Attack on the Guru Gobind Singh birthday procession at Ludhiana

Who: Sikhs marching in the Guru Gobind Singh birthday procession at Ludhiana, and the crowd that attacked them. The SGPC's history of the 1955 morcha names Dr Kali Charan, whom it calls an Arya Samaji of Ludhiana, as the man behind the attack, and says his leader was Bhim Sen Sachar, the Congress Chief Minister of Punjab.

What: On 31 December 1954 the procession was attacked at Ludhiana. According to the SGPC history, Dr Kali Charan had told the town for several days that certain slogans would not be allowed in it. Bricks and stones were thrown at the procession from rooftops and insulting counter-slogans were shouted. The history says the Sikhs bore this with patience, so disorder was avoided.

The history adds that slogans the Sikhs had never raised were then put into their mouths, among them "Dhoti topi Jamna par" (dhoti and cap wearers to the far side of the Jumna), and that they were falsely charged with looting shops and beating people, a charge it says Congress pushed hard through its propaganda. Khushwant Singh, by contrast, records "Dhoti, topi, Jumna par" as one of the two slogans that summed up the Sikh side in the Suba quarrel. The history says an inquiry brought out the truth and that even the Sachar government had to admit the attackers had committed a very serious excess.

Where: Ludhiana, along the route of the procession, with stones thrown from the rooftops.

Why it mattered: The SGPC history counts the attack as the first step on the road to the slogan ban of April 1955 and the Punjabi Suba morcha, and reads it as the opening of a plan to stop Punjabi Suba propaganda before the States Reorganisation Commission toured Punjab in March and April 1955. It says Akali leaders openly charged that some ministers, if not the whole Sachar government, had a hand in it, and that Dr Kali Charan himself said Congressmen were running the Maha Punjab movement to block the Punjabi Suba demand, adding that he was a Congressman and his leader was Lala Bhim Sen Sachar. When Akali newspapers asked Sachar to confirm or deny this, he stayed silent, which the history treats as consent. It records no reply from him.

The history also says the Government drew an argument from the attack: a slogan about new state boundaries would draw a counter-slogan and peace would be lost. On that ground, it says, a ban on slogans and processions was announced some ten to fifteen days before Baisakhi 1955. The history gives no date for the order. Gurmit Singh and Sangat Singh date the Amritsar District Magistrate's order to 6 April 1955, about a week before Baisakhi and so fewer days than the history's ten to fifteen. The historian J. S. Grewal says anti-Sikh and anti-Hindu slogans had become common at meetings and that the government then decided to ban slogans.