Two states, divergent paths

RECALLING the birth of Punjab and Haryana in 1966, my thoughts go back to the first division of Punjab in 1947 when gruesome communal violence, arson, loot, rape and killings had enveloped the whole of Lahore, where our family had been living for decades. After Partition, we had to flee our home and face endless threats before crossing over into India.

While there is no exact count of the dead, it is estimated that over 20 lakh people were killed and nearly five times as many became homeless refugees. Serious disturbances continued to wrack the new country, the Treasury was empty and a famine-like situation prevailed in East Punjab (later called Punjab, India); there was not enough foodgrain for feeding the lakhs and lakhs of people who had crossed over. For the next two decades, successive governments in Punjab, strongly supported by a devoted bureaucracy, ably met the endless challenges which emerged in the aftermath of perhaps the largest forced migration in human history.

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Before the Radcliffe Line (which defined the boundary between India and Pakistan) was settled, the Sikhs had raised a demand for a separate homeland. Their aspirations were not met. After Independence, the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) agitated vigorously to revive this demand. Considering that language-based reorganisation had been done in other states of India, the demand for a Punjabi-speaking state was not exceptional. However, it had assumed a somewhat different colour after it got intertwined with the political aspirations of the Sikh community. The States Reorganisation Commission (1953-55), set up to examine the reorganisation of states on linguistic and administrative lines, rejected the division of Punjab purely on a linguistic basis. It favoured Punjab remaining a bilingual (Punjabi and Hindi) state.

The Punjab Hindu Mahasabha (HM), opposed to political dominance by the Sikhs, aggressively countered the SAD’s demand for a Punjabi Suba and agitated for Punjab remaining a Hindi-majority state.

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Chief Minister Partap Singh Kairon, a capable and go-getting leader known for his autocratic style of functioning, dealt effectively with the SAD and HM agitations during his tenure (1956-64). In Delhi, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was opposed to any decision which may have resulted in exacerbating Hindu-Sikh communal tensions. The SAD-HM agitations continued through the 1950s and into the 1960s, till the Union Government agreed to the demand for Punjab being reorganised on a linguistic basis.

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In 1966, Punjab had 18 districts, of which almost seven were considered predominantly Hindi-speaking: parts of Ambala, Sangrur, Karnal, Gurgaon, Rohtak, Hisar and Mahendragarh. In the aforesaid group, Ambala (an important British cantonment till 1947) and Karnal were considered relatively more developed because the historical Grand Trunk (GT) Road passed through them. The other districts were in the so-called hinterland and regarded as “backward”. Postings to these districts were viewed as punishment, particularly by politically connected officers who were used to serving only in the “main line" districts of Amritsar, Jullundur and Ludhiana, all of which were on the GT Road axis. There was a general perception that the entire tract called Haryana was “backward” and separating it from the rest of Punjab would only lead to its further neglect and decline.

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The Union Government had set up the Justice S.R. Das Commission to enquire into allegations of corruption and misuse of authority against Kairon. After the report of this Commission became known, in mid-1964, the emerging political environment compelled Kairon to resign. Kairon’s exit, in June 1964, affected the functioning of the state administration. A further jolt came when Pakistan launched “Operation Gibraltar" in August 1965, with the objective of infiltrating large numbers of trained militants into Jammu and Kashmir so as to create chaos and disorder and seize the Valley.

Pakistan’s unsuccessful foray into J&K developed into a larger-scale war in which Punjab became the main battlefield. The Western Army fought valiantly and gave Pakistan a bloody nose. As the main theatre of the war, Punjab was affected by this conflict. Some of the controversies after the 1965 engagement generated a politico-military environment which, in my memory, considerably influenced the Union Government’s decision to accept the reorganisation of Punjab.

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The prolonged SAD-HM agitations and, later, the 1965 war, had generated an atmosphere of unease and uncertainty in Punjab, which had also affected the functioning of the administrative apparatus. Both Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri (June 1964 — January 1966) and, later, Indira Gandhi (1966-77 and 1980-84) were seriously concerned about the need to urgently restore political stability in the frontier state of Punjab; they accepted the need for its reorganisation along linguistic lines. The Union Government’s approach became clear when it appointed the Justice J.C. Shah Commission, in March 1966, to determine the boundaries of the new states and to make other necessary recommendations. The Shah Commission’s report (May 1966) cleared the path for the Punjab Reorganisation Act being passed in September 1966.

After the passage of this Act, all IAS, IPS and officers of other services were asked to indicate their prioritised choice of the cadres to which they wished to be allotted: Punjab, Haryana or Himachal Pradesh. This exercise was quickly completed.

To ensure that all matters relating to the reorganisation were decided with efficiency, transparency and fairness, unitary rule was imposed in the state in early July 1966 and a former Cabinet Secretary and eminent ICS officer, Dharam Vira, was appointed Governor of Punjab and Haryana.

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The main provisions of the Punjab Reorganisation Act included: creation of the new states of Punjab (11 districts, mainly Punjabi-speaking) and Haryana (seven districts, mainly Hindi-speaking); transfer of four hill districts and portions of three other districts to Himachal Pradesh (then a UT); Chandigarh to be excised from Punjab and made a UT (administered by the Union Government), to serve as the joint capital of Punjab and Haryana; all assets, state properties, liabilities and debts to be divided in 60:40 ratio; civil and police officers to be allocated to the three cadres on the basis of domicile and language proficiency; legislative seats to be divided, as also representation in Parliament; the Punjab High Court was renamed the Punjab and Haryana High Court, which would serve the two new states and Chandigarh (UT); Panjab University would continue under Central arrangements; matters relating to river waters, power boards etc would be managed by inter-state bodies; each state would have its own Governor.

Before the birth of the two new states, on November 1, 1966, the appointment of officers from the district level and above, to the ranks of Chief Secretary and Inspector General of Police, was notified well in advance.

Congressman Giani Gurmukh Singh Musafir, an eminent Punjabi writer, and Pt Bhagwat Dayal Sharma, also of the Congress party, were chosen to be the first Chief Ministers of the new states of Punjab and Haryana, respectively.

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As observed earlier, there was a school of thought which earnestly believed that grouping the “backward” districts of Punjab and creating a rather small Hindi-speaking state of Haryana was bound to be an economic and administrative failure. These prophecies have been proved wrong. Over the past nearly six decades since its birth, Haryana has done very well and overtaken Punjab in several spheres. Punjab’s economic growth and overall development was very impressive till the early 1970s. The period thereafter has witnessed marked decline, considering the fast pace at which Punjab was moving forward in the earlier period.

In 2023-24, Punjab’s per capita income (as percentage of the national average) was 106.7%, whereas that of Haryana was 178.8%. For the same year, Punjab’s share of the national GDP was 2.4%, while that of Haryana was 3.6%.

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India has a very large and still growing population. Our numerous multi-religious and multi-lingual communities have extremely diverse socio-cultural traditions and live in remote and sharply varying geographical areas. In the decades since Independence, we have achieved commendable progress on many fronts, but the challenge of eradicating poverty and inequality still remains. As we continue to move speedily towards attaining all the glorious facets of nationhood and become a strong economic and military power, it will be of crucial importance to ensure the sustained maintenance of communal harmony, peace and normalcy across the land, never forgetting that growth and development cannot take place in the midst of disorder and disturbances.

The genuine aspirations of our far-flung people must always be viewed with sympathy and mature understanding and never thwarted or rejected merely on political considerations. Any insensitive approach will only generate confrontations and conflicts which may erode the unity and integrity of our country. As past experiences have regularly demonstrated, whenever there has been delay or default in accepting the valid demands of the people, the outcome has damaged the foundations of our federal democracy. I will conclude by recalling what Francis Bacon once said: “He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils.”

N.N. Vohra is a former IAS officer, Punjab cadre, and former J&K Governor.