The Dharam Yuddh Morcha () ("righteous campaign") was a political movement launched on 4 August 1982, by the Shiromani Akali Dal in partnership with Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, with its stated aim being the fulfillment of a set of devolutionary objectives based on the Anandpur Sahib Resolution.
Background After the Punjabi Suba The Akali Dal had opposed several effects of the Punjab Reorganisation Act on 1 November 1966, with Akali leaders protesting against it. Several months before its inauguration, movement leader Fateh Singh had expressed his dissatisfaction over several issues of contention. These included genuinely Punjabi-speaking areas being left out of the new state and given to Haryana and Himachal Pradesh which stemmed from the usage of falsified returns by the Arya Samaj in the 1961 census, and resulted in the state of Punjab consisting of far less of the over 35,000 square miles of the Punjabi-speaking state proposed by the Akalis, who had carefully drafted the demand strictly on the basis of language and using pre-1947 census figures. Other concerns included Chandigarh being turned into a Union Territory instead of becoming the capital solely of Punjab as promised, the level of autonomy of all of the states in the country, riparian concerns, agrarian reforms, and power and irrigation projects being taken over by the central government, instead of the state retaining control of them.
Emergency and the Save Democracy Morcha
In 1975, Indira Gandhi imposed Emergency rule. The Akali Dal, which took part in Raj Narain's Delhi protest, resolved in a meeting on 30 June to oppose "the fascist tendency of the Congress," also expressing discontent with the construction delay of the Thein Dam, discrimination in heavy industrial development, and unprofitable farm produce prices. Akali leader Harcharan Singh Longowal would state,
Punjab was at the center of anti-Emergency activism, with the Akalis launching the Save Democracy morcha on 7 July, with marches commencing on July 9 from the Darbar Sahib, which served as well-accepted hub of national dissent and protest organization. Punjab served as a haven for anti-Emergency protesters, with dissidents and political opponents from all over India taking refuge in the Darbar Sahib complex. Upon elections being called by her in January 1977 following negative world press, renewed hardline support, and the overturned conviction, Congress was defeated by an opposition alliance, and the Emergency was officially ended on March 23, 1977, with the Akali coalition assuming power in Punjab.
In the 21 months of the Emergency, over 140,000 people were detained, including journalists, scholars, activists, and opposition political party members, using laws like MISA and AFSPA. Seizure of private property, illegal home searches, mass sterilizations, and extrajudicial killings took place among targeted individuals, community leaders, and parties.
Of the arrests during the Emergency, approximately 40,000, or 30%, were of Sikh protesters, and the Sikh would earn Gandhi's ill-favor; many considered her resentment over the Emergency activism to be the root of the strife of the 1980s.According to policy analyst Tridivesh Singh Maini, "It has been argued that Mrs. Gandhi never forgave the Akalis for their opposition to the Emergency;" according to Puran Chand Joshi, "Indira got into her head that it [was] only the Sikhs who constituted a threat to her imperious and dynastic rule, and decided to inflict blows from which they would take long, if ever, to recover."
Centralization The years following the Punjabi Suba movement were characterized by a centralizing tendency in the country. In 1978, several new policy areas were moved from the State List to the Concurrent List, including education, giving the center the power to set guidelines and make decisions regarding textbooks and curricula. The Akalis saw this move as yet another strategy of the central government to intrude on the Sikhs' hard-won autonomy and limit the expression of Sikh culture, history, and religion.
The struggle that emerged in the 1970s was primarily justified on economic reasons, some of which were a consequence of the 1966 reorganization. The Anandpur Sahib resolution, issued by the Akali Dal's working committee in 1973, called for the Indian constitution to be "recast on real federal principles, with equal representation at the center for all States," and a "congenial environment and political set-up" for the Sikhs. The resolution was not secessionist in nature but called for greater autonomy for Punjab, and protection of the Sikhs' cultural and religious rights, along with addressing economic concerns of the Punjab.
The Anandpur Sahib Resolution had been a comprehensive party program, not used in its full format in talks with the central government; the policy proposals developed a few years later based on the Anandpur Sahib Resolution was the 1978 Ludhiana Resolution, which put socio-economic concerns at the core. The Ludhiana Resolution called for an end to the center's control of Punjab's river waters and the just distribution of it, state control of the headworks, and better procurement prices and subsidies for the state's farmers. These issues were of particular concern to the state's rural Sikh population, as the Sikhs dominated the agricultural sector. Other demands included the maintenance of the ratio of Sikhs in the army, protections of Sikhs outside Punjab, Punjabi as a second language for states with significant Punjabi-speaking populations, amendments to tax and property policies for rural populations, a broadcasting station and a dry port at Amritsar, and a stock exchange at Ludhiana.
In September 1981, the Akalis formulated a list of 45 policies, 21 of which were economic in nature and concerned the state's entire population, eight were political in nature and concerned autonomy restrictions and ethnic concerns like Punjabi-speaking areas left out of the state, 14 were religious in nature, including calls for proper representation for Sikh minorities in other states and permission to install a broadcasting station at the Golden Temple, and two were social, concerning Sikhs specifically. The list would be trimmed down to 15 demands in October 1981, of which five were economic. The Dharam Yudh Morcha would champion these preliminary demands. The inclusion of religious demands were a result of polarization of Akali goals following failed negotiations in November with the Congress government, which would raise the specter of separatism to exploit the fears of Hindu voters and push the Akalis into a corner, as well as attempts to ally with, or outbid, more militant Sikh factions, which gained traction following the lack of progress and the growing religious revivalism that both the Akalis and Congress would attempt to play to gain influence. According to Atul Kohli,
Partnership The decision to launch the movement was taken at a World Sikh Conference in Amritsar on 15 July 1981, attended by more than 100,000 Sikhs.
As a result of his rising popularity, Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale faced opposition from all sides, including the government and rival Sikh factions, both political and militant. One of Bhindranwale's main concerns in his speeches was condemning factionalism and internal disunity among the Sikhs. This is reflected in one of his speeches,
The Akali Dal leadership had initially opposed Bhindranwale. While Bhindranwale ceded leadership to the Akali Dal and disavowed political ambition, in 1980 the Akali Dal faced a serious challenge from Bhindranwale and his mass support from the AISSF, the Akali youth wing. Bhindranwale and the AISSF in turn derived most of their support from poor and middle-class rural Sikhs; unlike 1920, when the Akali party was founded to give voice to Sikh issues, and 1962, when Fateh Singh would assume leadership of the Akali Dal and shift its support base to rural Sikhs of Punjab's Malwa region during the Punjabi Suba movement, the leadership of the Sikh movement did not switch strata quickly and decisively, and the dichotomy between Bhindranwale/AISSF and the Akali Dal reflected different economic classes of agricultural Sikhs; they struggled for leadership of the community while simultaneously engaged in protest agitations against the central government. The economic and political crisis began to take religious overtones as the Akali Dal couched its economic and social demands in religious terms, and as negotiations with the central government on issues like Chandigarh and water rights continued to fail, Bhindranwale's position was strengthened. As described by Joyce Pettigrew, "it was not difficult for a people who defined themselves by reference to religious and historical tradition to identify themselves with Bhindranwale's message on questions relating to civil rights and the economic grievance of farmers, and for their subsequent action to be encapsulated within that religious tradition."
As Bhindranwale became increasingly influential, the party decided to join forces with him. In August 1982, under the leadership of Harcharan Singh Longowal, the Akali Dal launched the Dharam Yudh Morcha, or "righteous campaign", in collaboration with Bhindranwale to win more autonomy for Punjab. At the start of the protest movement, against long-standing wrongs not addressed by the state's economic and political process, the Akali leaders had, in their Ardas, or prayer, at the Akal Takht, resolved that they would continue the struggle until the Anandpur Sahib Resolution was accepted and implemented by the Government.
The Anandpur Sahib Resolution itself had been written during the concerted effort of the Akali Dal to reingratiate itself with the Sikh electorate following electoral losses in previous years and alienated Akalis who advocated for a return to a more Sikh orientation, and called for a devolution of power, which had remained greatly centralized following the Emergency. It outlined a more autonomous Punjab and Sikh community, with the most important points being less interference from the central government in areas which other states enjoyed independence, like the economy, and fair consideration of Sikhs in civil service, as Sikhs from Partition to the Reorganization in 1966 claimed to have been run out of the job market if they kept a visible Sikh appearance, including the turban and beard. During this period the Akali Dal had become part of the anti-Congress national mainstream against the Emergency, and the secularization of Akali priorities increased as Akalis interacted with other jailed political leaders.