Remembering Partap Singh Kairon
By Joginder Singh Bedi

WHENEVER a discussion, debate or seminar on the post-Partition polity of Punjab takes place, the names of two chief ministers — Partap Singh Kairon and Lachhman Singh Gill — are mentioned both proudly and passionately. Glowing tributes are paid to them for their invaluable contribution in various fields of the state’s development. Lachhman Singh Gill is frequently remembered by the lovers of Punjabi language and literature as well as by the government employees of Punjab for giving an official status to Punjabi. He also provided financial benefits to the state government employees on the central pattern for all times to come. Partap Singh Kairon is admired for effecting efficiency in the state’s vast administrative infrastructure, through a highly disciplined and organised think-tank.

When today, the farmers of Punjab resort to agitations for their genuine demands of adequate supply of good-quality seeds, manure, electricity and water on reasonable rates to enhance their agricultural produce; the Jats of Haryana register their protest against the hike in prices of the fertilisers and pesticides and the apple growers of Himachal Pradesh launch a struggle for financial subsidy, I recall the times of Kairon. As Chief Minister of Punjab, before the formation of Haryana and Himachal, he ensured that "for the overall economic development of the state, no such situation should arise when men-at-work are constrained to resort to strikes and agitations".

As a student of political science in the USA, Kairon savoured the writings of Garibaldi, Mazzini, Rousseau, Patrick Henry, Trotsky and Lenin. He worked in field and factories to finance his college education. While he looked at the grape orchards of California, stretching over several miles, he wondered why Punjab couldn’t venture into similar grape fields. He shared a flat in Detroit with four more youngsters. In the kitchen they took turns to bake-loaves. One youngster ignored the pact. Kairon told him that dereliction of duty constituted gross misconduct. Hot words progressed towards blows. He picked up a table fork and while he was just thrusting it into the belly of his co-tenant, others intervened and separated them. The matter ended with a compromise, following an apology tendered by the offender.

Once during his tenure as Chief Minister, Kairon received a message amid a meeting at Hisar that the Prime Minister wanted his immediate presence in Delhi. The D.I.G. Police, Chaudhri Ram Singh proposed that the route to Delhi should by-pass Rohtak where people were in angry mood over a death in the area. The curtains of the car were pulled down, its number plate was changed and Kairon tucked in his flowing beard to camouflage his identity. The car moved behind a police jeep and motorcycle escort. But within five minutes Kairon asked the driver to stop the car. He told the D.I.G. to go back to Hisar. "If they stop me today at Rohtak, tomorrow they will stop me at Ambala and Ludhiana, and the day after tomorrow I shall have no option but to cancel my journey to Amritsar". He continued, "This way governments cannot run."

Ouster of absentee landlords from their large holdings in Punjab, the development of Chandigarh, extension of modern architecture to Punjab and rural electrification over the length and breadth of the state remained the outstanding achievements of Kairon. He exhorted the people of Kulu area to go in for apple orchards. The people of north-eastern hills bordering Punjab adored Kairon as their protector and patron. In the days of his political supremacy the cultivators of the part of Punjab which broke from Punjab on November 1, 1966, two years after Kairon’s demise, aspired to be locked in tight embrace with the community of farmers in Malwa, Doaba and Majha regions.

Their suppressed kinship strove towards its resuscitation. Kairon often said: "Good people ever expand and flit about; people with dwarfed and stunted susceptibilities ever tend to shudder and contract." Punjab is wedded to humanism, universalism and cosmopolitanism. The Sikh religion made available in Punjab its discovery of the deep harmony which underlies the historic Hindu-Muslim discord. Arnold Toynbee rightly concludes that "This religion is itself a monument of creative spiritual intercourse between two traditional religions whose relations have otherwise not been happy." This spirit of Punjab expressed itself in the aspirations of Partap Singh Kairon in a rather bold way.

Kairon was the personification of real and rapid development. When he visited far-flung villages of Punjab, anguish raged in his soul. "Why are we denying electricity to these people?" He would ask the heads of departments". "Sir," they would argue, "development is a phased phenomenon". They continued: "We shall first prepare project estimates, then we shall frame detailed estimates, the administrative sanctions shall be followed by technical sanction". "When I visit this area again", Kairon would say, "I shall see that bulbs glow in every hamlet that dots this area." The officers would say: "Sir, we have practical hitches."

"It is for you to remove the hitches and bottle-necks", Kairon spoke sternly. "I shall, of course, have no hitch at all to obliterate your names in the list of salaried staff if you are not able to transform dark-dales into shining vistas" he warned. "We shall do that, sir!" the engineers exclaimed.

"You, have to do it", Kairon reassured them, "in public as well as in your personal interest."

His parting message further warned them: "I expect promptitude; I don’t tolerate for delay; sloth is a vice; procrastination is a sin; work is worship."

A master strategist as Kairon was, he could decide in an instant the choice between medicine and operation or that between honeyed dose or puff of powdered chillies. He could, at once, choose between sweet appreciation and fierce warning. Some people were duped by his sardonic smile and could never anticipate, when apparent lull would grow into fiery storm.

Out of the masses and officials, Kairon hugged the former and advised or admonished the latter. His alertness and astuteness, combined with his awareness of talent and toil, won him a niche in the hearts of the simple people. He firmly believed that the matrix of power lay in the hearts of the people and that "continued power obligated continued contact with the masses". Kairon fervently believed in the welfare of the masses. From 1930 to 1947, from 1948 to 1955, and from 1956 to 1964, the game of hide-and-seek between Kairon and the people of Punjab continued. This romance extended over full 34 years.

Once the farmers of Rajasthan thought of presenting a living memento to Kairon. They brooded and contemplated for long. At long last, their choice fell on a pair of tiger cubs. Kairon looked at the cubs and said: "I cherish them; verily they inspire me." Kairon dead was more ferocious than Kairon alive. People never believed his death. People say that the disembodied Lion pervades the very air of the village of Kairon, and now and then manifests himself in a tempestuous and fiery lightning streets. Brave men never die; cowards die a hundred deaths!

Kairon was born in 1901, at village Kairon in Punjab. His father, Nihal Singh, had been a protagonist of the Singh Sabha Movement and was the founder of the village high school. Partap Singh had his schooling at his village. Later, he studied at Khalsa College, Amritsar. Towards 1919, he proceeded to the USA to preach Sikhism but stayed there for higher studies. He was awarded a postgraduate degree in political science by the Michigan University. In the USA, he was drawn into the revolutionary politics. Back in India, strong political ambition surfaced in his heart. He joined the Shiromani Akali Dal. For some time he served as editor of the Revolutionary Sikh newspaper, Akali. During the historical Annual Session of the Indian National Congress at Lahore in 1929, Kairon joined the Punjab Congress. In 1932, he courted rigorous imprisonment for five years for presiding over the Punjab Congress Session at Amritsar which had since been banned by the Government. In 1937, Kairon was elected Member of the Punjab Legislative Assembly from the Tarn Taran-Beas constituency.

In 1938, he courted arrest for leading a kisan agitation against abiana.

In 1942, he was arrested and detained for active participation in the Quit India Movement. He was released in 1945. In 1946-elections, Kairon was returned to the Punjab Legislative Assembly. The same year, he was elected Member to the Indian Constituent Assembly. In the post-Independence era, Kairon was a minister in Gopi Chand Bhargava’s cabinet. He held the rehabilitation and transport portfolio. From 1952 to 1956, he was a minister in Bhim Sen Sachar’s cabinet and held the development portfolio.

In January 1956, he was sworn in as Chief Minister, Punjab. In the wake of his indictment by the Das Commission on June 14, 1964, he resigned from the office of the Chief Minister. Kairon’s resignation was followed by his death. While he journeyed by car from Delhi towards Chandigarh, bullets hit him mortally. The living Kairon left Delhi and entered Haryana Pradesh. On the same day, the dead Kairon left Haryana Pradesh for his final glimpse of Punjab. Punjab sobbed, killed him".

Kairon is the only chief minister of Punjab who has been eulogised as a forceful fighter, a fine and capable administrator, an impressive speaker and an indefatigable worker. People remember him as a patriot and a secularist par excellence, a fearless champion of righteous cause, a man of unflinching courage and unwavering devotion, the grand vitalizer of people and an announcer of quick and firm decisions. People who have known him say that he was "a pre-occupied man who would grip the microphone with a gnarled hand, a fashioner of the musical fugue, and a socialist zeitgeist. People concede to him such titles as a brave son of soil, a good friend, a warm and jovial patron and an heir of Punjab heroism. Familiar voices convince us that he was an apt improviser, a man of action, and, above all, a profile in self-reliance.