Sardar Hukam Singh

Sardar Hukam Singh was a lawyer, Akali leader and parliamentarian who argued the Sikh case in the Constituent Assembly, launched an English weekly for the Panth in Delhi, chaired the parliamentary committee on a Punjabi-speaking state and became Speaker of the Lok Sabha.

He was born on 30 August 1895 at Montgomery (now Sahiwal), learned Punjabi at the local gurdwara, graduated from Khalsa College, Amritsar, in 1917, took an LLB at Law College, Lahore, in 1921 and practised law at Montgomery. In the Gurdwara Reform movement he was arrested on 7 January 1924 and sentenced to two years, and he was elected to the SGPC and repeatedly re-elected. In 1928 he was injured and arrested at a protest against the Simon Commission. After leaving Montgomery in 1947 he became a judge of the Kapurthala High Court.

The Constitution. Elected to the Constituent Assembly in April 1948 on an Akali Dal ticket, he spoke in its debates and served on its panel of chairmen. He refused to sign the Constitution because it did not protect the Sikhs as a religious minority (Encyclopaedia of Sikhism).

The Spokesman. In 1951 he launched The Spokesman, an English weekly, in Delhi. He also wrote The Sikh Cause and The Problem of the Sikhs.

Parliament. He sat in the first three Lok Sabhas for PEPSU, Bhatinda and Patiala, and Wikipedia records that he later joined the Congress. He was Deputy Speaker from 20 March 1956 and was elected Speaker of the third Lok Sabha, serving from 17 April 1962 to 16 March 1967; The Tribune calls him the first Sikh to hold the post. In October 1965 he chaired the parliamentary committee formed to examine the demand for a Punjabi-speaking state, and its unanimous report favoured reorganising Punjab on linguistic lines. He then served as Governor of Rajasthan from 16 April 1967 to 1 July 1972. After that he was president of the committee for the 1973 Sri Guru Singh Sabha centenary. He died in Delhi on 27 May 1983.

Key moments

• 1924: arrested and sentenced to two years in the Gurdwara Reform movement.
• 1948 to 1949: in the Constituent Assembly, refuses to sign the Constitution.
• 1951: launches The Spokesman.
• 1962 to 1967: Speaker of the Lok Sabha.
• 1965: chairs the Punjabi Suba committee.
• 1967 to 1972: Governor of Rajasthan.

What he is remembered for. He is remembered as the Sikh voice who put the minority case into the Constitution debates and later chaired the committee that backed Punjabi Suba.