Trivedi circular on the Sikhs, October 1947

Who: Sir Chandulal Trivedi, the first Indian Governor of East Punjab after Independence (Wikipedia dates his term from 15 August 1947); the Deputy Commissioners of East Punjab, who received the circular; and Kapur Singh, a Sikh civil servant who protested.

What: Gurmit Singh's History of Sikh Struggles says that on 10 October 1947 the Governor sent a circular to all Deputy Commissioners. As the book quotes it, it read: "Sikhs as a community are a lawless people and are a menace to the law-abiding Hindus in the province. Deputy Commissioners should take special measures against them." The book says it came while wounded Sikh refugees were trekking out of West Pakistan, and that it told officials to deal with the Sikhs as if they were habitual criminals. The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism also dates the circular to 10 October 1947 and describes it as a warning to district authorities against the "criminal tendencies of the Sikh people". A representation to President Rajendra Prasad dated 7 June 1960, signed by five Sikhs, the first of them the retired High Court judge Gurnam Singh, places it in September 1947 and calls it a secret policy circular; Gurnam Singh's open letter of 5 July 1960 to the Prime Minister gives October. The text of the circular is not reproduced in any source this page draws on, so it rests on these accounts.

Kapur Singh, then serving as a Deputy Commissioner, protested. The Encyclopaedia says he filed a strong protest against what it calls an utterly wild accusation, invited the Governor's wrath, and was dismissed after charges were brought against him. Wikipedia says he was suspended from the civil service in April 1949 with the Governor's consent, and that he believed the Governor had targeted him over his protest. Gurmit Singh writes that he fought his dismissal up to the Supreme Court and was denied justice. The 1960 representation says a minor Sikh public servant who demurred was punished to warn others, and that the Governor was later honoured. Wikipedia lists his later offices as Governor of Andhra and member of the Planning Commission.

Where: East Punjab, the part of the Punjab left in India after Partition.

Why it mattered: Gurmit Singh treats the circular as an official act that singled out the Sikhs as a distinct group, alongside the ban on the entry of Sikhs into Saudi Arabia, imposed by that country in 1950, and the government's notification after Master Tara Singh's fast of 1961, which announced a commission on the charges of discrimination. The 1960 representation says that measures aimed at one minority end by harming the civic foundations of a people and the state, and Gurnam Singh's open letter says it would be unnatural to expect the Sikhs to forget the directive.