When Chaudhary Bansi Lal Made Telugu Haryana’s Second Official Language: Mahatma Sant Kumar Recalls Punjabi Struggle For Identity After Haryana Partition

Key Points:

AFTER THE 1947 PARTITION, many families suffered as people were displaced from their homes in search of a new place to settle. Pakistan had a large Punjabi population which was forced to come to India after Partition was announced. One such family was that of Mahatma Sant Kumar, the president of Haryanvi Punjabi Sabha. Kumar is also the president of Universal Research Foundation of Gita and an advocate in district court of Fatehabad, Haryana.

Mahatma Sant Kumar, in a podcast with DB Clips and Podcast, explained how the Punjabi population who migrated to India suffered to maintain their identity. He said that after they came to India, they had high hopes, but as soon as the Partition of Punjab happened in 1966, the view of Haryana people towards the Punjabi community suddenly changed. In the Punjab Reorganisation Act, which was passed by the Indian Parliament, Punjab was divided into Haryana, Punjab, and the Union Territory of Chandigarh, with some parts being transferred to Himachal Pradesh.

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Punjabi Population in Haryana After Punjab Reorganisation Act

Mahatma Sant Kumar first said, “We had crossed a river of blood and come here in Haryana, we came with great hopes that we are in Hindustan. But as soon as Haryana separated from Punjab, the views of the people here changed toward us.” Then he further explained what happened at that time that made him think that people had changed their attitudes toward the Punjabi people living in Haryana.

He said that the first instance was about 45 years ago and it was related to Professor Surendra Kumar Auliyan from Kurukshetra University. Kumar said that he was a professor from the Law department and he published a pamphlet that read, “all these Punjabi people should be sent back.” The pamphlet mentioned that the culture of Punjabi people is completely different from the Haryana people and hence they don’t have any place in the state.

He further stated another person named Pratap Singh Yodha also printed another pamphlet against the community which crossed all the limits. According to Sant Kumar, the pamphlet mentioned that, “They(Punjabi community) are looters, they are infiltrators. Send them back to Pakistan and seize their lands.”

Chaudhary Bansi Lal and the Decision of Telugu as 2nd Official Language

Then he said that the biggest challenge that the Punjabi people had to face was from Chaudhary Bansi Lal. After the Partition, both Punjab and Haryana used to have a lot of disputes about water sharing, education, airport, and the biggest was about the state capital Chandigarh, which both the states were sharing. During this time, Chaudhary Bansi Lal, the third chief minister of Haryana in 1969, got so upset and decided to replace Punjabi with a different second official language.

He introduced a South Indian language as the second official language of Punjab, which was Telugu. Many people from the Punjabi community, including Sant Kumar, were disappointed with this as their Punjabi language was replaced. He said, “Now no one could read, write or speak in Telugu in Haryana. So in these circumstances, we thought that we should create a Punjabi platform to preserve our identity.”

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He said the first meeting for this was organized in 1980, “There used to be a PT college in Rohtak, I’m not aware if it’s still there, in that we had our first meeting.” In that first meeting, there were many members present, including, “Sardar Harpal Singh, AC Chaudhary, and the MLA of this place(Rohtak), Bharat Bhushan Batra, his father Satram Das Batra, and Subhash Batra, and Ashok Arora from Kurukshetra, and Ameer Chand Makar and Parash Mahajan.”

Kumar said, “all of us came together and we decided that in order to maintain our existence. The attacks that are happening on us, in order to protect ourselves from them, or to respond to them, we should do a very big gathering. So after that, we started the meetings.” He said when they started, there used to be small meetings as people used to get scared of being a part of such gatherings.

The meetings used to be held in the houses of the people, “Sometimes we used to meet in Panipat at Diwan Chand Bhatia's house, Diwan Chand Bhatia, Sanjay Bhatia, who is now a Member of Parliament, and sometimes we used to go to Sirsa and meet there. Sometimes we used to meet Satramji and Batraji in Kalanaur.” According to him, that's how they started raising awareness among people about Punjab and their language.

(Edited by Harsh Pandey)

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