Dr Gopal Singh Dardi

Dr Gopal Singh Dardi was a writer and public servant who spoke for the "Nationalist Sikhs" before the Das Commission in 1961 and argued in 1981 that the Sikhs are a qaum and not a nation. Khushwant Singh writes that he had earlier, as editor of the defunct Liberator, been an enthusiastic supporter of the Sikh state.

Wikipedia gives his birth as 29 November 1917 and his death on 8 August 1990. It lists him as a nominated member of the Rajya Sabha from 3 April 1962 to 2 April 1968, Lieutenant Governor of Goa, Daman and Diu from 24 September 1984, Governor of Goa from 30 May 1987 and the first Governor of Nagaland from 20 July 1989 to 3 May 1990, and says he translated the Sikh scriptures into English. Khushwant Singh adds that he was sent as ambassador to Bulgaria and the Caribbean, chaired the high power committee on minorities, and wrote several books on the Sikhs, including a four-volume translation of the Granth.

Key moments

• 1961: Gurmit Singh writes that Dr Gopal Singh Dardi, spokesman of the newly formed Nationalist Sikhs, appeared before the Das Commission, allegedly at the instance of Partap Singh Kairon, and denied that Sikhs were discriminated against. Khushwant Singh adds that before the commission Dardi listed the privileges the Sikhs enjoyed under Nehru's government. Gurmit Singh adds that he later said his memorandum listed eight cases of discrimination, among them the Punjabi language and the treatment of Sikh farmers in the Tarai region of Uttar Pradesh, and doubts that account.
• May 1981: Gurmit Singh writes that at a seminar on the Sikhs as a nation at Vithalbhai Patel House in New Delhi, Dr Gopal Singh, then chairman of a high-power panel on minorities, was the sole dissenter and was hooted down by the audience as an agent of the government.
• 5 July 1981: Gurmit Singh writes that he organised an All India Sikh Intelligentsia Convention, under what the book calls an assumed status as President of the All-India Minorities Congress, and asserted there that the Sikhs are a qaum and not a nation.
• 1984: Khushwant Singh lists him among the handful of Sikhs who supported the army action in the Golden Temple, and says he was appointed Lieutenant Governor of Goa, Daman and Diu.

What he is remembered for. Sikh writers such as Gurmit Singh and Khushwant Singh present him as a Sikh voice that the Government could point to when it rejected the Akali demands. Gurmit Singh also reports Dardi's own account, that his memorandum listed eight cases of discrimination.