The Hindu-Sikh position

OF the three communal positions enunciated at the recent informal conference at Lahore and summed up by Mahatma Gandhi in his article in Young India, the simplest is that of the Sikhs. They said that they were not in favour of communal representation at all, but that if communal representation was to remain, their “special position and importance in Punjab required special treatment” i.e., excessive representation. There is at least as much to be said for this plea for special representation as for the similar plea of the Muslim minorities in other provinces. The statement that the Sikhs want this special representation, only if communal representation to which they are themselves opposed, is to remain, makes the Sikh position as a whole much more reasonable than that of the Muslim minorities. We would only place two considerations before our friends and trust they will give them the attention they deserve. In the first place, it is impossible for the Sikhs, under any system of democratic or representative government, to have such a number of seats in the Legislative Council and local bodies as would enable them by themselves to hold their own against either of the other communities. The root idea of representative government would entirely exclude such a possibility. It is true that communal representation and representative government are themselves incompatible. But communal representation is admittedly a compromise and accepted by the Hindus, at any rate, only as a necessary evil for the time being. It is neither necessary nor desirable to add another evil to it that would be just as inconsistent with democratic government as communal representation itself.