Mahatma Gandhi

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869 to 1948) led the Indian National Congress's mass campaigns against British rule from 1920. History.com records that he launched a satyagraha in 1919, was by 1920 the leader of the independence movement, led the salt march in 1930, and went to the second Round Table Conference in 1931 as the Congress's sole representative. For Sikhs he is part of three stories: the Akali Gurdwara Reform movement, the Congress assurances of 1929, and the Partition of Punjab.

Key moments

• 1920: Baba Kharak Singh, as president of the Central Sikh League, led the Sikhs into the non-cooperation movement that Gandhi had launched (Encyclopaedia of Sikhism).
• 3 March 1921: after the Saka of Nankana Sahib on 20 February, Gandhi came to the shrine with the Muslim leaders Shaukat Ali and Muhammad Ali.
• January 1922: when the Punjab government gave up the keys of the Golden Temple treasury to Baba Kharak Singh on 19 January, Gandhi sent a wire saying "First decisive battle for India's freedom won".
• 1929: Gandhi and other Congress leaders urged the Central Sikh League not to boycott the Lahore session of the Congress. The Congress then adopted a motion assuring Sikhs and Muslims that it would accept no constitutional solution that did not satisfy them. The Encyclopaedia says Congress leaders led by Gandhi met Baba Kharak Singh and gave the assurance that no arrangement lacking full satisfaction to the Sikhs would be accepted.
• 1931: after the Gandhi-Irwin Pact the Central Sikh League gave Gandhi, who was to represent the Congress at the second Round Table Conference, a memorandum of 17 demands. They included a one-third Sikh share in the Punjab cabinet and Public Service Commission, and Punjabi as the official language of the province.
• 1944: C. Rajagopalachari persuaded Gandhi to offer Jinnah a Pakistan made up of the contiguous Muslim-majority areas, which would have meant dividing Punjab and Bengal. Jinnah rejected it (Encyclopaedia).
• 30 January 1948: Gandhi was shot dead at Birla House in New Delhi by Nathuram Godse, a Hindu nationalist.

After his death: the Encyclopaedia records that a sub-committee chaired by Vallabhbhai Patel, appointed on 24 February 1948 to look at safeguards for the Sikhs, rejected their demand for special reservation of seats when it finally met on 23 November 1948.

He is remembered as the leader of the freedom struggle. On 14 October 1949 the Akali member Hukam Singh charged in the Constituent Assembly that the Congress was breaking the promises given to the Sikhs in 1929 and later, according to Patel's reply as recorded by the Sikh historian Gurmit Singh. The 1921 visit and the 1922 wire are on the same record as that charge.