SOUTH ASIA GRADUATE RESEARCH JOURNAL
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take Gurmukhi as a badge of their separateness. This ambiguity, according Paul Brass, "has surrounded the language issue, because the rulers do not permit the Sikhs any more than the Muslims to make a demand based on religion, but only on language." 62 The resulting consequence has been the infusion of religion with language identification in Punjab. Though the government leaders did not want to accept such a demand on the basis of religion, a Punjabi suba was finally carved out in 1966. This was not on a purely linguistic but also, on a religious basis.63 After two decades of struggle by the Sikhs, the linguistic division in Punjab was made on communal lines granting the Sikhs a Sikh-majority state excluding vast Punjabi speaking territories outside. The Sikhs themselves were an active party to this political arrangement first in 1956, when a compromise on Regional Formula was reached, and subsequently in 1966, when large chunks of Punjabi speaking areas, especially Kangra, were portioned off from the newly carved state. Territorially apart, vast sections of Punjabi speaking people within the new Punjab and many outside in Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Haryana, Rajasthan and Delhi were alienated from the Punjabi language. Speakers of Dogri and Kangri have now started seeking an independent identity for these two major Punjabi dialects. All these developments have adversely affected the growth of the composite personality and its reflection in the literary and cultural configurations in the past fifty years. As a consequence millions of Punjabis have remained outside the Punjabi mainstream in cultural estrangement.64 The Punjabi identity is gradually veering to a posture of growing isolation from the national mainstream. Large segments of the population living in Haryana and Himachal Pradesh, in spite of Punjabi being their language, give Telegu or Sanskrit as their second language.65 Long outstanding issues such as the transfer of Chandigarh to Punjab, the allocation of river waters and the inclusion of Punjabi speaking areas left out of new Punjab have languished until now.66 Until the early eighties the Akalis continued their struggle for settlement of the pending issues, but their internal factionalism ensured a divided house. In general, Hindus did not have political trust in the Sikh community and most allied themselves with nonPunjabi Hindus. In order to wrest power, the Congress rule at the 62 63 64 65 66
Ibid., 325. Singh, 136. Ibid., 136. Ibid., 136. Ibid., 136.