Cripps Mission and the Sikh demand to divide the Punjab

Who: The British Government's envoy Sir Stafford Cripps; the Congress and the Muslim League; and the Sikh leaders, who acted through the Sikh All-Parties Committee under Baldev Singh. Cripps's own note lists Baldev Singh, Ujjal Singh, Master Tara Singh and Sir Jogendra Singh at his interview with the Sikhs on 27 March 1942.

What: The mission was led by Sir Stafford Cripps, who landed in Delhi on 22 March 1942 with a draft declaration. It offered dominion status after the war, a constituent assembly and no compulsion on any province to join (Wikipedia). At the interview of 27 March the Sikhs asked for protection for the Sikh minority and for a province in which the Sikhs would have the decisive voice. Cripps's note says he listed the stages at which they could press: the constituent assembly, the treaty with minority clauses, the plebiscite of Punjab Muslims, who would need the Sikh vote, and a second constituent body. He added that the War Cabinet had particularly discussed the Sikhs because of their contribution to the defence of India.

On 31 March the Sikh All-Parties Committee wrote to Cripps that it found the proposals unacceptable because they provided for the separation of provinces and a Pakistan, and because the cause of the Sikh community had been lamentably betrayed. It asked for the Punjab to be divided roughly along the Ravi, with the Ambala and Jullundur divisions and the districts of Amritsar, Gurdaspur and Lahore forming a province 63 per cent non-Muslim, and listed eleven safeguards, among them a Sikh seat in the Central Cabinet.

The Congress signalled its opposition on 2 April, and the Muslim League rejected the proposals because they did not clearly accept Pakistan (Sandhu and Mahmood). Baba Kharak Singh rejected them and said that if division was inevitable the Sikhs had a right to a state from the Jhelum to the Sutlej. Cripps left on 12 April. Governor Glancy told the Viceroy on 1 May that the Sikhs were relieved by the rejection but restive, and hoped they would not think "Khalistan" a practicable proposition. Leo Amery wrote on 20 August that the Sikhs had nothing they could justifiably call a pledge from the mission.

Where: Delhi, where Cripps held his interviews, with Sikh meetings at Amritsar.

Why it mattered: The Sikh letter of 31 March 1942 is a formal Sikh demand, put to the British Government in writing, that the Punjab be divided so that the Sikhs held a decisive position. Sandhu and Mahmood write that the failure of the mission paved the way for the Sikander-Baldev Pact, which brought an Akali nominee into the Punjab Government in June 1942.