Did the Sikh leaders of 1947 err in joining India? The promises made to the Sikhs

The claim: The Sikh leaders chose well and no promise was broken. Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel made the case in the Constituent Assembly on 14 October 1949, answering the Akali member Hukam Singh. In the text Gurmit Singh reproduces, Patel said he did not know what promises were meant, that no Sikh voice had been raised against partition, and that the Sikhs were probably in the forefront of demanding the partition of Punjab. A second argument is that there was no better road. The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism (entry by Penderel Moon) says the Sikh leadership accepted partition by early 1947 to avoid being absorbed into Pakistan after the attacks on Sikhs at Rawalpindi and Attock in March 1947. Viceroy Wavell wrote on 15 August 1944 that Jinnah had again floated special autonomy for the Sikhs inside Pakistan and that the Sikhs disliked it (the letter is reproduced in Gurmit Singh's Appendix 22).

The sourced facts:

• What was said to the Sikhs. A Congress motion at Lahore in December 1929 assured Sikhs and Muslims that no constitutional solution that did not satisfy them would be acceptable (Encyclopaedia of Sikhism, "Central Sikh League"). In July 1946 Nehru told a press conference that the Sikhs deserved special consideration and that he saw nothing wrong in an area and set-up in the North where they too could feel the glow of freedom (J. S. Grewal, The Sikhs of the Punjab). On 10 August 1946 the Congress Working Committee promised the Sikhs safeguards (Gurmit Singh, p. 83). These were statements and resolutions, not constitutional text.
• What the Sikh leaders asked. Master Tara Singh told the Cabinet Mission he wanted a united India or, if Pakistan was conceded, a Sikh state free to join either side, (Encyclopaedia of Sikhism, "Partition of the Punjab" and "Tara Singh, Master"). The Cabinet Mission itself noted on 16 May 1946 that any division of the Punjab would divide the Sikhs (Hansard).
• The choice. On 3 June 1947 Baldev Singh consented to the partition plan for the Sikhs, and the eastern part of the Punjab Assembly voted 50 to 22 for partition and for joining India. The Boundary Commission was told to take "other factors" into account besides population (Hansard, 3 June 1947), wording meant to reassure the Sikhs.
• What followed. J. S. Grewal records that the question of Sikh safeguards was postponed, that a sub-committee in February 1948 saw no reason to make an exception for them, and that in May 1949 Patel reopened the question of reservations and the Assembly decided on none for any religious minority. Gurmit Singh also reproduces a note of 22 January 1948 in which Rajendra Prasad wrote that the Congress position had been to do nothing on the minority question without Sikh consent. Hukam Singh declined to sign the Constitution after failing to win protection for Sikhs as a religious minority (Encyclopaedia of Sikhism).

The Panthic answer: Sikh historians do not say the Sikhs should have gone to Pakistan. They say the Sikhs trusted assurances, held no binding guarantee, and were left without safeguards. Sirdar Kapur Singh told the Lok Sabha on 6 September 1966 that the Punjab Reorganisation Bill was "the latest act of betrayal of solemn promises given to the Sikh people" (as quoted by Hardev Singh Virk in Asia Samachar); J. S. Grewal records that he cited the Congress promises in that debate. The Akali Dal's own resolution of 17 March 1948 shows where the trust lay: it advised its legislators to join the Congress parties because the Sikhs should rely on the fairness and generosity of Rajendra Prasad, Nehru and Patel (Gurmit Singh). Bhai Ajmer Singh, in Vihveen Sadi Di Sikh Rajneeti, sets the assurances of 1929, 1931 and 1946 as one chain, all broken after 1947. He argues that the Akali Dal staked its future on the Congress without a Sikh demand of its own, calls its move into the Congress in 1948 a surrender, and says that when Patel refused in 1949 the Sikhs had no safeguard and no independent claim to fall back on.