girilal Jain

There is widespread relief that the Union government has acceded to the Akali demand for amending Article 25 of the Constitution and thereby prevented the continuation and intensification of the Akali agitation on this issue. The president of the Bharatiya Janata Party, Mr. Atal Bihari Vajpayee, has spoken against the Centre’s “appeasement policy”. But this would appear to be an unrepresentative position.

The sense of relief, however, speaks more for our psychological make-up than for the grim reality we face in the Akali agitation and the extremist campaign of communal hate, violence and murder accompanying it. This sense of relief is not likely to last. Indeed, it may end even before a suitable formula to amend Article 25 is devised by the Union government in consultation with the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee, other “representatives of the Sikh community” whoever they are, and legal experts.

It does not necessarily follow that the Union government should not have taken this step. Indeed, a case can be made in favour of this move. For one thing, New Delhi is not conceding to the Akalis what is not implicit in the Constitution. For the impugned Article itself acknowledges that except for the purpose of this Article, the Sikhs are a separate community. For another, if a sufficiently large section of the community has come to feel, however misguidedly, that the Article casts doubt on their separate religious identity, it is only appropriate that the grievance should be suitably redressed. Democratic governments do not stand on prestige in dealing with their own people.

Mr. Vajpayee has argued that the concession on Article 25 should have been part of a package deal with the Akalis. But this is a weak argument. As Mrs. Gandhi has explained once again in her speech in Lucknow on Sunday, while she can discuss and concede religious demands of the Akalis without bringing other states into the picture, she cannot and would not do so in respect of Akali demands which impinge on other states. The other Akali demands on Chandigarh, river waters and territorial adjustments do so impinge. And why not defuse the situation in Punjab to the extent you can?

 

Tension May Continue

But that is the rub. The situation is not likely to be defused to any considerable extent as a result of the Centre’s concession. The extremists will not give up their determined bid, on the one hand, to make the chasm between the Sikhs and the Hindus unbridgeable and, on the other, to terrorise into silence those Sikhs who differ with them and are inclined to think in non-communal and nationalist terms. And so long as innocent Hindus and “dissident” Sikhs, such as Mr. Manchanda, president of the Delhi Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee, continue to be murdered, the situation in Punjab will remain dangerously critical.

There can be genuine differences of opinion on whether the official Akali leadership headed by Sant Longowal is truly moderate in a meaningful sense of the term and is seriously interested in an agreement with the Union government. But even if it is, it is in no position to behave accordingly. For it has become a prisoner of the extremists. Reports indicate that Sant Bhindranwale is dominating the decisions of the Akali Dal. But we do not even need these reports to grasp the reality. Sant Longowal’s decision not to condemn the murder of Mr. Manchanda in the capital speaks for itself. He is apparently too terrorised to speak out against the bands of assassins roving Punjab and now Delhi and perhaps territories beyond.

This discussion is likely to confuse the ordinary reader who would want to know whether we favour the government’s move or not. It is not possible to give a straight answer to this question. We are not opposed to the action but we do not believe it would help ease the situation much. It might help avoid an aggravation of the problem in that it eliminates one grievance which was to serve as a pretext for the “Azad Panth Saptah” (independent Panth week) when Article 25 was to be burnt on a mass scale all over Punjab. But this would at best be a temporary gain. The Akali agitation has unleashed dangerous forces which the continuing agitation on other demands will feed and strengthen.

 

Secular Interests

Political leaders and commentators have argued that the Akali agitation for amending Article 25 does not make my sense because instead of questioning the separate identity of the Sikhs, it confirms it. But to the best of our knowledge, no one has so far sought to explain why the Akali leadership has raised this issue. Indeed, those who have spoken and written on the subject appear to have assumed that the Akali leadership must be desperately in search of an issue to have done so. We are not in a position to contradict this widespread view. But we would suggest that the possibility of there being a method in the Akali action should not be rejected out of hand. In fact, it should be carefully considered.

There are, of course, some Hindus wholly unfamiliar with historical developments since the beginning of the century who continue to think of the Sikhs as being part of the larger Hindu fraternity. But no one has ever disputed, indeed no one could possibly dispute, the right of the Sikhs to think of themselves as a separate community. In any case, for the purpose of the Indian State, the Constitution clinched the issue through Article 25. The Sikhs are a separate community.

But what advantage does that acknowledgement confer on them? None at all in the non-religious sphere. For the Indian Constitution, like all other modern Constitutions, is based on the concept of the individual and not of communities. Except for scheduled castes and tribes, there are no reservations for any community. It could not be otherwise if India was ever to become a modern political community in which people would think and operate in terms of their secular interests and not of their religious-communal affiliations. But the future of the Indian nation in-becoming cannot be the principal concern of those who emphasise communal identities.

The Muslim League in pre-independence India sought partition for that very reason. Its ostensible case was that the interests of the Muslims would be disregarded by the Hindu majority. But this was a fake argument. Since the Hindus were not one community capable of acting in unison on any single issue, there could be no real threat of domination by them. The League’s fundamental objection was to the very concept of an Indian nation into which all existing entities would merge for secular purposes, which in today’s world means for most purposes. It was determined to make the Muslims into a political community. It invented a Hindu majority and endless grievances for the purpose.

Non-religious Demands

The Akalis have clearly not gone that far. The secessionists are a fringe element among them. It would also be wrong to conclude that secessionism would be the logical culmination of their insistence on the separate identity of the Sikhs. There is no fatal inevitability about such things. Much will depend on the strength and resilience of those in charge of the country’s affairs in New Delhi. But it should be noted that the Akalis are giving expression to a frustration which must result from the clash between the constitutional scheme on which the country’s political order is based and the growth of communal self-awareness which they present and seek to foster among the Sikhs.

The Akalis picked up a non-issue because a genuine constitutional issue was not available. But they did so in pursuit of a specific purpose – which is to emphasise that the Sikhs are a separate political community. This objective has not been spelt out. Indeed, it cannot be spelt out because it involves challenging the very basis of the political system which the Akalis do not wish to do – not just yet at any rate. But that is the drift of the entire agitation. The principal demands are non-religious demands. For reasons of expediency, the Akalis make the demands in the name of Punjab and speak in terms of wanting to reach an agreement with the Centre. But the demands are solely their demands and they are seeking to inflict a defeat on New Delhi.

The establishment of Pakistan as an expression of the Muslim self-awareness as a political community was followed by anti-Ahmediya riots in the fifties leading finally to their expulsion from the ummah in the seventies. The Akali search for a similar consolidation is accompanied by the massacre of peace-loving Nirankaris. This is not an accident or an aberration. The two are inextricably linked; they are two faces of the same coin. It is an eloquent commentary on the situation we face that the Nirankari Bhawan near Amritsar should have been subjected to a hand grenade attack a day after the Union government indicated its willingness to amend Article 25. It is a reasonably safe bet that no Akali leader will condemn this attack.

Finally, the attempt to forge a political community out of the Sikhs must involve at the very least carving out a territory where their majority and domination are permanently assured. Tin implications are too grim to be stated but they are obvious.

The Times of India, 3 April 1984

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