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With the creation of the Punjabi Suba, all the concrete major demands that the Akali Dal had raised and agitated for over the years had been accepted and implemented no real, meaningful demands were left which could enthuse its followers for long and therefore be sustained for long. It was, therefore, faced with the problem of where to go politically. The Akali leaders saw the option of giving up communal politics and becoming either a purely religious and social organization or a secular party appealing to all Punjabis as committing political suicide. Akali communalism therefore inexorably moved towards separatism, as was the case with the Muslim League after 1937. The fact is that the logic of minority communalism, especially when it is repeatedly ‘satisfied’ leads to separatism. In the 1980 elections to the Punjab assembly, just before launching its most militant and communal movement, the Akali Dal secured only 26.9 per cent of the total vote. This meant that less than 50 per cent of Sikhs voted for it and that the majority of Sikhs rejected the Akali politics and ideology. Having lost the elections in 1980 and in order to widen their support base among Sikhs, the Akalis began to intensify the communal content of their politics and to continuously escalate their demands, the so-called moderate leaders keeping in step with the extremists. In 1981, the main Akali Dal, headed by Sant Longowal, submitted to the prime minister a memorandum of forty-five religious, political, economic and social demands and grievances, including the issue of the sharing of Punjab’s river waters between Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan and the question of the transfer of Chandigarh to Punjab, and launched a virulent campaign around them. Very soon, implementation of the Anandpur Sahib Resolution (ASR), adopted in 1973, became the most prominent demand. The resolution, which had many versions, was openly communal and separatist in all its versions. |
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