Swami Atma Nand

Swami Atma Nand was an elderly sannyasi, a renouncer, who led the Hindi agitation in Punjab in 1957. The Hindi Raksha Samiti, the Save Hindi Committee, was formed by Hindus of Punjab to oppose the Regional Formula of 1956, which they said held the seeds of a second partition of Punjab. Gurmit Singh writes in History of Sikh Struggles that the agitation was led by the Arya Samaj. The Samiti made Swami Atma Nand the "dictator" of its movement. On 30 April 1957 he began an indefinite dharna at the Secretariat in Chandigarh, and the agitation was launched (vol. I, p. 122).

Key moments

• 30 April 1957: the dharna begins. The Samiti's main demands were that no one should be compelled to learn two languages, that parents should choose the medium of instruction, that government notifications at district level and below should be bilingual, that applications could be made in any language and answered in the same, and that district records should be kept in both scripts. The Government soon conceded bilingual notifications and records up to district level (pp. 122 to 123).
• 8 September 1957: the Akali Dal Working Committee, meeting under Master Tara Singh, says he himself held out a threat that Arya Samajist youths would march to the gurdwaras if Congress youths sat in dharna in front of an Arya Samaj mandir. It calls the agitation unsavoury and vulgar and says it was carried on by violent, abusive and insulting methods (pp. 123 to 124). That is the Akali Dal's charge; the sources found here give no reply from the Swami.
• 23 December 1957: the agitation is withdrawn (p. 125).

What he is remembered for. His name is tied to the agitation that, in Gurmit Singh's words, widened the gulf between Hindus and Sikhs. The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism says that during the Hindi movement several Sikh places of worship were desecrated, that language frontiers had become communal frontiers, and that for Master Tara Singh Punjabi Suba became the only antidote to the rising Hindi fanaticism.