Sardar Hukam Singh Jiਸਰਦਾਰ ਹੁਕਮ ਸਿੰਘ ਜੀ

Sardar Hukam Singh Ji (30 August 1895 to 27 May 1983) was a Sikh lawyer, parliamentarian and jurist who rose from a small-town practice in Montgomery to become the first Sikh Speaker of the Lok Sabha. He served as Deputy Speaker from 1956, Speaker of the Third Lok Sabha from 1962 to 1967, and Governor of Rajasthan from 1967 to 1972. He is remembered as a fair and firm presiding officer who set many precedents by which the Lok Sabha still runs.

Early life: from Montgomery to the law

Hukam Singh was born on 30 August 1895 at Montgomery, now Sahiwal in Pakistan. His father, Sham Singh, was a businessman of moderate means, and he died before his son had finished school. He learned Punjabi at the local gurdwara and matriculated in 1913 from the Government High School, Montgomery. In 1917 he graduated from Khalsa College, Amritsar, where he played for the College Hockey XI.

He worked as an inspector in the Cooperative Department, then resigned to resume his studies. He passed his LLB examination in 1921 from the Law College, Lahore, and set up practice as a lawyer at Montgomery. He became president of the Montgomery Bar Association and manager of the local Khalsa High School, and stayed active in Sikh education. In 1967 Punjabi University conferred on him the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws.

The Akali movement and two years in jail

A devout Sikh, he took part in the Gurdwara Reform or Akali movement. When the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee was declared unlawful in October 1923 and most of its leaders were arrested, the Sikhs formed another committee of the same name, and Hukam Singh was a member of it. He was arrested on 7 January 1924 and sentenced to two years in Mianwali jail, alongside Baba Gurdit Singh, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan and Sardul Singh Caveeshar.

He was elected a member of the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee at the first elections held under the Sikh Gurdwaras Act, 1925, and continued to be elected successively for many years. He took part in the anti-Simon Commission agitation of 1928 and was injured and arrested during a police baton charge on a procession in Montgomery. He entered politics through the Shiromani Akali Dal and was its president for three years, and in 1951 he became president of the All-India Akali Dal.

Partition: escape from Montgomery

When riots broke out after the declaration of Partition in August 1947, most of the Hindus and Sikhs of Montgomery, including Hukam Singh's own family, took refuge in the walled compound of Gurdwara Sri Guru Singh Sabha, of which he himself was president. He went about the town evacuating people, burying the dead and taking the dying to hospital, at grave personal risk. A price of 25,000 rupees had been put on his head.

During the night of 19-20 August 1947, a British officer of the Punjab Boundary Force evacuated him, penniless and disguised in a khaki uniform, to the Firozpur cantonment. After about ten days he learned that his family had arrived safely at Jalandhar, and he traced them to a refugee camp, where he rejoined them.

Giani Kartar Singh Ji introduced him to the Maharaja of Kapurthala for a position in the state judiciary. He arrived at the palace dressed as a refugee, without the coat and tie that court etiquette expected, and the Maharaja was not at all pleased. The prime minister smoothed matters over, saying that a refugee could be forgiven the lapse, and Hukam Singh was appointed a Judge of the Kapurthala High Court.

The Constituent Assembly and the Constitution he would not sign

Partition left some seats vacant in the Constituent Assembly. On Gurmukh Singh Musafir's motion, the Assembly on 27 January 1948 approved the election of two Sikh and two Hindu members from East Punjab. With Giani Kartar Singh Ji's help, Hukam Singh was elected on 30 April 1948 as an Akali Dal member and sworn in the same day. Within a year he was nominated to the panel of its chairmen.

He took an active part in the Assembly's debates, pressing for safeguards for the Sikh community and for minorities. Although the Shiromani Akali Dal had directed all Akali legislators in March 1948 to join the Congress legislature party en bloc, he continued to function in opposition. When the new Constitution gave the Sikhs no protection as a religious minority, he refused to put his signature to it or to endorse it. He said then that the real content of freedom could only be felt if minorities were given due protection and safeguards for the development of their culture, language and religion.

He sat in the Provisional Parliament from 1950 to 1952. In the first general election of 1952 he was elected to the First Lok Sabha from the Kapurthala-Bhatinda constituency in PEPSU state, as an Akali Party candidate, and he became secretary of the National Democratic Front led by Shyama Prasad Mookerjee.

Deputy Speaker and Speaker of the Lok Sabha

On 20 March 1956 he was unanimously elected Deputy Speaker of the Lok Sabha, even though he was a member of the Opposition and one of only two MPs of the Akali Dal. Some people accused him of having struck a secret deal, giving up the demand for Punjabi Suba in exchange for the post. His defenders said he had consulted Master Tara Singh, the Dal's general house had not opposed it, and on the day of the alleged bargain he was in Rohtak jail with Baba Harkishan Singh. In 1956 the Akali Dal's general committee decided to join the Congress party. In 1957 he was re-elected to the Lok Sabha from Bhatinda and re-elected Deputy Speaker on 17 May 1957.

In 1962 he was elected to the Third Lok Sabha from Patiala as a Congress candidate. He was then unanimously elected Speaker on 17 April 1962, the first Sikh to hold the post. He served under three Prime Ministers, Nehru, Shastri and Indira Gandhi, and was known as a fair and firm Speaker. He upheld the supremacy of the legislature over the executive and kept firm discipline in the House. If a member rose and spoke without being identified by the chair, he would not catch the Speaker's eye, and in extreme cases the Speaker would instruct reporters not to record such speeches.

The Defence of India Act was one of the major laws passed by the House in the wake of the Sino-Indian War of 1962. He also kept decorum during the stormy debates when, for the first time, no-confidence motions against the Council of Ministers were admitted. As Speaker he led Indian parliamentary delegations to the Commonwealth Parliamentary Conferences in Lagos in 1962 and in Kuala Lumpur in 1963, and in July 1963 he led a delegation to Washington, where he met President John F. Kennedy in the Oval Office.

In October 1965, when Sant Fateh Singh Ji announced an indefinite fast for a Punjabi-speaking state, Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri appointed a parliamentary committee with Hukam Singh as chairman to consider Punjabi Suba. The committee gave its verdict in favour of a Punjabi state, saying that Punjab should be reorganised on a linguistic basis. He had earlier drawn up the Regional Formula, which did not work. He did not stand for re-election in 1967, because he wanted to set the precedent that the Speaker must be elected unopposed, and he could not be assured of this.

Why is Sardar Hukam Singh Ji remembered?

He was appointed Governor of Rajasthan in 1967 and served until 1 July 1972, working with Chief Ministers Mohan Lal Sukhadia and Barkatullah Khan, then settled in Delhi.

His retirement did not last long. In March 1973 the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee formed the Sri Guru Singh Sabha Shatabdi Committee to celebrate the centenary of the Singh Sabha movement launched in 1873, and Hukam Singh was nominated its president, with Giani Gurdit Singh as its secretary. In 1974 he toured North America and Europe with Gurcharan Singh Tohra and Surjit Singh Barnala.

As a writer, he launched the Spokesman, an English weekly, from Delhi in 1951 and edited it until 1956. He wrote The Sikh Cause and The Problem of the Sikhs, and a travelogue on his visit to Russia.

He fell ill on 23 May 1983 and died in a New Delhi nursing home on 27 May 1983, aged 87. At his deathbed were his daughter Raminder Kaur, his son-in-law Brigadier Hari Singh, and Giani Zail Singh, the first Sikh President of India, who had rushed from Rashtrapati Bhavan.

He is remembered as the first Sikh Speaker of the Lok Sabha, a fair and firm presiding officer whose rulings shaped Parliament, and the man who refused to sign a Constitution he believed left minorities unprotected, yet swore to uphold it as Speaker and as Governor. He was famous for his ready repartee, his courtesy, and a life of public service from Montgomery to Jaipur.