Rajasthan

Rajasthan is the large desert state to Punjab's south and west. It matters to the Panth in three ways: its northern canal districts, Sri Ganganagar and Hanumangarh, have a Punjabi and Sikh farming population; it draws a large share of the rivers Punjab calls its own; and the Akali Dal once asked for part of it to be joined to Punjab.

Key moments

• 1920 to 1927: Bikaner, undivided Punjab and Bahawalpur agreed in 1920 to take Sutlej water to Bikaner. Work on the Ganga Canal began on 5 December 1925 at the Ferozepur headworks, and it opened on 26 October 1927. Wikipedia says migrants from south Punjab settled the area, and Ganganagar and Hanumangarh became Rajasthan's granary.
• 16 and 17 October 1973: the Akali Dal's working committee adopted the Anandpur Sahib Resolution at Anandpur Sahib; the 18th All-India Akali Conference at Ludhiana endorsed it on 28 and 29 October 1978. The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism records that it asked for an autonomous region that included "Ganganagar district of Rajasthan", and in its political goal "six tahsils of Ganganagar district in Rajasthan, merged with Punjab".
• 31 December 1981: Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan signed a water agreement. Rajasthan was allotted about 8.6 million acre-feet from the Ravi and Beas, the largest share, which supports the Indira Gandhi Canal that carries water from the Harike Barrage into the Thar. In 2004 Punjab passed an Act cancelling its water agreements, and on 10 November 2016 the Supreme Court gave its opinion that the Act is unconstitutional.
• March 2026: Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann said Punjab would claim Rs 1.44 lakh crore from Rajasthan as water royalty dues since 1960, relying on a 4 September 1920 agreement signed at Simla. Rajasthan's water resources minister Suresh Singh Rawat said that agreement is "no longer legally tenable", and Mann said he would take the matter to court.

Today: the 2011 census made Sikhs 12.23 per cent of Hanumangarh district's people, second to Hindus at 80.75 per cent, the Tribune reported in 2023. Rajasthan is both a Sikh farming homeland outside Punjab and the main downstream claimant on Punjab's water, and the Panth's politics has had to reckon with both.