Transfer of Power, Tara Singh, re-colonisation and the black under-turban

Having been born in 1947, I grew up in the era politically dominated by Master Tara Singh. Particularly before the partition he was much eulogised by the media. It was consciously building him up into a mercenary to oppose the Pakistan cause and hoped, through him, to pit the Sikhs against the Muslims. The masterstroke of those days was the media myth that he had cut off the Pakistan flag hoisted atop the Punjab Assembly building by the Muslim League. This did help in promoting the Sikh-Muslim conflict initially, but the wisdom of the Sikh leaders in not using the liberal supply of arms to them to kill the Muslims fleeing to Pakistan, minimised the violence in the circumstances. Some papers kept up the accolades in favour of the Master even after 1947, but the better informed among them did not. They even turned against him and the Sikhs. Taking their cues from the ‘prayer meetings’ of M. K. Gandhi and the proceedings of the Constituent Assembly, they started building the Sikhs into monsters supposedly capable of doing immense harm to the permanent cultural majority (pcm) which the Sikhs began seeing as a new and more oppressive colonising power. Tara Singh was often represented as a person opposed to the pcm and as one working to break up the country with the intention of creating a Sikh state.

Later at the crucial time of his career when he was being assailed by the Jalandhar press on one side and the new Akali leadership sponsored by Mohan Lal Sukhadia, the chief minister of Rajasthan on the instigation of Jawahar Lal Nehru, the prime minister of India on the other; Darbara Singh, having pretentions to being an amritdhari Congressman, came out to accuse him of conspiring with Pakistan for the establishment of a Sikh state. It then became better known that the wheel had turned a full circle for the Master. Those whom he considered enemies were projected as his friends and those who had camouflaged bitter enmity behind friendly masks and had reaped the harvest of his folly, had thrown off all deception. They had put on a permanent scowl on their faces. M. K. Gandhi had became the pivot and had pumped as much hatred of the Sikhs into the psyche of the new nation as he could muster – when it came to spreading hatred, his capacity was infinite. He was a consummate master of the game of deception and as the representative of the pcm, he upheld the philosophy of hatred that had been sharpened for centuries at the stone of the so-called untouchables. Consequently, hatred of the pcm for the Sikhs was palpable in the atmosphere. At such a time an aggressive Sikh leader rearing to take the bull by the horns built up his own charisma as he went about. The Master rode on the equally strong Sikh wave of distrust like an accomplished horseman and built himself into a messiah of sorts. Punjabi poets were suddenly delinked from the cultural milieu they were used to and found patronage of sorts only in the Sikh circles of which the Shiromani Akali Dal led by Master Tara Singh was the most prominent. It became imperative for them to project Tara Singh as the last hope of the Sikhs in the most hostile land that India had suddenly turned into for them after 1947.

Before I ever saw Master Tara Singh in person, I had started subscribing to his magazine Sant Sipahi. I first met Master Tara Singh in the house of a relative in Muktsar where he had come for a public meeting. I considered meeting him quite a privilege. I took photographs of him with my father and younger brother. He sat chatting there for some time and thereafter left. I developed the film myself at the school photographic club and printed it in many ways providing several kinds of margins. A year or so later I went to Amritsar to pay respects at the Darbar and also met Tara Singh in his office which was within the Darbar Sahib premises. He was sitting on a string-cot and writing letters. A small tin box from which he was drawing his writing material was lying next to him. I took a photograph of him. It turned out very well and came to be much used. This was the year 1960 when he was preparing for a big battle ahead. I offered my services for what they were worth. He looked at me very kindly and advised me to first finish my education and then think of such things; ‘otherwise the people will think that you were afraid of facing the tenth class exams and had strayed into politics. Finish your education. Do well in all the examinations and come to me after that.’ I hardly knew anything about the travails of political life but had a desire to be seen in the service of the people. I have thought much about the incident since. A lesser person would have grabbed at the opportunity of gaining an unpaid servant. I remained ever grateful for the sound advice that he had given me on the occasion. It enhanced my respect for him.

There was a poetry recitation session in the school hall to which several Hindi poets had been invited. This was during the days when the Master was talking about the Punjabi Suba in all seriousness. I had noticed a lot of hatred for him and for the Sikhs in general in the air. I had to face jeers and hostility on many fronts. At the Ambala railway station the clerk issuing the tickets had treated all the Sikhs in the queue most contemptuously. He made us all step aside so that he could issue tickets to the Hindus first. He ignored my requests to do so in turn because I and my younger brother were in the danger of missing our train to Dehra Dun and had nowhere to go. He turned to everybody in general and said, ‘look at these Sikhs! They want a Punjabi Suba and also cannot do without a railway ticket.’ I did not quite see the logic he was trying to propound but had to comply with his orders. During this period, I found that my best friend of long standing at the school, who was a Dogra from a well-educated Jammu based family, had suddenly turned against me most virulently. This was one of the experiences of my childhood that left me completely confused about human relations.

Most of the poets at the recitation evening were very sensible but several were seen to be taking pleasure in ridiculing the Sikhs. One who drew the most applause from the audience of which some school boys were a part, earned it by comparing Master Tara Singh to a donkey. In western culture this animal is assumed to be very wise but on the Indian sub-continent it is presumed to be low on intelligence. I was amongst the few Sikhs in the hall and I felt utterly helpless and thoroughly insulted. The short shrunken man who made the comparison, was perhaps a chain smoker, for he went out quite often and was seen puffing away at cheap, foul-smelling cigarettes. No elevated or decent thought was to be expected of such a person, but we did feel isolated and disgusted. Particularly painful were the merry outbursts of our schoolmates. More than anything else, we were surprised since this aspect of their personality had always remained hidden from view. We at once understood why our leaders were trying to carve out a niche to safeguard the Sikhs from being inundated in the sea of hatred welling up all around. The prevailing situation must have turned many inside and outside that hall, into strong supporters of Master Tara Singh. When on the early morning of August 15, the day the Master was to start his fast-unto-death, I went to the gurdwara to pray for his wellbeing, I was in a way seeking revenge for the behaviour of that despicable poet. A mixture of such emotions in such an atmosphere must have turned many into supporters of the Akali leaders, as the most tangible justification for their cause was being generously served out to the people at large by every aggressive representative of Hindudom.

I was also swept away by the Master wave, like, as I imagine, everyone else was and wore my blue turban as a mark of honour commemorating the sacrifices of the Akalis. Historical facts to the circumstances leading to the partition of India had not started appearing though the partition itself gave rise to much emotional outpouring in literature. I confess that I was duped by his stance aimed at defending the self-respect of the Sikh people, was bludgeoned by his rich rhetoric replete with graphic depiction of touching scenes from Sikh history and never even imagined that the Master could have betrayed a trusting people whom he led. His ineffectiveness at the time of partition, when the destiny of nations was being carved anew, was disappointing. His followers swept even that failure under the carpet. I attended on him when he was in the PGI at Chandigarh during his last illness. I was one of the two or three students who readily donated blood so that the operation he was to undergo, could take place safely. I thought I was returning, in my own humble way the sewa he had performed for the Sikh people. I visited him almost every day and took him out of the hospital for an evening walk to the barren expanse of space named Rajindra Garden. His death profoundly saddened me, I tore a piece from the black sheet that I used for trick photography and wore it as an under turban - a mark of mourning.

There had been a revolt against him under the leadership of Fateh Singh and Channan Singh. They were not very pleasant personalities and were not likeable as persons. There was much about them that was despicable. They seemed such a contrast to the ‘self-sacrificing’ Tara Singh that nobody in his senses would have liked them. The great Sirdar Kapur Singh squarely hated them. I disliked them no less; because they were opposed to the Master, contributed much to the quantum of my dislike. I disliked them also because I suspected them to be enemy stooges, now we know that they were that and much more.

Tara Singh was also a master communicator. He wrote abundantly, spoke all the time and issued statements on every issue with which he perceived his people to be concerned. He had his own press that took care to publicise every word he spoke. Besides this, his position was such that everyone had to take notice of what he said. He had a captive audience, mainly in the urban Sikhs who in particular owned him up. He used all these advantages, to propagate himself, instead of disseminating ideas of social uplift. He projected his own image as a fighter for the rights of the Sikhs and blamed others for his failure at the time of the partition. There was hardly any option but to believe what he was keen to pass on as information about his role. Eventually, he became a victim of his own propaganda and wrote the same thing in his last will and testament that I saw him writing during his last days in the hospital. He was proud that he had never misled anyone in his whole life but people had deceived him. ‘Getting deceived is no sin but deceiving is’ was his conclusion. At that time, I did not suspect that the Master was trying to deflect attention from his misdeeds.

On the Master’s death I wrote his obituary. It was a good tribute. It brought out the best in him and was garnished with a bit of emotion as all such stements should be. It was carried by his paper, the Jathedar published from Jalandhar. I appended some of his last photographs. I later published a few of them in one of my books. During these forty years nobody has shown interest in his last photographs. Even his family, some members of which were personally known to me, including his daughter Bibi Rajinder Kaur, never so much as asked to have a look at them though she visited my home several times before her unfortunate assassination. The usual tributes were paid to him by those associated with him, but to this day he remains unclaimed by and large. None cared for his political legacy. An insight into the phenomena of such negligence was not possible until Sirdar Kapur Singh’s Sachi Sakhi came out in 1973-74. It was a soulful account of the failure of the Sikh leadership in the pre-decolonisation period. It was a serious study and exhibited the Master in a bad light. It was a gripping book that made a painful reading and left a powerful impact. It mentioned several minor misdeeds of the Master and hinted at major ones. It was limited in its scope and the most heinous crimes of our leaders did not come within its ambit.

While preparing the expanded version of the Sachi Sakhi, the Sirdar asked me to write what I thought of Fateh Singh. What I wrote is verbatim preserved as an annexure (kouoo hario boot rahio ree). He was very happy with it and further asked me to write something on similar lines about Master Tara Singh. I refused. It led to a verbal duel. Kapur Singh and I remained ‘on not-talking’ terms for many months. The greatness in the Sirdar asserted itself and he took the initiative to restore normalcy in mutual relations. We patched up over a cup of tea and some traditional sweets that Surinderpal Kaur served. He was always critical that in serving those kind of sweets (laddu, jalebi balushahi, shakarpara) she was presuming him to be a rough rustic but all of us knew that he liked them the best. It was the expanded version of the Sachi Sakhi that appeared in 1979 that brought to notice the serious nature of the sins that the Sikh leaders had committed at the time of the partition of India. He was critical of the Master but stopped just a step short of denouncing him outright. There was no doubt that his personal loyalty to his teacher at school had held him back. It was a noble emotion and much becoming of the Sirdar – anyone will concede that. That was perhaps why he wanted me to do the butcher’s job. I did not have enough evidence at that stage to do it.

He had by then thoroughly exposed the Hindu Congress leaders in his speech in the lower house of the country’s parliament. He had assailed them on facts and brought out their immorality in violating solemnly made promises in defiance of the moral rectitude prescribed by their own scriptures. This was a serious and provocative indictment and would have sent the hostile parliament flying at his throat had he made even a shadow of a mistake. As Sikhs we have not had many friends in that legislative body. Such was the power of the truth he was uttering on the occasion that none dared to contradict the Sirdar and none had the facts to counter his statement. This speech was made a part of the Sachi Sakhi. It drew the requisite attention to the other party, focussed minutely on what they had done and by that very act helped to camouflage the doings of our leaders. Master Tara Singh was most severely criticised in the book, but his actual misdeeds still remained to be brought to light. In a manner of speaking the book was truly like a bikini, it revealed much but hid the essential in relation to the Master.

It however performed the function of persuading people to suspect much and to look for more. During these days, the Punjab government, at the behest of Sardar Atma Singh, formed a Master Tara Singh Trust. The statue of Master Tara Singh, now installed at Delhi was commissioned by this trust. I was appointed one of the trustees. I read many of the Master’s speeches, articles, letters, memoranda written by him and his public statements as a functionary of the Trust. I made a thorough analysis of his addresses to the annual Akali conferences and so on. I was shocked to find an utter lack of conviction in his professions and was stunned that he had several times proclaimed that his political agenda was decided by his opponents, in reaction to whose utterances, he charted his political path. I needed to know more. The behaviour of the successor Akalis, who were my contemporaries was not very re-assuring either. Their political wisdom and concern for the people they represented left much to be desired. The tradition of deceiving the people, that had reached its lowest depth (until then) was still being followed. At this stage I lost all respect for the Akalis and stopped wearing the blue turban that I had always worn until then. It was painful to be disillusioned but the realisation came as a powerful impulse that was difficult to resist.

One of his grandsons sent me a copy of Khazan Singh’s book. The author had been greatly interested in Sikh affairs and had functioned as a magistrate in pre-partition Punjab. He accused Master Tara Singh of financial irregularities. The evidence cited was convincing. It left the Master’s image much damaged in my mind. Financial honesty had been the strongest argument of supporting Master’s leadership. Financial honesty was the least that was expected of people’s representatives. In the Indian conditions it implied that the person abiding by it was in politics for the love of the people and not for the love of the lucre. It became difficult to go on cherishing his memory despite the exposure. I wish our leaders knew what agonising moments their ordinary followers have to suffer when their sheepskins fall off revealing wolves’ clothing.

All his life the Master had taught his followers one effective lesson: namely, that the Sikhs could not have obtained a sovereign state of their own in 1947 because they were not numerically dominant in any extensive area in the Punjab. The Sikhs had accepted his logic by and large. Then came the formation of Israel. Tara Singh was cooling his heels in one of the re-colonised Punjab’s prison when it dawned upon him that there were other valid principles on which a state could be founded in the modern age. In his biography written by his son, the Master confessed he came to know of other possibilities only after he contemplated on the emergence of the Jewish state in a land in which almost no Jew lived. It now seemed that the person who claimed to be the sole (wahad) Sikh leader and alone competent to decide on the destinies of a nation was not all that all-knowing as he pretended to be. The ‘intellectual giant’ who flouted his status by not consulting the people whose destinies he was about to mortgage to the sponsors of a culture hostile to his own, actually had feet of clay. He did not even know the elements of international law, neither was he aware of the developments that had been taking place in the neighbourhood. In his arrogance he had defied the Guru’s instructions of collective responsibility and the obligation to consult the congregation as that alone legitimises leadership. After his confession there was no way in which anyone could support his act of dooming a nation for want of awareness, particularly after striving at every legitimate and illegitimate means for remaining at the helm of affairs.

There was only one hope left for salvaging the tattered pieces of his image as a leader. Everyone concerned about doing so hoped that he had not deliberately surrendered the unique status of the Sikh nation for any extraneous consideration.

Sardar Karnail Singh an associate of Dr. Sohan Singh gave me a book written by his brother Ram Singh who was obviously not a very good writer. His style can be described as somewhat simplistic with every feature of a novice to the job stamped on every page. But it drew the reader’s attention for the naked truth it depicted about Master Tara Singh. He alleged that well before June 2, 1947, Tara Singh had succumbed to the pull of his ancestral faith and had come to a private understanding with J. L. Nehru to keep the Sikhs within India. We cannot say that the agreement was unconditional and Ram Singh does not help us on that point. Perhaps it was not without the implementation of political promises already made to the Sikhs by the Hindu Congress leaders including Gandhi. They certainly had talked of constitutional safeguards. Nevertheless, this was a mind blowing revelation. Ram Singh had researched it much in the manner of doing so known to him. His methodology was not perfect but his intentions were clear and honest to the core. The emotional intensity of his hurt at the betrayal of the Sikh people by the Master was kneaded into every sentence that he had written.

His thesis is that Master Tara Singh remained a Hindu at heart, conspired with the Hindu leadership to obliterate the Sikh identity, to place the Sikhs under the Hindu rule and that he did all this clandestinely. He quotes a statement of Master Tara Singh to the effect that he had settled everything with J. L. Nehru. Tara Singh kept up the facade of Sikh independence and never stopped issuing anti-Hindu, anti-Muslim statements to hide his misdeeds. He completely frustrated the British design to provide constitutional safeguards to the Sikhs. The crucial date was June 2, 1947, when without consulting any one, he agreed to the partition of the country between the Hindus and Muslims. He left the Sikhs high and dry although he had been advocating their cause for several decades since then. Such advocacy had been the key element in his acceptance as a leader by the Sikhs. He betrayed his community boldly because he knew that government papers would be revealed to the public only after fifty years. The evidence presented by Ram Singh is sufficient to sustain the hypothesis he has propounded.

A person reading the history of the period dispassionately cannot miss the significance of June 2, 1947. Up to that date the Sikhs had been taken to be the third party entitled to a share in the sovereignty of India. The Dalits under Ambedkar were the fourth party but they surrendered their right after the Poona Pact with the Congress. Dr. Ambedkar, who is highly rated as a fighter for Dalit rights, meekly surrendered their right to inherit political power in return for a few crumbs in the shape of reserved seats in the legislatures and services. Maintenance of the Sikhs and Dalits in the reckoning was squarely the contribution of the British government that was trying to be fair to the people of India on at least the issue of inheritance of political power. On June 2, 1947, the different parties were to finally state whether they agreed to the partition of India. It was implied in the very proposition that something else would be worked out if that was not acceptable. M.K. Gandhi, J. L. Nehru had already agreed after the interim government failed to work smoothly, that the Muslims were to be thrown out of India and into Pakistan, the word coined for that country by the Hindu Press of Jalandhar. Even at an earlier date, M. K. Gandhi had conveyed to the British government in an interview to a journalist, that the partition was inevitable. The understanding with the journalist was that the interview would not be published but would be brought to the notice of the high ups in the British administration. After the failure of the Cabinet Mission Plan and the observance of the ‘direct action day’ the Muslims had also irrevocably decided that they would be safe only in an independent country.

June 2, 1947, was a day fixed for the Sikhs only. Had the Sikhs said partition of the country was not acceptable to them they could have carried the British administration with them and could have ended up at least getting ‘feet of their own on which they could have walked back into history.’ They could have resumed the march that was interrupted in 1849. It would not have been on so grand a scale, it still would have been their own march on their own feet. The Hindus and the Muslims, despite the decisions already made, were treading very cautiously. All their decision makers had been invited to Delhi and to assist their leaders. That was not done by Master Tara Singh and the Sikhs. The Master arranged no meeting of the Panthic Board that had been constituted precisely to deal with a situation of this kind. Baldev Singh, a novice in politics, was advised or directed solely by Master Tara Singh and his associate Giani Kartar Singh. When Nehru went to the Viceroy’s office to agree to partition, he claimed that he was speaking also on behalf of the Sikhs. The Viceroy did not accept him as a Sikh representative. Consequently Tara Singh, Giani Kartar Singh and Baldev Singh were called in. Mountbatten asked them whether they agreed to the partition of the country and they readily agreed. He asked them again and again and they repeated their commitment to partition. Eventually, in desperation, he called for the map of India and drew a bold line to tell them that if they agreed, their nation would be divided into two equal parts between India and Pakistan. They still agreed and sealed the fate of the Sikhs. Mountbatten must have pitied their short-sightedness. The specific instructions of the British government to Mountbatten to do his best for the Sikhs were nullified by our Master Tara Singh. He valued his commitment to Nehru, the Hindus and not to the Sikhs whose leader he was.

I go along basically with Ram Singh when he talks of Master’s understanding with Nehru but there are some slightly jarring notes that militate against total smooth sailing in accepting the idea. The Master did not provide for the exchange of population which could have been the most important element in such an arrangement. The other difficulty is presented by the fact that just as he nominated Sikh (actually his own henchmen) representatives to the Indian Constituent Assembly, he also appointed Ujjal Singh and Giani Kartar Singh to the parallel Assembly in Pakistan. It is possible to conclude from this that he was unaware that the situation would change so much after 1947. In the heart of his hearts he believed that the Sikh people would resume normal life on both sides of the border after de-colonisation. He appears to have discerned no particular finality in the act of June 2 and 3, 1947. Perhaps he thought he would have many chances to rectify the blunder he was committing. Like Hippocrates of old he had “danced away his wife” (chance of making history), but unlike Hippocrates, he did that unconsciously. He was in a stupor of some undefined kind. The question that his supporters will always have to answer is ‘whether he plunged headlong into the greatest blunder of his political career without giving it a thought’? Was he so naïve that he handed over his flock to the butchers without a consideration?. He was often compared to biblical prophets during his lifetime. His final act would make him into a Moses had that prophet delivered the Jews back to Ramses on the shore of the Red Sea. Sadly, it was not reserved for the Master to ask the waves to part and make way for the Sikhs. Whatever it be, the long and short of it is that he was unable to muster statesmanship of the high order that was required to take appropriate decisions. Since he lacked it, he was rendered incapable of salvaging the situation, as for instance Sheikh Abdullah had been able to partly redeem himself later. He placed no trust on the robust common sense of the Punjabi which had enabled their country to weather many a storm in the past. He just depended upon the cleverness of a petty roving trader who hopes to drive a lucrative bargain during his next visit to the same spot. He did not realise that he was playing for high stakes, the very destiny of a civilisation was in the crucible. Everything depended upon his saying ‘I do’ agree or ‘I do not agree’ to the partition of India between two warring religious communities. One must lament that the master failed and that by consulting none other he volunteered to take the entire blame upon himself. So be it!

It was after reading Ram Singh’s book that my symbolic mourning for the Master and the respect for his person, ceased altogether. I did not remove the black under-turban from my person but certain it is that it was not a symbol of mourning or respect any longer. When he was disillusioned with the secularism of the Indian National Congress, Sardar Jagjit Singh (Sikh Revolution), said, ‘in my mind I discarded the coarse hand spun cloth though I continued to wear it.’ I also did something similar.