Preeti
Chandigarh: It is generally perceived as a land of plenty, full of contented, generous, and somewhat boisterous people, who live life to the fullest. But Punjab has always been a restive place since Independence, and even earlier in the 20th century. As it zooms back into the headlines with the gangland-style killing of popular singer-turned-politician Sidhu Moosewala and the film ‘Udta Punjab’ before that, its torturous past needs to be revisited. Punjab has had a tumultuous history — its wide plains being an easy path for all invaders breaking through the passes of the northwest across the centuries. But if we stick only to the century gone by, it has always been volatile despite the air of calm and contentment. Once regarded as a bastion of British rule, due to the loyal and stalwart soldiers it furnished for the Raj’s armies for fighting anywhere in the world — China, Africa, the Middle East, Punjab began changing as the 20th century dawned. It was then that the fight for India’s freedom saw the emergence of a new brand of more direct political action — the troika of ‘Lal-Bal-Pal’ of whom the first, Lala Lajpat Rai, was based out of Punjab (the other two being Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Bipin Chandra Pal). The Punjabi diaspora — it existed even then, particularly on the West Coast of the US and Canada — was also involved in an armed conspiracy to overthrow the British Raj under the Ghadar Party and fought a clandestine war with British security agencies. The Jallianwala Bagh carnage and its backdrop is well-known, but in the same decade and the 1920s, so was the struggle, mostly non-violent, to wrest control of leading Sikh shrines, including the Harmandir Sahib, or the Golden Temple, from the mahants who had been “managing” the ...
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