Gulzar’s Maachis came in 1996. It was seen a lot and was appreciated a lot. In contrast, Satluj came in 2026 and got embroiled in controversies as soon as it was released on the OTT platform. It was also removed from the OTT platform. The film was banned in India but is being watched widely in Canada, America and Britain. But both these films do not try to understand the Punjab problem. Both films raise questions on the side effects of the suppression of the Punjab problem. Matchmaker Gulzar is a serious and literary director. That’s why he did not sensationalize the match. He framed it as a tragedy of a young man victimized by the regime. Who is innocent and innocent. But fed up with the police harassment, he adopts the path of militancy but there too he gets disappointed.
attempt to evoke emotions
Whereas Honey Trehan’s Satluj is about a human rights activist. This is the story of the fight of this activist Jaswant Singh Khalra. In this, the sentiments of the victimized Sikhs have been portrayed with intensity but it has not been told how terrorism spread in Punjab. Certainly this Sutlej film is based on the true story of police atrocities. But one should try to learn from the past and not to raise sentiments again and again without examining the suffering party in the past. These sentiments have been engraved in Sutlej. This increases bitterness in the society. Therefore, it would have been better if the film should have tried to get to the root of the problem. Punjab was not a disturbed state but there was a political conspiracy behind making it disturbed, which started immediately after independence.
disintegration of sikh empire
To understand the Sikh problem, we should understand the history from 1947 till today. Maharaja Ranjit Singh laid the foundation of the Sikh Empire. Such a glorious empire had emerged in India for the first time after the seventh century. He had conquered both Afghanistan and Tibet. His empire extended from Khyber Pass in the west to Tibet in the east. Kashmir in the north and Sindh in the south were under his empire. This was the glorious past of the Sikhs. But this empire was destroyed due to the crookedness of the British. Then in 1947 the country and Punjab were divided. Sikhs had to leave their homes and come to India. Their dialect, speech and culture all got scattered, Punjab which came as part of India, also included Braj and Khari Boli Kaurvi speaking areas. An Amritsar was definitely here.
Sikhs got love and sympathy everywhere
Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s subjects included Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims. He never discriminated on the basis of caste or religion. He kept people from all three communities in his army and administration. The foundation of his empire was laid in 1799, when he conquered Lahore. He established the Khalsa Empire by uniting twelve Sikh Misls, but after his death in 1839, discord started in the empire and in 1849 Lord Dalhousie brought this empire under the East India Company. But Punjab of Sikhs remained. But with the partition in 1947, they had to move from one place to another. He received love and sympathy in every part of India. Whether they were settled in Punjab or Delhi, Kanpur, Lucknow or any other part of the country, the desire for a Sikh state took them towards separation.
sikhsubekimaang
From 1960 onwards, the struggle for the Sikhs to establish their own language and separate identity began. They had no basis to look different from Hindus. Till then both had the same religious identity. Sikhs with hair and without hair did not differentiate them from Hindus. Arya Samaj was widely spread in Punjab. Because of this, the concept of deity worship or incarnationism was less than the rest of India. Both Hindus and Sikhs stood there and spoke Hindi, Braj and Punjabi, but the script was becoming Devanagari. Because till then the entire Haryana and a large part of Himachal was also in the Punjab province. Therefore the demand for Sikh Suba or Akali Suba arose. Although, as soon as the country became independent, Master Tara Singh had raised the demand for Akali state. He was the leader of Shiromani Akali Dal but at that time the number of Hindus was more in Punjab and his support base was also bigger.
Coming and going of Gopichand Bhargava
Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru did some experiments in Punjab. Like he had toppled the government of Punjab’s popular leader Dr. Gopichand Bhargava on 13 April 1949. He was the first Chief Minister of Punjab in independent India. He took over the post of Chief Minister on the request of Home Minister Sardar Patel. After him Bhimsen Sachar became the Chief Minister. This sequence continued for a long time. Dr. Gopichand became the Chief Minister of Punjab thrice. Gopichand Bhargava became the Chief Minister again six months after the fall of the first government. He became the Chief Minister for the third time after the death of Pandit Nehru on 21 June 1964 but he died 15 days later. Pandit Ram Kishan became the Chief Minister on July 7, 1964. He remained Chief Minister till 5 July 1966. Between 1947 and 1966, only one Sikh politician, Pratap Singh Kairon, could become the Chief Minister. He remained Chief Minister for a little more than eight years.
Sikh identity not separated in divided Punjab
After four months of President’s rule, Punjab was reorganized on November 1, 1966. Haryana and Himachal got the status of separate states. But the issue of Akali Suba was still a distant dream. Sikhs became majority in Punjab but the number of Hindus was also quite high. Since there has been a tradition in Punjab that every Hindu family would make its elder son a Sikh, hence Hindu-Sikh relations were not allowing this separation to happen. Secondly, the Sikhs who came from Punjab of Pakistan were mostly Khatris, Baniyas and Brahmins, hence they were not even advocating for the Sikh state like the Jat Sikhs. The politics of Shiromani Akali Dal has largely been with the Sikhs. He would keep away these Khatri Sikhs, who were called Lale Sikhs. Apart from this, Punjabi was written in three scripts. Hindus wrote in Devanagari, Muslims in Urdu and Sikhs in Gurmukhi.
Anandpursahib proposal
Therefore his request towards Gurmukhi also could not succeed. Now a separate Punjabi province was formed but the heartfelt wish of the Sikhs was not fulfilled. Meanwhile, in 1973, Shiromani Akali Dal passed a resolution, it is called Anandpur Sahib Resolution. According to this, this proposal was brought to give a separate identity to the Sikhs. There were some important demands in this. For example, the central government should keep only defence, foreign affairs, communications and currency with itself. All remaining powers will remain with the Punjab Government. Sikhism should be recognized as an independent and sovereign religion and Amritsar should be given the status of a holy city. Apart from this, Chandigarh should be given to Punjab and Punjabi speaking parts of Haryana and Rajasthan should be handed over to Punjab. Agriculture should be promoted, tax concessions and proper representation should be given to them in army and other government jobs.
ISI’s conspiracy
It was impossible to accept these demands. An independent sovereign and secular nation cannot give so many rights to any state on the basis of religion and language. As a result, the identity of a separate Sikh state gained strength. Religious sages and saints also entered into this and the demand for a separate Sikh nation for a separate religious identity started rising from the platform of Gurudwaras. There is no doubt that Pakistan’s intelligence agency ISI was behind this movement. Wealthy Sikhs from Canada and America were funding it. The deceit increased to such an extent that Hindu society started being targeted. In such a situation, the central government had to take strict steps. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi launched Operation Blue Star between June 1 and 3, 1984. The army freed Darbar Sahib from terrorists but now separatism has entered homes and villages.
Indira Gandhi’s assassination
On 31 October 1984, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was shot dead by her Sikh bodyguards. But the massacre that took place against the Sikhs after this changed the atmosphere of the entire country. In Punjab, Hindus started being thrown off buses and killed. The crisis which could have had a political solution was made worse. Rajiv Gandhi was also assassinated and Narasimha Rao became the Prime Minister. He conducted assembly elections in Punjab and Congress got 87 seats. Whereas BJP got a total of 6 seats and BSP got 9 seats. Shiromani Akali Dal got three seats and CPI four seats. Beant Singh became the Chief Minister. He decided to eradicate terrorism from Punjab. For this he made KPS Gill the Director General of Police of the state.
Mbayant Singh died saving Punjab
Both of them ran such a powerful campaign in Punjab that many innocent Sikh youth also got affected by it, but they ended terrorism in Punjab. However, for this, Chief Minister Beant Singh had to sacrifice his life. On August 31, 1995, a Sikh youth carried out a suicide attack near his car. 17 people including the Chief Minister were killed in this. Later, a Sikh human rights activist named Jaswant Singh Khalra investigated it and told how many innocents were killed in this police violence. Later Khalra was taken away by the police and one day information came that he too had been murdered. The role of Khalra has been played by Daljit Dosanjh in the film Satluj. But justice would have been done to the film Satluj if Honey Trehan had also highlighted the problems of Punjab. Right now this film is a kind of emotional blackmail.
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