Is the Anandpur Sahib Resolution a secessionist document or a federal demand?

The claim: The Resolution is secession dressed as federalism. This was the line of Indira Gandhi's government. Its July 1984 White Paper on the Punjab Agitation said the real issue was "the maturing of a secessionist and anti-national movement", as The Tribune summarised it. The journalist Jagtar Singh says the Congress fought the 1984 election on the charge that the Resolution was secessionist, and Captain Amarinder Singh, as Congress Chief Minister, called the 1973 text secessionist in January 2005. An NCERT textbook was still describing a separatist agenda in 2023. Critics point to the 1973 wording, which names the political goal as the pre-eminence of the Khalsa through "a geographical entity and a constitutional set-up of its own". Ramachandra Guha, writing in The Hindu, called the federal demands reasonable but said some passages could be read as far more radical.

The sourced facts:

• The Akali Dal working committee adopted the Resolution at Anandpur Sahib on 16 and 17 October 1973. The 18th All-India Akali Conference endorsed it in twelve resolutions at Ludhiana on 28 and 29 October 1978 (Encyclopaedia of Sikhism).
• The 1973 text would restrict the Centre to defence, foreign relations, currency and communications. The 1978 resolutions asked for "greater autonomy to all the states", a "real federal shape" for the Constitution, Chandigarh for Punjab, headworks control for Punjab and a revision of the Ravi-Beas water distribution (AllAboutSikhs; Encyclopaedia of Sikhism).
• According to Wikipedia, three versions of the text were in circulation by the 1980s, so each side could quote the one that suited it. Kuldip Nayar writes that Akali leaders told him Kapur Singh drafted the English original.
• On 24 July 1985 Rajiv Gandhi and Sant Harchand Singh Longowal signed an accord. Clause 8.1 records the Akali Dal's statement that the Resolution is "entirely within the framework of the Indian Constitution" and aims at greater state autonomy "with a view to strengthening the unity and integrity of the country". Clause 8.2 refers its Centre-State parts to the Sarkaria Commission.
• The Tribune reports that the Commission, which reported in October 1987, rejected the Resolution's approach to Centre-State relations.

The Panthic answer: The Akali Dal has answered the charge the same way since 1982: the Resolution is federalism inside the Constitution. Longowal put that in writing in clause 8.1 and the Government of India signed beside it. SGPC president Kirpal Singh Badungar said in January 2002 that the demands of the 1978 resolution would go into the Akali manifesto beside federalism, Chandigarh and river waters. When the NCERT repeated the separatist reading in April 2023, Prem Singh Chandumajra said the country had accepted the Resolution by setting up the Sarkaria Commission and that regional parties had welcomed it, and Paramjit Singh Sarna, who heads the Delhi unit of the Akali Dal, said it sought greater powers for states inside the Union. The Panthic reading does not shrink the text to administrative reform. The 1978 resolutions state the goal as the pre-eminence of the Khalsa through special constitutional safeguards and powers for the Sikhs: a political claim for the Panth, made inside the Constitution.