Giani Kartar Singh Jiਗਿਆਨੀ ਕਰਤਾਰ ਸਿੰਘ ਜੀ

Giani Kartar Singh Ji (22 February 1902 to 10 June 1974) was an Akali leader and Punjab minister who dominated Sikh politics in the 1940s and 1950s. After Master Tara Singh, he was the most important thinker of Akali politics and the Punjabi Suba movement. He was Punjab's Revenue and Development Minister from 1948 to 1951 and its Revenue and Agriculture Minister from 1957 to 1962. He is remembered as much for his simplicity as for his strategy: he left ministerial office with his belongings in a single worn iron trunk.

Early life: from Lyallpur to Amritsar

Kartar Singh was born on 22 February 1902 at Chakk No. 40, Jhang Branch, in Lyallpur district, in the part of Punjab that is now in Pakistan. His parents were Bhagat Singh and Mai Jio. The family were Jatts of the Khaihra clan from Nagoke village in Amritsar district, who had moved to Lyallpur when the Sandal Bar region opened as a canal colony late in the nineteenth century. Most sources give his birth date as 22 February 1902, though the Nehru Archive lists 1905.

He studied first in the village gurdwara and then at the Khalsa School in neighbouring Chakk No. 41, matriculating in 1921. In his school days he led a kirtan jatha, a group of hymn singers, and the name Giani, one learned in scripture, stayed with him for life. He joined Khalsa College in Amritsar but had to leave after an attack of smallpox. He was married young to Harnam Kaur, daughter of Jagat Singh of Ghiala Kalan in Amritsar district.

Two early experiences shaped his politics. He was in Amritsar during the Jallianwala Bagh massacre of April 1919, which left a lasting mark on him, and as a tenth-class student he raised funds for the Tilak Swaraj Fund of the Indian National Congress. In October 1920 he led about twenty students to the Sikh conference at Dharovali, the gathering that paved the way for the Shiromani Akali Dal.

Rise in the Akali Dal

In 1924 he became general secretary of the Lyallpur district Akali Dal. Later that year he was arrested for leading a procession to welcome the 13th Shahidi Jatha on its way to Jaito, and served six months in Campbellpore Central Jail. In 1926 he was elected to the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee, reconstituted under the Sikh Gurdwaras Act of 1925, and he joined its executive committee in October 1927. He remained a member of the SGPC until 1960.

He joined the rally that greeted the Simon Commission with black flags at Lahore railway station on 30 October 1928, and he was jailed again during the Civil Disobedience Movement of 1930 to 1931 for speeches against the colonial government. In 1933 he was elected to the executive committees of both the SGPC and the Akali Dal, and in 1937 he entered the Punjab Legislative Assembly from Samundari-Jharharivala in Lyallpur district.

In 1942 he helped bring about the rapprochement between the Akalis and the Unionist Party, which put Baldev Singh into the Punjab ministry of Sir Sikandar Hayat Khan. Under that arrangement, known as the Sikandar-Baldev Pact, he introduced a bill to amend the Sikh Gurdwaras Act of 1925. The bill became the Sikh Gurdwaras (Amendment) Act XI of 1944, passed on 12 December 1944. It expanded the SGPC's powers, gave backward Sikh classes representation, and freed the SGPC to spend on missionary, educational and charitable work. He sponsored a further amendment in 1956, after the merger of PEPSU with Punjab.

The Azad Punjab Scheme and Partition

When the Muslim League demanded a separate Muslim state, he answered in 1943 with the Azad Punjab Scheme. It proposed a restructured Punjab whose population was balanced between communities, so that no single community held an absolute majority. The scheme became the basis of the Akali position in the negotiations that followed, and in those talks he ranked next only to Master Tara Singh. In January 1947 he was elected president of the Shiromani Akali Dal.

His sense of service showed itself the year before. In September 1946, when a Sikh minister was to be chosen for the Punjab cabinet, he was selected, but he put his garlands on Swaran Singh instead, saying Swaran Singh deserved the post.

After Partition was announced on 3 June 1947, he called a joint meeting of the Akali Dal Working Committee and the Panthic Pratinidhi Board, which on 14 June endorsed the transfer of population and property as an essential measure. After 15 August 1947 he personally helped evacuate non-Muslims from Lyallpur and Sheikhupura districts, at considerable personal risk.

Minister in East Punjab

On 17 March 1948, under his leadership, the Akali Dal allowed its legislators to join Congress. Giani Kartar Singh became Revenue and Development Minister in the East Punjab government under Gopi Chand Bhargava, and he continued in the ministry of Bhim Sen Sachar, which he had helped bring to power with his group of 22 MLAs in March 1949. As minister he rehabilitated refugees from Pakistan and started the Government Agriculture College at Ludhiana.

In the Constituent Assembly he argued for statutory safeguards for Sikh rights. His most lasting idea from these years was the Giani-Sachar Formula, worked out with Bhim Sen Sachar, dividing East Punjab into Punjabi-speaking and Hindi-speaking zones. The demarcation laid the foundation for a Punjabi-speaking state, and for the Punjabi Suba demand that followed.

He lost his assembly seat in the first general election of 1952, but was soon elected to the Punjab Legislative Council. By then the demand for Punjabi Suba, a Punjabi-speaking state, had become the focus of Sikh politics, and he was one of its principal advocates.

The Punjabi Suba movement

Back in the Akali Dal, he courted arrest in the 1955 campaign for Punjabi Suba. A year later the Regional Formula brought the Akalis back into the Congress fold, and he was elected from the Dasuya-Tanda constituency. In 1957 he became Revenue and Agriculture Minister in the cabinet of Partap Singh Kairon, and he was re-elected in 1962. As minister he pushed through the consolidation of land holdings and piloted the Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee Act and the Punjab Agricultural University Act, measures that laid the foundations for the growth of Punjab's farm economy.

In September 1957 Jawaharlal Nehru wrote to Kairon that Giani Kartar Singh was functioning more and more as an Akali leader and less and less as a member of the cabinet. In the 1960s his differences with the Akali Dal widened, and a folk song mocking him for deceiving the Panth was widely heard in rural Punjab.

Yet in 1966 he did some of his most important work. When the Punjab Reorganisation Commission, the Shah Commission, was set up to draw the boundaries of the new state, the Akali Dal chief Sant Fateh Singh was abroad. He and Shiv Singh Bela mobilised public opinion to press the commission to keep Anandpur Sahib, Ropar, Nangal, Kharar and other Punjabi-speaking areas in Punjab. He appeared among the last before the commission, pleading with a scarf around his neck, and reminding it that three holy shrines of the Sikhs, Nankana Sahib, Panja Sahib and Kartarpur Sahib, were already in Pakistan, and that losing Anandpur Sahib would deprive the Sikhs of Takht Sri Kesgarh Sahib. Una tehsil's Anandpur Sahib and Nurpurbedi blocks, with the Nangal Headworks and Bhakra Dam access, stayed in Punjab, as did the Kharar and Ropar tehsils, giving the contiguity that mattered for Punjab's claim over Chandigarh.

Why is Giani Kartar Singh Ji remembered?

In February 1967 he lost again as a Congress candidate from his former constituency, and he resigned from the Congress party on 16 April 1967. His attempt to enter the Lok Sabha from Hoshiarpur in 1972 was unsuccessful, and his health declined. His political career had effectively ended.

What people remember most is how little he kept for himself. After he ceased to be a minister in 1962, officials came to ask him to vacate his ministerial bungalow. He packed all he owned into one worn iron trunk, called a rickshaw, and left for a friend's house, his wet kachhehra spread over his shoulders. The 48 acres allotted to him after Partition at Tanda Urmar he donated in full to the Government College there, which was named in his memory.

In his last years his health failed, and he was admitted to Rajindra Hospital in Patiala. Friends visiting quietly left money under his hospital pillow for his treatment. He did not touch it. He died there on 10 June 1974.

He dominated Sikh politics in the 1940s and 1950s, and after Master Tara Singh he was its most important thinker. The Azad Punjab Scheme, the Giani-Sachar Formula and his Shah Commission plea all shaped the Punjab that exists today. He is remembered as a politician who lived like a fakir: single-minded, plain in his habits, and devoted to the welfare of the Panth above his own gain.