Punjabi Suba Morcha of 1960-61

Who: The Shiromani Akali Dal ran the morcha under Master Tara Singh, who declared it on 10 May 1960 and was jailed within two weeks. After his arrest Sant Fateh Singh directed it from inside the Golden Temple precincts, helped by young men of the Sikh Students' Federation (Encyclopaedia of Sikhism). Against them stood Chief Minister Partap Singh Kairon, whose speeches called Punjabi Suba a camouflage for a Sikh state (Gurmit Singh), and Prime Minister Nehru.

What: It was the second large morcha for Punjabi Suba, after that of 1955.

• January 1960: the Akali Dal won 136 of the 140 seats in the SGPC elections (Encyclopaedia of Sikhism; Khushwant Singh), and the new members pledged at the Akal Takht on 24 January to win a Punjabi Suba.
• 30 April and 10 May: a "Now or Never" resolution (Khushwant Singh), then Master Tara Singh's declaration of a "do or die" struggle from Manji Sahib (Gurmit Singh). On 22 May a Punjabi Suba convention at Amritsar, to which members of the Swatantra and Praja Socialist parties were invited, backed the demand.
• Night of 23, 24 or 25 May: Master Tara Singh was arrested and held at Dharamsala (Gurmit Singh, the Times of India Year Book and the Encyclopaedia of Sikhism differ on the night). The first round-up was about 500 in Gurmit Singh's account and about 250, six of them legislators, in the Year Book. From 30 May a jatha of eleven courted arrest daily at Amritsar. The Akali papers Prabhat and Akali were sealed and then allowed to reopen after journalists protested.
• 12 June: the Delhi procession was broken up by the police. By 14 June the Year Book counted 2,457 arrested in the agitation, and Grewal says nearly 18,000 Akalis courted arrest at Amritsar before the end of July.
• 15 August: Nehru called the agitation a "stage tamasha". On 21 October he said, "We shall not have any Punjabi Suba," calling it a communal demand (Gurmit Singh).
• 9 and 10 October: police firing at Bhatinda jail and at a Patiala procession killed six, in Gurmit Singh's account.
• 18 December to 9 January: Sant Fateh Singh's fast unto death.

The morcha ended when the Sant broke his fast on 9 January 1961. The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism puts the jailed at 30,000 by the official count and 57,129 by the Akali count; Khushwant Singh gives 23,000 and 57,000. A committee of the Swatantra Party (K. M. Munshi, N. C. Chatterjee, N. C. Aggarwala and Kartar Singh Campbellpuri) found the Government's measures unduly harsh, though it said gurdwaras should not be bases for agitation, a point on which Campbellpuri dissented (Gurmit Singh).

Where: Amritsar, where jathas courted arrest daily and the morcha was directed from the Golden Temple, and Delhi, where the Akalis opened a second front.

Why it mattered: It did not win a Punjabi Suba. Sant Fateh Singh presented the demand as purely linguistic: "We do not seek a Sikh-majority area," he told the press at Amritsar. On 8 January 1961 Nehru said Punjab was "broadly speaking a Punjabi Suba" with Punjabi as its dominant language, and the Sant ended his fast; talks in 1961 then failed (Encyclopaedia of Sikhism). Master Tara Singh, booed by Sikh crowds after the fast ended, was succeeded in practice by Sant Fateh Singh, who led the movement to the creation of the Punjabi-speaking state in 1966.