Hindi Raksha Samiti

The Hindi Raksha Samiti, or Save Hindi Committee, was the body under which supporters of Hindi in Punjab launched a fierce agitation in 1957 to have the Regional Formula annulled, according to the Encyclopaedia of Sikhism. The Formula, agreed in March 1956 after talks between the Akali Dal and the Central Government, divided the Punjab that merged with PEPSU into a Hindi and a Punjabi region, each with its own regional council.

The agitation: Gurmit Singh writes that the Hindus of Punjab formed the Samiti to oppose the Regional Formula, which they said held the seeds of a second partition of Punjab, and that the agitation was led by the Arya Samaj. He says Swami Atma Nand was made "dictator" of the movement and began an indefinite dharna at the Secretariat in Chandigarh on 30 April 1957. Its demands were that no one should be compelled to learn two languages, that parents should choose the medium of instruction, and that government notifications and records at district level and below should be bilingual. Gurmit Singh says the government conceded bilingual notifications and records up to district level, and that Nehru said the compulsion question should be settled with educationists. The Encyclopaedia says the new Congress government under Partap Singh Kairon, in office from 3 April 1957, dealt with the protest firmly.

The Sikh charges: On 8 September 1957 the Akali Dal Working Committee, under Master Tara Singh, said the agitation was being carried on by violent, abusive and insulting methods. It listed cigarette boxes thrown into the sacred tanks of Amritsar, the hair of sleeping Sikhs cut, and gurdwaras attacked, and accused the Government of encouraging what it called hooliganism. Gurmit Singh adds that pages of the Guru Granth Sahib were found torn and scattered on a road in Amritsar on 1 August 1957. The Encyclopaedia says several Sikh places of worship were desecrated during the Hindi movement and that language frontiers became communal frontiers. The sources found give no reply from the Samiti.

What followed

• 14 June 1958: Master Tara Singh revived the demand for a Punjabi Suba, which the Encyclopaedia calls for him the only antidote to rising Hindi fanaticism.
• 1961 to 1962: Gurmit Singh writes that Virender, editor of the Pratap, appearing for Hindu organisations joined as the Hindi Raksha Samiti, told the Das Commission that Punjabi was not the mother tongue of the Hindus of Punjab. In the same account, Balraj Madhok of the Jana Sangh asked for the Regional Formula to be scrapped.

Where it stands: The sources found say nothing of the Samiti after 1962.