Lucknow Pact and the Sikhs

Who: The Indian National Congress and the All-India Muslim League, meeting in joint sessions at Lucknow. Bal Gangadhar Tilak shaped the Congress side, and Muhammad Ali Jinnah took part. Sikhs were not party to the agreement. Their voice was the Chief Khalsa Diwan, and in a private letter that year Sundar Singh Majithia asked for one third of the seats and appointments in the Punjab government.

What: In December 1916 the Congress accepted separate electorates for Muslims in the Imperial and Provincial Councils, which Muslims already had under the 1909 Act and which the Congress had opposed. It also accepted weightage: one third of the seats in the central council for Muslims, although they were less than a third of the population. The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism records that in Punjab the pact gave Muslims 50 per cent of the communal seats. At the 1911 census Sikhs were 11.1 per cent of Punjab's population but 24.1 per cent of its electorate.

The Chief Khalsa Diwan had been asking for fair Sikh representation since 1911, and in 1916 and 1917 its requests turned into demands. Its call for one third of Punjab's non-official Indian seats was largely unfulfilled.

Where: Lucknow, with the effects felt in the provincial councils, including Punjab's.

Why it mattered: The pact settled a seat share for Punjab without any Sikh at the table. The Sikh answer was to organise. The Central Sikh League held its first session at Amritsar on 29 December 1919, and the Government of India Act 1919 created communal electorates for Sikhs in Punjab. The Communal Award of 16 August 1932 later gave Sikhs about 19 per cent of Punjab's seats, and the League protested strongly.