Sir B.J. Glancy

Sir Bertrand James Glancy was the British Governor of the Punjab through the years of the Cripps offer, the Quit India movement and the first Sikh moves over the future of the province. Wikipedia, used here because no better source for his career opened, says he was born on 31 December 1882 in Dublin, joined the Indian Civil Service and its Political Department, was Governor of the Punjab from 7 April 1941 to 8 April 1946 under the Viceroys Lord Linlithgow and Lord Wavell, and died at Nairobi on 17 March 1953. Evan Jenkins succeeded him.

His voice reaches the Panth through his private letters to Linlithgow, printed in Appendices 13, 15, 19, 21 and 23 of the first volume of Gurmit Singh's History of Sikh Struggles. They show how the Governor read Sikh politics, in his own words.

Key moments

• 1 May 1942: he told the Viceroy that the Sikhs were undoubtedly relieved at the rejection of the Cripps offer but still restive. He reported that Master Tara Singh and his lieutenants found it easy to stir up communal feeling at the alleged danger of Muslim rule. He hoped that sympathetic references to the Sikhs in Parliament would not lead them to believe that "Khalistan" was regarded in responsible quarters as a practicable proposition, since there was not a single district in which the Sikhs were a majority. He named Sir Jogendra Singh and Sardar Baldev Singh as the Sikhs most often mentioned for the Governor-General's Executive Council.
• 26 July 1942: he judged the Sikhs better disposed to the Government than for some time, as a result of the Sikander-Baldev Pact and Sir Jogendra Singh's appointment, and thought Gandhi could not rely on any general Sikh support for a mass movement.
• 13 November 1942: he called the Sikander-Baldev Pact a powerful factor for good, with a distinctly pacifying effect on the Sikhs. He wrote that some Sikh leaders were attempting negotiations with Jinnah, that steps had been taken to point out to some of them that they were not likely to gain any practical benefit, and that he did not think reasonable Sikhs wanted to see the province dismembered as long as they were given a fair deal.
• 28 November 1942: he wrote that, by proclaiming that he saw eye to eye with Jinnah, Sikander had to a considerable extent weakened the Baldev Singh-Sikander Pact, and that the Sikhs were feeling injured and bewildered. He reported that Giani Kartar Singh had said at Nankana that Sikhs should work for the unity of India as a whole but aim at an appropriate partition of the Punjab, one suggestion being a partition by landed interests rather than population. He added that at a reunion party for Guru Nanak's birthday, Baldev Singh, the host, showed up well and seemed to be gaining self-assurance.

He is remembered in Sikh history as the official who recorded, in confidence, what the British thought of the Sikh demand for their own territory.